The Art of Advertising

BY LAURA DANIELS

Logos of Wal-Mart Over the Years

The current logo of Wal-Mart

http://thewholegardenwillbow.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/walmart.gif

http://www.tipb.com/images/stories/2010/06/walmart-2-400x300.jpg

http://walmartstores.com/aboutus/8412.aspx

Icons of Wal-Mart

Nicknames given to Wal-Mart• “Wally World”• “Trashmart”• Wal-Mart

http://www.matthewlangley.com/blog/?p=75

Stereotypes of Wal-Mart

http://www.girlscantdrive.com/image/144-walmart-racism.html

http://livelovelaughblog.blogspot.com/2011/05/stereotypes-of-walmart-employee.html

http://thepoliticalcarnival.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/walmart-greeter.jpg

All greeters at Wal-Mart are elderly people who have retired from previous jobs

Advertisements found in our Camillus Wal-Mart

The Use of Average People Advertising Wal-Mart Products

Wal-Mart Battles for Shoppers

http://a.abcnews.go.com/images/Business/e9d57377ecb44d7299648a046d1b342b.jpg

I thought this was amusing to see a huge clearance on weight loss items that are towards the back of the store. You have to walk through the impulse items to get to the fitness aisle. This implies that most Americans are overweight (which we are) and if you want to loose weight, it can be simple. You don’t have to pay for an expensive membership to a gym just to loose weight, you can buy the equipment for less at Wal-Mart.

The Use of Coupons

http://www.groceryshopforfree.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/image133.png

“Subjects have agency- the ability to respond to their historical contexts and, with any luck at all, change them in the process.”- Theory Toolbox

Wal-Mart is trying to get its customers to go “green.” With trying to be environmentally friendly, more products will be sold. Also, with Wal-Mart stating that they are helping our local farmers, people feel like they are helping out their community by buying locally grown food.

http://blog.terrachoice.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/walmart_reusable_bags.JPG

Quotes From The Texts

“For the semiotician, the contradictory nature of the American myth of equality is nowhere written so clearly as in the signs that American advertisers use to manipulate us into buying their wares.”- Masters of Desire: The Culture of American Advertising

“Our job, it emerges in fragments throughout the day, is to keep ladies’ wear ‘shoppable’.”- Nickel and Dimed

“We might argue that jeans have two main social foci, those of youth and the blue-collar or working class, but these foci should be seen as semiotic rather than sociological, that is, as centers of meaning rather than as social categories”-The Jeaning of America

“Of course jeans are a supremely functional garment, comfortable, tough, sometimes cheap, and requiring ‘low maintenance’-but so, too are army fatigues.”- The Jeaning of America