2. This advertisement is put out by Astro Beyond, promoting their new high definition
quality television service.
It is interesting because they took the stereotype of a close up beauty shot with an
attractive girl- a young Caucasian with big blue eyes, sharp nose and strong, defined jaw
line, and talked about the imperfections that we missed under the tagline “Here’s what
you didn’t see”. Hence, the company decided to use, of all things, something that would
be desirable to be looked at twice- sex appeal. The woman’s stare, amplified by the
colour of her eyes and ample amount of skin simply oozes sensuality throughout the page.
She is given almost the whole page to captivate the readers before they turn to the next
page. The company decided to use physical attractiveness to to appeal to the reader’s
liking.
However, they then point out in their caption the imperfections of her, although in no
way prejudicing her. Instead, this forms a sort of reciprocation of information, which
anybody could have easily missed out. This mechanism of persuasion plays to the
reader’s sentiment of feeling indebted to those who do something for them, leading them
to take a second look at the picture and notice the imperfections listed as follows “stray
grey hair, split ends, blemish on right cheek, unflattering contact lens colour, lipstick
bleed”. This two way interaction with the advertisement, diving deeper into the
advertisement, would further persuade the reader regarding their product about the details
that we miss everyday without their high definition quality television service.
In conclusion, it is not by chance that this advertisement entices the reader to look twice,
and most important of all, think twice about purchasing their product. This particular
advertisement calls on the readers to notice the details that they can bring to your
television screen through a stereotyped beauty and reciprocation of information.
