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Think about TV ads. Analyze. Ask questions. |
Consider these ideas for your own compositions. |
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| WHAT
DOES THE AD ASSUME?
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WHAT
DO YOU ASSUME?
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Advertising makes basic assumptions that the audience will receive and understand the messages sent. Most ads assume that the intended audience can see, can hear, and can understand the language. Print ads assume also a literacy, which implies a certain degree of education and intelligence. Ads also make cultural assumptions that the audience has some kind of interest, desire, or need for the product. Ad campaigns are usually well targeted at the appropriate audiences. Ads also make some basic assumptions about the sales transaction involved: that the item is to be purchased (not stolen or shoplifted), and that the audience has the potency and ability, the means and the money, to buy the product. In the broadest sense, advertising assumes an affluent society in which consumers have choice. (Science-fiction scenarios for post-nuclear-holocausts will not include ad agencies thriving in the ruins.) Ads targeted at very specific audiences will make many assumptions. For example, ads about business products (office computers, telephone networks) may use technical jargon not comprehended by everyone in the total television viewing audience, but easily understood by the intended target audience of business people. Advertisers spend much time and money on audience analysis ("consumer research") to discover what assumptions can be made about what the audience knows and how the audience feels. Ads that assume too little about the audience, and tell us too much, will seem simplistic and "insult our intelligence." If this occurs, we might reflect whether the ad is ineffective, or if we are not the target audience.
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Assertions and assumptions are made anytime you transfer information. Some things, you assert, or state explicitly; other things, you assume, or take for granted. When you write, you usually don't have to start from the beginning (from scratch, from zero, ab ovo). Unconsciously, writers make certain assumptions about their intended audience: for example, that they are able to read English and that there is some "common knowledge" of customs and conventions. In most cases, writers presume a certain "normality" or "typicality" about their audience. The better able you are to define and specify your audience, the easier it is to make assumptions about what they already know and how they feel about the topic, and what context or background material would be relevant for their understanding. Feedback helps as a way to check your assumptions about the audience. Try to get someone else to read your draft - from the point of view of the intended audience - and to suggest what could be added for clarity, or deleted because it explains too much. Sometimes it helps to specify, by writing notes to yourself, exactly what you do assume about your audience's knowledge and attitudes. For example, if you are writing a paper to be read by a teacher, specify your assumptions about that reader's education, background, and expectations. Although such "psyching out the prof" can be abused ("What does he want?"What's she looking for?"), at best, it can develop a genuine, conscious awareness of audience expectations. In all writing, think about what you can assume, or need not explicitly tell your audience. Degree is important: If you assume too little, you may be insulting; assume too much, you may be unclear.
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| | Welcome | Purpose | Audience | Limits | Structure | Attention | Confidence | Explicit | Implicit | Response| Omission | |
