Constructing audiences: how do media products use brand identity to form their audiences?
 |
| The Adbusters website presents a disparate and compelling array of styles to its target audience that is significantly different from the magazine |
For Curran and Seaton, the audience doesn’t just already exist: it is made by the producer of the media product. So what does this mean? Basically, in order to construct brand identity and brand loyalty, the producers of media products will think long and hard about what they want their audiences to be. Then, by presenting their ideology in an agreeable and compelling manner, people will agree with the ideology of the media product, and may even change their lifestyle as a result.
So what lifestyle does Adbusters promote? An activist lifestyle, where the audience will challenge the forces of capitalism and consumerism, using the tools of satire and detournement. So, how does Adbusters make this look good?
Adbusters issue 125: May/June 2016
You will need access to this entire issue of Adbusters to complete these questions. Your teacher will provide you with a link.
Please note: this edition features distressing images and challenging concepts!
Complete the following questions/tasks
- Skim read the whole magazine. Yes the whole magazine!
- Sum up Adbuster's ideology in three words
- Use a search engine to find three examples of significant world events that happened from March 2015 to April 2016. What issues, event, problems and concepts did this year raise, and how might Adbusters be seen to respond to this?
- After reading the entire magazine, what genre do you believe that Adbusters best fits in to?
- What elements of the magazine may encourage the audience to live an alterntive lifestyle
adbusters.org
- Spend some time going through the website. Click on things. Turn the volume up. What can you find?
- How does the brand identity of the adbusters website and the magazine differ? What things do they do differently?
- Take five screenshots of the Adbusters website. In what ways do these screenshots encode Adbuster's brand identity? Make reference to media language