Sunday, October 11, 2015

This advertisement for Expedia, created by Mark Osborne in January 2013 in London, England serves as a prime example of lust. In a denotative examination of the text it is stating that Expedia's travel expertise can take someone to a place like paradise, fill of sun, sea, sand, and sex. The connotative examination of this piece reveals that this ad is appealing to the idea of escapism in human nature. This idea of leaving behind the mundane life and going to a fantastical location far away from the norm is an appeal to the sense of wanderlust humans experience on a day to day basis.The advertisement is being marketed towards British travelers, as shown by the use of English as the language of publication and the web address in the bottom left corner (expedia.co.uk). The social and economic backgrounds of the targets of this advertisement would consist of people who are middle to upper class who are seeking adventure in their mundane lives, since lower class members of society could not afford luxurious vacations to high end resorts. The average traveler does not have a large amount of cultural knowledge of the place of the they are traveling, which is represented in this ads generic descriptions of travel destinations. The ad is simplistic in its layout, listing off a series of words as airplane baggage tickets. The words themselves promote the idea of lust in that sex is included alongside sun, sea, and sand. This implies that sex is just as important to a complete beach vacation as the beach itself. This plays on stereotypes of luxurious vacations to faraway islands that are present in the minds of wealthy travelers.

4 comments:

  1. Dawson-
    Be sure you do more with the little picture- look at and cite specific examples of format, structure, language, etc. It will strengthen your analysis and provide more depth/ examination of effect in your big picture

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  2. I thought it was weird that a travel agency would use lust as a method of advertisement. One would think more along the lines of greed. It appears that the creator of this add views sex as a main attraction of any vacation. It is quite a shame if this is what society has boiled down to. Pay a lot of money to fly somewhere, have sex and come back. I personally would have expected an advertisement full of fancy beach side resorts that are super expensive.

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  3. Similar to Brandon, I would have guessed that a travel agency would have used a different sin for advertising purposes, maybe avarice? But I really liked your analyzation of "sex" in comparison to the other words, and how they correlate especially on a vacation. Also, I had never thought about how this would appeal to a specific audience, so I enjoyed your description of the "middle to upper class who are seeking adventure". Great job!

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  4. I really liked your analysis, I also think Brandon and Mackinley's comments add something to the blog post (shoutout to Mrs. G for having this cool idea). Anyway I agree that including sex to suggest vacation is kind of odd. Like are they also a company that provides escorts? Including sex does make vacation seem more exotic and interesting in a sense but also narrows the target market (as in not kids or parents with kids)... I don't know if it is just me but I didn't get that SND was SAND untill I read the blog post, s/o for pointing that out! Great job Dawson!

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