Adbusters Flashcards
Audience profile?
ABC1 - disposable income
25 - 45
Male & Female
Where & When was it founded?
in 1989 by Kalle Lasn and Bill Schmalz, a duo of award-winning documentary filmmakers living in Vancouver, Canada
What are the main messages the magazine tries to get across?
anti-capitalism & anti-communism
Profit?
Non-Profit magazine
What is a subvertising?
spoofs of corporate advertising
“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” quote from?
Blaise Pascal - 16th C french philosopher
What does the quote suggest about the audience?
They are educated - understand the quote and can apply it to modern day life
What does the quote mean?
People can’t just sit and reflect, we have to be constantly entertained - consumerism/short attention span.
What is significant about the layout of Pascal’s quote?
stands out because it’s on a blank page
= Signifies how empty spaces make people uncomfortable like being alone does
How does the magazine suggest that technology is taking over our lives?
Image of a person in bed & people at train station being sucked into their phones = technology isolates people from the real world, no face = identity is online
Who publishes Adbusters
Adbusters Media Foundation
When was the set edition published?
May/June 2016
How much is the magazine?
£10.99
In April 2017, how many readers did the magazine have on its website?
120,000
Genre of the Magazine?
Independent/Culture Jamming
Adbusters Ethos (3)
Being grateful for the world around you rather than what’s on the internet
Giving readers useful information not useless ads
Producing less toxic media
How can media language dissect the ad ‘The Joys of being advertised nothing’?
Blank space draws attention
Graffiti at the bottom of the billboard is in keeping with the area (Bristol)
Not put together like a conventional advert, it is messy and unprofessional = reinforces the purpose of the advert which is to make people stop focusing on consumerism
Target Audience psychographics?
Politically aware, political activists, environmentally friendly lifestyle
How many times is ‘Adbusters’ published per year?
6 times (1 every 2 months)
Language: Analysis of the Front cover’s masthead?
Masthead = plain white sans serif font clearly visible top of cover, although partially covered as if its been covered in dirt.
Representation: how have ethnicities been represented?
black person wearing makeshift shoes, standing on parched earth, connotations of poverty and drought/ famine in a developing country (familiar representation from charity advertising campaigns and television news reports).
Representation Theorist
Stuart Hall - ‘otherness’
Audience Theorist
David Gauntlett -
Language; Analysis of front covers main image?
Black background, main image of male in camouflage jacket, angry expression, clenched fist, image partially pasted over – subverts codes of consumer/lifestyle magazines.
Language; What is the title of the set edition?
‘POST-WEST’ - in same white font as the masthead, dominantly positioned in the lower third of the cover
Language; What typical magazine conventions does the front cover not have?
cover lines, price or barcode = reflecting the independent and subversive nature of the magazine.
Advert proving ant-consumerist ideology?
Loubouton logo juxtaposed with image of a black person’s feet in shoes/ flip-flops made from two squashed plastic bottles and tied together with pieces of ragged material to communicate an anti-consumerist ideology.
Analysis of Loubouton advert?
tagline ‘red soles are always in season’
- irony as Loubouton is famous for creating shoes with red soles, but the meaning here also refers to the feet of the person in the advert.
- ‘Season’ refers to both the fashion calendar and the situation of the person in the image who wears the same shoes all year round.
- The audience is positioned to reject consumerism and to understand/ possibly take action against the issue of inequality.
