The product I am advertising is Lush’s ‘Rosy Cheeks’ face mask. I am using fellow student Kate McKenna as the face of my brand. In both adverts, I will take on a reactionary stance, which fits in with the ideals of the era in which the adverts supposedly take place in.

In my first (modern) advert, my target audience will be women aged 12-25, who are looking to get smoother, glowing skin on their faces. The aim of this advert will primarily be emphasising the positive qualities of my product through a clean, pretty aesthetic and informative description. The adverts colour palette will mostly consist of pink / nude shades because these colours are usually associated with love, kindness, calmness, and femininity. I will apply this by using a pinkish background, and by dressing my dominant signifier/face of the brand (Kate McKenna) in pinky colours. I also photoshopped a pearl earing onto her ear. Pearl earrings are a symbol of class and riches, and so by including one in my advert, it suggests to the audience that the product is a luxury one. It also makes the advert look prettier. Furthermore, I used photoshop extremely liberally in this advert (see my post titled ‘BEFORE / AFTER PHOTOSHOP‘). I smoothed out Kate’s skin, took away any moles, spots, and blemishes, thickened out her eyebrows, lightened her skin, coloured in her eyes to make them bluer, took away her eye bags, made her skin lighter / clearer, and filled in her lips to make them thicker, redder, and a more idealised shape. In my view, adverts shouldn’t use photoshop at all, and to me, Kate looked just as (if not more) beautiful in the unedited picture of her. However, as almost all adverts (especially skincare ads) use photoshop to make their product look more appealing to their target audience, it is essential that I use photoshop in order to fit in with the ‘reactionary’ stance I decided to take with my ad. The main selling point of the product will be the soothing, calming influence it has on the skin. The tagline (indexical sign) will be “give your skin the love it deserves”. This reinforces the calm, kind, and loving feel (the anchorage) of the product which I’ve tried to connote. My style model is unfortunately a landscape ad (I am required to do mine portrait) and so I will be taking most of my influence from the adverts ‘feel’ rather than its layout. The most obvious way that I’ve taken influence from my style model is by using a flower as part of my backdrop. The type of flower I decided to use was a rose because the name of my product is ‘rosy cheeks’, and a pretty pink flower connotes feelings such as love, kindness, calmness, and femininity. Also, the font I used on the company and product name (‘Lush’ and ‘Rosy Cheeks’) is slightly similar to that of my style model, and it connotes a luxury, posh feel. Finally, I directed Kate to use a pose that slightly resembles the pose Kate Winslet uses in my style model (head turned slightly to the right with a natural – but elegant – expression). I differed from my style model by placing Kate smack bang in the middle of my advert. I did this because I want the audience to immediately be drawn to Kate’s face because that is the dominant signifier of my advert. Hopefully, Kate’s beauty and clear skin will attract the attention of the target audience, who will likely yearn to have skin as clear and beautiful as hers.

In my 60s era advert, my marketing strategy will be slightly different. Instead of targeting strictly women aged 12-25, my target audience will be women and men aged 18-35 (however the advert will be directed towards women). In this advert, I followed my style model much more strictly. The theme of the advert will again be reactionary (for the time period). The reactionary stance of my advert is most clear in my slogan – “Give your man a face he wants to touch”. This slogan suggests to the target audience that she needs to use this product, to appeal to the sexual desire of men. Degrading slogans such as this one were extremely common in advertising during the 60s, and so it is important that I made my slogan creepy and politically incorrect (by modern standards). My picture will follow the same theme as my slogan, as I will have a man (me) caressing a woman’s face (Kate). This is extremely similar to my style model, which also pictures a man touching a women’s face in a loving manner. However, one area in which the two pictures are different is that in my advert Kate is looking towards the camera, whereas in the 60s advert the woman is looking at the man. I made this change because I believe that by having Kate look at the camera, the passive viewer of the advert will be more interested in the product. I again matched my style model through the use of colour, with the dominant signifier of the advert (the picture of me and Kate) appearing in black and white, and the banner at the bottom of the screen appearing in a creamy white colour. The dark colour palette of the advert connotes a dark, sexy vibe, which captures the viewer’s attention and creates feelings of passion and energy.