Magazine advert analysis - Miss Georgiou

Magazine advert analysis 

Introduction

The purpose of a magazine advert is to promote the artist itself as well as a newly released album or single. If a artist is bringing out a new album then they will use promotion to tell there target audience the dates that the album is being released, and give them any information on pre-ordering or where is can be brought. As well as catching her own audience, it can lead to it being promoted to a wider audience, which is an advantage. Another purpose of a magazine album advert is to act as a constant reminder of the upcoming album, as well as to link in with other advertisements of the album to create more marketing.  This helps with the promotion from the marketing purpose. To get support from the other companies that could push sales further. 

Adele's '21' Album Advert
The first magazine advert i have chosen to look at is for adele's 21 album. This album was released on the 19th of january 2011. The representation of the artist shows her as depressed and having a lack of confidence. This is shown through this advert as she is looking down on her audience in both of the photos shown. In the main photo, which is the background shows her enlarged on the page looking down, which represents her as thinking or even shutting her eyes upset. This may show her also as insecure, as she doesn't want to show her face to the audience so she is looking down and hiding it. This may be for reasons such as her past experiences and restricting her emotion from being sent out to the audience and creating a relationship between the two. Depression is shown through the colour black being used frequently which is a connotation of the magazine advert, this also links in to the colour green being used, which shows jealousy linking in to Adele's songs about her past and previous boyfriends on the album. The connotations of Adele link in with the colours throughout. The colour black is also a connotation of her past, as the two colours black and white represent a cold and dark past, which is referenced within her lyrics within the songs on the album Adele 21. The colour green is used within the title on the number 21, the main feature of the word 'available everywhere now' which stands out on the black background and is shown clearly to Adele's target audience as it is in a clear font that is easy to understand and read. There is only three colours used on this magazine advert which is black, white and green, which are quite dull colours representing her feelings and how low she really is, linking into her looking down in both photos as her representation. The design and the layout of this advert is very simplistic. The layout shows Adele enlarged on the front as to be looking down at her new album being promoted at the bottom left hand corner of the magazine advert. The font is very simple, which is unconventional as the soul genre is usually original and qwerky, whereas the typography shows a bold font for the title which states 'Adele 21'. Seeing as this is a woman's magazine advert, bright colours usually catch the audiences eyes, with curly writing which women find attractive. Adele's use of simplistic features catches her audiences eye in a different way as it is noticed because it isn't bright and is unusual towards a magazine advert as they are normally promoted as bold. This says a lot about the messages Adele is sending out to her audience and the way in which she is feeling. Adele is sending out a message through the features used that she is feeling down and feeling insecure about herself. The style of language used on this magazine advert doesn't go into a lot of meaning and gets straight to the point. The language "available everywhere" shows that Adele is very popular and is very-well known to have her album released in all available CD shops in the UK, this also shows her promotion and wanting to be able to reach a wider audience as well as her own. But this doesn't express the UK, the word everywhere can mean globally, showing her originality and popularity all over the world. Furthermore, the word "featuring" expresses that there is a popular number 1 hit within the new album, helping with promotion and directing at the audience to buy the new album as it includes popular new releases and lurking the audience to look into what other songs are included. The style of language is very persuasive towards not just Adele's target audience but a wider one too. In addition, the album promotes the soul genre due to the dull and dark colours used which are conventional of soul. The soul genre traditionally incudes deep meaningful thoughts within the lyrics and meaning within each song, which  has been connected to the representation of the magazine advert. The advert is promoting the genre has being personal and easy to create a relationship between the artist and audience which is what Adele's target audience want. The advert promotes the artist as insecure and in a low mood. Adele is expressing her emotions through the colours being portrayed and the images and messages being sent out from her facial expressions, which show her to be un happy with no expression of happiness or direct contact e.g. eye contact at the audience. This shows that Adele wants the audience to understand her, and try and make out how she is feeling rather than tell them. This advert attracts an audience as the green title makes an impression on the target audience from the black background, and the black and white effect throughout shows meaning. Adele has an audience of between the ages of 16-30, and mainly women so this being represented in a magazine advert would normally appear in a women's magazine, which would be seen by frequent readers, especially if this advert was produced at a time such as Christmas were an audience would be prime.


Paloma Faith

The next magazine advert I have chosen to analyse is Paloma Faith who I have chosen as she is very similar to my chosen artist Adele and both produce music within the same genre which is soul. This magazine advert is also very similar to my previous analysis, showing that they are both conventional to the soul genre. my first instinct of analysis is the representation of the artist. Paloma is shown on the front of the magazine advert positioned in the centre of the advert, showing her authority over her target audience who is very similar to Adele with the ages of 16-30. Paloma is represented looking away from the front of the advert, and up and to the right at something else. This represents are mysterious and insecure. Her insecurities means she can not look at her audience and want to keep them guessing what type of message she is going to be sending out throughout her album and the songs that are going to be included and for what reasons. The connotations of the advert show the dark colours as her have dark feelings, which shows the representation of black, and the white in contrast of the black and represent past and future and life and death. The white colours over the top of the background shows that she wants to be bold and make a stand. The connotations of her strong makeup, shows Paloma on this magazine advert to be wearing bold red lipstick and an highlighted face. The lipstick represents her as being strong and wanting to show her personality as bold which will jump out and be noticed. The main colours used throughout are black, white and orange. The orange is used on Paloma's hair as well as her outfit and the small album cover shown in the bottom centre of the advert. The orange outfit it faded out as the background and overlapping is used for the text. The outfit shows her to be wearing a feathered dress in front of an dusky dirty room behind her. This works well as we see Paloma in a stronger light. The red lipstick may show her to be insecure and wanting to show herself differently towards her audience, and trying to catch a wider one. The white typography is used to overlap the whole background in this magazine advert. This stands out to the target audience, and isn't easy to miss. Paloma's name is typed in swirly font, which represents her as having a girly personality and trying to hit a target audience of women, as this is what women enjoy seeing within a magazine advert. The white font may represent her as insecure and ...... . The style of language which is portrayed shows words being used such as "soulful", which clearly shows what type of genre the music being played is. The word "British" after this also shows that Paloma is a British singer and is very popular within the UK with her soul music. A metaphor is used within the language on the front of the magazine advert; "will cast a spell on America". A spell is not actually going to be cast, this is used within the vocabulary as a persuasive way of telling the audience the songs included are powerful and Paloma's voice is enjoyable and recommendable. This also catches the target audiences attention when reading and gets her audience thinking about what could be so great. The style of language overall within this magazine advert is very powerful and uses strong language to seek the audiences attention, which is a positive as this is a way of promotion and good advertisement. The choice of images used within this advert shows Paloma being full screen of the advert, with the important things covering the bottom half of the page. The choice of this image doesn't show Paloma to be happy, but to be looking up thinking. This gives the audience a feeling that to create a relationship between them and the artist they need to buy the album and listen to the song being promoted through the advert to know what she is feeling and what message she is sending out to her audience. This advertisement promotes the soul genre in many different ways. The soul genre is clearly shown through the words "soulful", presenting her music as deep and meaningful. Also the colours and the use of the close-up to portray the artist are both conventions of the soul genre which can be seen by the audience easily. The advert promotes the artist as it shows Paloma as a person as well as her upcoming performance in America, showing she is globally famous. The advert also promotes her as reviews from the evening standard and glamour magazine are written on the front, meaning her audience can see a wider picture of how good her music is and this also helps with the promotion aspect. This advert attracts an audience due to the bold colours being reflected off of black and white. Paloma's hair stands out the most to the audience, and certain types of vocabulary explained above means her audience can relate to them. The magazine advert would normally be found in a women's magazine as this is what women enjoy reading about and finding out information about artists and when there upcoming singles or performances are being released. This advert mainly attracts the gender of women as certain aspects such as the fancy writing is enjoyed by women rather than men. Her make-up and hair is also perfect, which attracts the audience more as they want to read more and look at what style Paloma has used to look so good.

Conclusion

Overall my research has helped me to understand how different features used on a magazine advert can be so important and how they effect how the target audience is approached. The first magazine advert for Adele helped me to understand that sometimes bright colours are not the things that catch the audiences eye and make the advert stand out. Adele's features of black and white throughout the first advert lead me to see that this works effectively with the messages being sent out to the audience and how these things link together to create a strong relationship between the audience and the artist. Whereas In comparison to the second magazine advert I chose to analyse of Paloma showed me that the typography can make a difference with the target audience that you try to hit, and how different effects of a black and white background and colours in front can make a bold up front. Both of these pieces of analysis will help me with my planning and after comparing with the two I feel that I will use features form both as they both work well depending on what image you are trying to represent to your audience and how you want to portray yourself. This post has helped me to elaborate on my ideas for my music video analysis and what features I will include as I am producing a video from the genre of soul, just like the two magazine adverts above. This blog has been beneficial for me and has allowed me to further research my ideas which I will now be discussing with my group members and other indivuals when creating my own magazine advert.