Beauty Products

When designing an advertisement, it is very important to define the purpose of the ad. Often times, an ad can have a visual eye catcher, which invokes an emotional response opposite of the intended purpose. If this happens, then the ad will be ineffective. To develop an effective ad, it is important to make sure the message is conveyed accurately and consistent with the purpose. When producing an ad, it is crucial to have a congruency between the intended message, the visual appearance with emotional appeal. and the actual text statement.

A congruency between all components of an ad is key to its effectiveness. Looking at two ads for beauty products at a glance, they seem to conveying the same message “use this product and beauty will be yours." When in actuality, each ad has a very different purpose. The messages are complete opposites. The first shampoo ad has a very positive and congruent layout. There is a beautiful woman who uses the shampoo and looks great with beautiful hair. The ad looks and feels positive and evokes a positive response. To contrast that ad,there is an animal rights ad which does not have congruency of components and the result is disastrous.

The animal rights organization “Freedom for Animals” has designed an advertisement about beauty products. The objective of the ad is to educate the public about companies who test or use animals in the production of their products. The ad put out by the Freedom for Animals group shows a young, beautiful woman with vibrant blue eyes. Her hair is a stylish curly frizzy. It looks very becoming on her, actually emitting the message of beauty. To view this animal rights ad, it evokes the same emotional result as the Pantene shampoo ad, one of beauty. Taking a second look at the Freedom for Animal ad, you see on the right side of the woman’s face there is a red sore or wound. It looks like a chemical burn or a scrap. From a distant it looks like a paint smear. It actually takes a second glance to even see this blemish on the woman’s perfect skin. The purpose of the ad is to educate about animal cruelty in the beauty industry. The ad does little to educate the public about animal cruelty. When looking at the ad the woman’s eyes are such a vibrant blue that it actually detracts from the raw red wound. The beauty portrayed is parallel to that in the actual shampoo ad. The Freedom for Animals seemed to use the wrong approach for their message. Their message is really about the ugly brutality of killing animals but the ad shows a gorgeous woman with stunning eyes. This is an incongruency of the visual appearance. My question is why does the organization want to use an image of beauty to encourage people to stop buying the products? I don’t feel like I have to stop buying the product because the woman is so beautiful. This ad is so ironic because it seems to be promoting beauty products in spite of the ugly truth behind the manufacturing process. Looking at the ad the woman is so gorgeous that the written text messages are totally missed.

The message of the words does not match the visual message. This is an incongruency between the visual emotional appeal and the actual written message. The ad combines both negatives and positive texts related to what the advertisement is about. In the larger font size, it says “FOR Luxuriant HAIR” while next to that statement in a much smaller font size it says “this is how 300,000 lab animals suffer each year.” Next to the smaller message we see the tube of the beauty product. The negative message of this ad is lost because of the text is not forthright and visually available causing an inconsistent message of the text. The negative message is totaling lost there for changing the message of the ad. The ad itself is a positive ad. This ad is supposed to be negative but the emotional response I feel is positive. This inconsistency in regards to emotional appeal as a result of the positive visual is a detriment to the ads message.

Beauty product advertisements appeal to the emotional vanity of beauty. The ads are about the products you use to make you look beautiful like the women in the ads. Can a beauty product ad be negative or positive? There are two different advertisements about beauty products but each ad has a message totally opposite of the other. The objective of each ad is totally different but they employee similar techniques, the positive picture of a beautiful woman. One ad is about products that are being tested on animals, and the other one is suggesting that if you use the product you will be as beautiful as the woman in the ad.

It is very important to match the message to the visual. When producing an ad, it is crucial to have a congruency between the intended message, the visual appearance with emotional appeal, and the actual text statement. The advertisement from Freedom for Animals organization is weak in many ways. The visual is a young beautiful woman with perfect skin and bright blue eyes. The models beauty elicits a positive emotional response which is inconsistent with the ads intended purpose, the message of animal cruelty. The larger font text message contains positives words while the insignificant smaller text is missed, even though it is the intended negative purpose of the ad. Defining the purpose and staying consistent to it is key to an effective advertisement.