Charity essay

Analyse how social and cultural contexts can influence advertising?
Use figure 3 to support your answer.
In your answer:

• analyse how social and cultural influence advertising
• make judgements and reach a conclusion on why they are advertised in this way

Social Context

 

Social Anxieties - Inequalities (gender, race, sexuality, class) - Conflicting Social Values

Cultural Context

 

Consumerism - Celebrity Culture - Feminism - Postmodernism

These posters each emphasise what the campaign tries to achieve in helping the homeless. By advertising the Shelter campaign, it is targeting tough topics that relate to people’s everyday life. This proximity targets the emotions of people that see the campaign so that they feel inclined to do something about homelessness. Homelessness is a fairly sensitive subject as it negatively affects a lot of people in the world. There are so many people who are homeless and so by the Shelter campaign creating the type of posters shown in figure three, they are emphasising the need for help and donations to the campaign.

On each of these posters, the people behind the text have similar expressions on their faces. Their emotions seem relatable to those who are homeless (as the campaign represents homelessness and aims to tackle it). All the posters show normal, white people who are losing or have lost their home due to things like jobs etc. Even though these posters don’t show diversity between races, there is diversity shown in gender. This allows everyone to be able to relate to them and it shows togetherness/a community.  By using men and women as the face of the campaign poster, it shows how homelessness could happen to anyone.  

The camera shot is a close up so that you can clearly see their facial expressions (showing sadness/depression etc.). The contrast between the light pigmentation of their skin and a very dark shade of hair links with sadness (which is what many homeless people feel).

Furthermore, the text used (lying on top of the actor’s faces) illustrates the fact that homeless people need help. The rhetorical question “But where will we live?” is an open question that anyone can have an opinion to answer. The idea is for people to automatically think about how serious the situation is and what they can do to help. Also, the use of the word “can’t” emphasises the negativity that the situation of homelessness brings to people’s lives. Meaning that when someone is being threatened of losing their home, it is very common to become depressed or having negative thoughts.

 

In conclusion, Shelter uses many social and cultural contexts in order to promote what they aim to do - help the homeless. They do this by targeting people by showing normality in the ads to make people feel included and a community that should help each other out.