Instructify

BY KEVIN HODGSON

There’s a saying that if you want to understand the times, read the advertisements. What companies are selling, and how they are selling it, is an indication of the beliefs, values, and prejudices of a society. Certainly, this philosophy often forms the heart of many media studies classes. Adflip is a site with an abundant number of advertisements from various decades, ranging from back to the 1940s all the way up to the present.

Just a glance at the advertisment posters from the 1940s demonstrates a country still pulling out from the Great Depression, with smiling faces selling products designed to let you forget about your troubles. There are also plenty of car advertisements, and car parts, and it’s interesting to note how the ads change and stay same over time. The site has a free component, but it has its limitations, and the paid component lets you go deeper into the Adflip archives.

In the classroom

Adflip provides one avenue for examining the rhetoric of ads from across the last 50 to 60 years in the United States. This might be done by choosing a general topic, such as automobiles, and picking apart the use of image, word choices, and other advertising strategies that also connect to the zeitgeist of the times. In addition, one thing that popped out at me is how some ads are clearly targeted for men, while others, for women, and I imagine that is still very true today (such as in Car and Driver magazine as opposed to Glamour magazine, for example). Students who examine these rhetorical stances more closely may become better attuned to the times when their own demographic and gender are being targeted by companies.

Adflip

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