- What insight does Melissa Rubin offer about the Coca-Cola ad she analyzes, and what evidence does she provide to support her analysis? Has she persuaded you to accept her conclusions?
Rubin explains that the Coca-Cola ad not only reflects the values of that time, they actually influenced the American culture. Her evidence comes from her analysis of the ad, and how she connects specific parts of it to historical facts. She points how the diversity in the ad is not showing multiple races, it shows military and civilians, or middle class and working class together. She then uses information about what historically was taking place to explain why this is important. The way she does this for every part of the ad, and used that information to support her thesis, makes me accept her conclusions.
- How does she incorporate historical content, and what does that information contribute to her analysis?
The historical information that Rubin provides allows us to understand how she came to the conclusions she did. The author gives us history on Coca-Cola, and historical context on what was happening in the world at the time the ad was effective. To analyze an ad from the 1950’s, we needed to understand what was happening in the 1950’s.
- What other questions might you try to answer by analyzing an ad?
Advertisements give us a look into what appeals to society, or specific parts of society. We can use advertisements to figure out what was valued in a culture; what people wanted, what they saw as socially acceptable. You can also you ads to determine what underlying assumptions about a certain group is in society. For example, the “Stay Sweet As You Are” essay uses ads for women to determine what society thought about women.
- Can you think of a contemporary ad that projects the values of the era we live in? How do the two ads compare?
Most perfume ads depict beautiful women, and the handsome man they use the perfume to impress. These ads show society’s pressure on women to be beautiful and perfect, and how their goal is to be beautiful and perfect for men. These ads both want to persuade their target audience to buy and use their product, however the way they appeal to their target audience is very different. The way Coke was trying to inspire feelings of togetherness in their ads is very different than the pressuring of women to buy perfume so they can be beautiful for men.
Summary:
Melissa Rubin’s, “Advertisements R Us,” analyzes a Coca-Cola ad from the 1950’s, and discusses how Coke used the cultural environment of the 50’s to make their ad most effective. Coke, thanks to advancements in technology and transportation, quickly became popular across the US. Considering the backdrop of wartime, Rubin states that in the ad, Coke is trying to inspire positive feelings of patriotism in conjunction with their product. The types of people prominently shown in the ad, servicemen and veterans, appealed to the value that was placed on the military at the time. The highlight of economic and wartime related diversity, and the lack of racial diversity i
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