The Seven Deadly Sins outline the summarized seven actions that are not to be committed by people who are followers of Christianity and other related religions. The following advertisement displays one of the Seven Deadly Sins, lust, in order to persuade the viewer to eat at Subway.
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| RSN Designs May 12, 2013 New York City |
Look at the photo and what do you see? The small picture idea is likely that Subway is attempting to persuade the viewer to eat at their restaurant after grabbing their attention from the advertisement. The idea is that a person seeing this would be astounded at the thought of "Sex" being displayed publicly in this manner, and subliminally would want to eat at Subway as a result. The intended audience for this advertisement is people who would be easily distracted by the obsceneness of the sign and find humor within it, and we can understand that this is meant for an older audience of people that fall into a category of popular culture. The culture of these people would create a humorous reaction to the Subway ad since it says "Sex", which wouldn't normally be something acceptably displayed in such as public setting. It targets people that are easy going enough to find the humor in the advertisement as opposed to the outrage that could also be concluded from it. It doesn't seem to necessarily appeal to a specific economic or social class because it tends to target more of a cultural aspect of a person.
Although this billboard was not actually real, the advertisement was utilized in order to target the same audience and serves the same purpose. Diving deeper into the meaning of the advertisement, there's a saying in the world of publicity: "Sex sells". It can be assumed that since sex and lust are commonly understood within people's lives, it creates a sense of familiarity. While this is how we're initially drawn to the advertisement, the underlying reason why is likely to be considered one of the Seven Deadly Sins. Lust is something common in people's lives all over the world and is relatable, which is why Subway used this theme to target their audience. If you saw this billboard driving down I-540, would you do a double take? It's expected that you would because lust is something commonly silenced and frowned upon within our society, despite it being natural human behavior. Displaying an idea that is most often not discussed in a public manner grabs everyone's attention when looking at this advertisement, and Subway uses lust ironically since it's what draws us into reading the ad, but it's also a deadly sin.
Elena,
ReplyDeleteWow! I loved this blogpost. You brought up so many ideas that I'd love to comment on. Because I also chose an ad that appealed to the sex appeal of its viewing population, I'm in complete agreement with you that using sex as an advertising technique isn't necessarily targeted towards a specific demographic; rather, it appeals to the universal sex drive within us all. Additionally, I thought that bringing up the taboos of publicizing sexual desires was a great point to hit. You're right- this society is pretty stringent about pushing down any and all sexual desires, despite the fact that we are biologically wired to reproduce. Whereas my ad also concerned lust, it featured a classical "hot girl," and I was interested in seeing how your advertisement appealed to the idea of sex by manipulating its conventional role in society. Frankly, I didn't see anything wrong with your post this week to mention. Keep it up!
Interesting post, you did a good job in developing your argument throughout your blog post. I liked how you connected the fact that the sin of being lustful is inevitably a natural human behavior, something that back in the days people probably thought otherwise. This shows that we as a human society have improved our values in order to accept that maybe we are not the ones to blame for our sins and therefore we shouldn't be punished for something that is not under our control. Overall, awesome blog!
ReplyDeleteReally good blog post Elena! I really though how you brought the subliminal messaging aspect of the direct and subliminal messaging that can be seen in this advertisement. The way that you were able to talk about both of these viewpoints in a very direct and understandable manner was very well formulated, and that shows that you really though about the prompt before actually writing your blog post . Also with the idea of "Sex sells" is really important which you brought up because although we are advancing in today's modern society we are still relying on old world tactics like 'sex' in order to make a product sell, or look better. Stellar work!
ReplyDeleteElena,
ReplyDeleteIn this blog post you had some really great analysis of the small and big picture of the ad. One part that I really liked was how you connected it back to your audience by asking what one would do if they saw this sign on I-540. The grammar, intended audience, and analysis were all great.
I really like your post! I thought it was cool how you picked an ad that was not actually real, but the use of the subliminal message was really neat. you did a great job in analyzing all the parts of this ad, and i enjoyed your question at the end.
ReplyDelete