Magazine Advert Analysis

Magazine Advert Analysis

The purpose of a magazine album advert is to promote the artist's new album and encourages people to listen to the artists music. This also enables the artist to reach a wider target audience which is for people that read magazines as well as listening to music. The advert will act as a constant reminder of the upcoming album which will remind them to listen and buy the album. With this it also links in with other advertisements of the album which creates more marketing which overall means a higher profit. In addition to this the advert enables the company to get support from other companies which means that this could push sales further and in turn again gain higher profit. The advert also benefits both the magazine and the artist also as this will be able to link in with any articles in the magazine based on the artist. I have chosen two adverts which I have chosen to analyse to help me understand the connotations of the advert and how they benefit the artist and the company. I have chosen to analyse adverts from Adele and Paloma Faith.

Adele


Within this magazine advert Adele is represented as though she is fed up, lonely and down. This can be inferred through the close up which enables the audience to see her facial expressions and body language. Her eyes are looking downwards which is what somebody would usually do if they were feeling sad or upset as this is a natural reflex, and also has connotations with looking down and to the right in which Adele is doing in this specific image to attending to eternal emotions which they may be struggling with. Furthermore, it also appears as though Adele is closing her eyes, this has connotations with shutting out the outside world and not wanting to see what is in front of that person. This could represent Adele and the topics in which she is confronting in the music on her album as it is personal to her and something in which she may not want to talk about. The colours used throughout the magazine advert also enable the audience to infer different representations of Adele and her music. The colours used are predominately black and white.This creates a dark and negative effect for the audience. This is because black has connotations of grief and sadness which could infer to the audience Adele's state of mind and emotions suggesting she is in a bad point of the time she was singing about of reminiscing. This contrasts with the secondary colour used which is white. Black and white usually contrast each other in the sense that black gives of a negative effect whereas white usually suggests and infers positivity. The white used also reflects on Adele which could suggest innocence and vulnerability of the artist. Therefore, the audience will sympathies for Adele as she is seen to be in a dark place in a vulnerable state which some of the audience may be able to relate to. In this magazine advert, the artist is positioned to the side of the advert, whereas this contrasts to the actual music video because the artist is predominately in the middle. However, the reason for this could be that by positioning the artist this way, it allows the light to shine on her and reiterate the vulnerability and dark phase she is in and is singing about. In addition to this, this enables the title to stand out more as this can be positioned in the middle in front of the dark background which allows it to stand out even more as this is eye capturing and bold in capital letters and a white font so that it contrasts from its surroundings. The choice of image allows the overall magazine advert to remain simple and eye capturing due to the well thought out aspects of the advert. The image used also is a close up shot of the artist which allows the audience to recognize her more easily. This type of shot works better than a long shot as it enables the audience to see the facial expressions and body language of the artist. We can infer from the facial expressions and previously mentioned how Adele may be feeling by looking at the way she is posed, such as down and upset. But we can also see by the close up shot that she is feeling vulnerable and lonely through the use of body language. Adele appears as though she is wrapping her arms around herself and crossing them, which  suggests to the audience that this may be a defensive mechanism to her as she is blocking out the outside world or something that has hurt her; suggesting to the audience that this is what her music could be about. In addition to this, the body language can infer that there is a lack of trust and a sense of vulnerability which the artist is feeling, this may cause the audience to sympathise as they may feel sorry for her and be able to relate as they may have been in a similar situation themselves. The typography is the technique and arranging or writing which can be either legible, readable and appealing when displayed. The arrangement of the writing involves selecting sizes, line lengths and spacing. In this particular artist magazine advert the font is kept quite plain and simple, which allows the audience to not divert their attention away from the artist and the expressions in which will give a glimpse into her music style and songs. The writing style also matches the style of her music as it is not loud or extravagant, soul genre music is usually soft and contains more of a hidden meaning whereas if this was a pop magazine advert I would expect to see extravagant fonts with bold, bright colours. The colours used in the font for this particular magazine advert is based around light colours, which again suggest innocence and vulnerability which could represent the artist and her emotion. In addition to this a secondary colour used is a light, pale green. This colour has connotations which could infer and represent the album because it gives a renewing feel which the audience may want to hear as a refreshing style of music to listen to. Green is also a colour which has connotations of being relaxing and soothing which could also represent her music genre and engages the audience as this may be something that they would like to listen to. Furthermore, in this magazine advert, the writing and language which is used is kept quite plain and simple in regards to the style. Adele's language used is kept straight to the point and sharp as it tells the audience the key facts in which they need to know. In comparison with the Jessie J posters in which my group analysed she used words such as "smash" which is stereotypical of the pop genre as they use bold, eye capturing aspects which would engage a younger audience. Whereas Adele is marketing a sophisticated, older audience which may not be engaged by those types of wording and language.

Paloma Faith


Within this magazine advert of Paloma Faith it seems as though the artist is intrigued by something through her natural and innocent pose which also gives of a sense of vulnerability to the audience. The advert uses many dull colours such as the use of brown tones and cream. The darker colours are commonly used in an advert for the soul artist as this helps to represent their music as they are usually singing about controversial, personal and sensitive topics. However, the lighter colours are predominantly surrounding her face. The use of this colour can help to portray innocence and vulnerability as the audience know that the artist sings lyrics with a personal background which could lead them to sympathize for her as they could imagine themselves in her situation. The use of the orange is exaggerated in the magazine advert which has connotations of the person being fiery which also suggests power. This is not typical from a soul artist as they are usually seen to be vulnerable an innocent so this representation is contrasting which may help to engage the audience as this is something that they are not expecting. Like most soul artists, the artist in this magazine is positioned central in the advert.This shot is also a close up which helps the audience to recognize the artist more than they would if there was a long shot of the artist which may be difficult for the audience to recognize and ensures that the main thing that they are focusing on is the artist and the typography. The typography is a curly, unique font which could represent her music. Her music isn't conventional and would not be considered 'mainstream' by many. The colour of the writing could be seen as a light gold colour. This colour has many connotations and symbolizes high quality, which could further illustrate her quality of music in which she produces, which would entice the audience to listen to her music. Furthermore, the writing used also has hints of silver used as it seems multi-coloured. The silver in the title could relate to the moon and suggest and represent the artist as quite emotional and sensitive which is understandable and relatable for the audience as this is what the majority of her content in her music is based upon, personal subjects. In comparison to Adele, who did not really use any extravagant, eye capturing language, Paloma Faith uses words such as "sensation" to boost her credit and show to the audience that she is worth listening to. In addition, "cast a spell" is also used and shows that her talent is rare, which therefore captures the audience makes them want to listen more as they wonder what is so good about her music.

Both adverts promote the music genre stereo typically, they both are simplistic in the fact it represents the music as there is no extravagant aspects, it is predominately focused on the artist. The advert promotes the artist to the audience as though they are missing out if they do not listen to the artists music. They focus the advert mainly on the artist in order not to divert the audience's attention away through the use of close ups and techniques which are not extravagant such as using bright colours and bold fonts. Instead it targets the audience with a different approach than a typical magazine advert would by focusing on the wording and simple images used which help to show a deeper meaning in which the audience can infer and may be able to relate. The research that I have found from analysing the two magazine adverts will assist me and my group in the planning stage of developing ideas for our own magazine advert for our chosen artist Adele. One example that we will consider including in our magazine advert is a close up shot of the artist. This is conventional to both the advert and music video as it does then not divert the attention of the audience away from the artist as they are not distracted by anything which may be disrupting in the background. Not only this, but the close up shot allows the audience to relate to the audience as they can see the emotion she is feeling throughout the expressions and body language clearly shown. Furthermore, we will think carefully in deciding which colour, style font we will choose as we will choose a colour in which has connotations with the artist and her music. An example of this which I am interested in using is the colour silver as it has connotations as previously mentioned with emotions and being sensitive which links into the themes and topics of the majority of songs in which our artist sings.