Textual Analysis 2 - Magazine Advert

Language:

The main image, a mid-shot at a straight angle, is situated on the right, as are a lot of print advertisement's pictures. Furthermore, the main image, featuring a topless man taking a picture of himself in the mirror, I presume, is relevant because of the title of the album which the advertisement is promoting, which is 'Postcards from a Young Man', and the image is of a young man, possibly sending a picture of himself as a postcard. In addition to this, the advert in its entirety, ranging from the main image to the colours and  the font, is an intertextual reference to the album art of the album it is promoting, which is shown on the right. This particular advert will influence my own as it has a sleek, neat design, with the text neatly placed on the left, with the image taking up the right hand side. The font resembles a military style, which would be found on army vehicles, for example, with some of the text faded away, yet still readable. The name of the artist and the album title are situated at the top, not quite standing out, as the colours are the same as the rest. However, it is conventionally larger than the rest of the text, meaning it grabs the audience's attention. Furthermore, the use of "ALBUM OUT NOW", in a large different coloured font, at the bottom, stands out the most, simply because it is important to declare that the album has been released. The colour has been bleached out of the advert, just like it has on the album cover, connoting that the life has been sucked out of this man on the advert. This reflects the album contents, singing of the end of the world and "the end is nigh" etc. (information taken from a review by The Guardian newspaper), so evidently the music is going to be sad and low-tempo to express the sorrow of mankind's demise. Another conventional feature of the print advert is the use of professional reviews, always stating how good the album is. The main text feature of this advert is the reviews, featuring the 4 star rating, in this instance from Q magazine, which basically means "very good, but not excellent"... There is also a sense of irony in this, which is possibly a conscious decision by the band, as the title refers to a young man, yet Tim Roth, a much loved actor and the model in the advert and album cover, is 49 years old. That means he's nearly 50. This may suggest that the band, who are getting on a bit themselves, feel as though they are still young, even if they are releasing their 10th studio album.

Institutions:

Similarly to the Kings of Leon advert, the institution logo is situated on the bottom right of the advert. This is a stamp by the record label, who no doubt funded the advertisement campaign, of property; stating that they own the album and it is one of their products. The label is Columbia records, which is owned by the parent company Sony Music Entertainment (which is a subsidiary of the conglomerate Sony Corporation of America). This has affected the advertisement in the sense that it will, due to Sony's wealth, have a lot of funding behind the campaign; the advert will be placed near a main story by Q magazine, which the advert came from. This turned out to be correct, as the issue was a special on the life of John Lennon, the advert came right after a large article written on him. Underneath the record company's logo, the band's website URL is shown. This allows the audience to know the website URL of the band, so they can look further in to the band and the product as well as view previous material, sign up for email alerts as well as view videos and purchase and consume the product from the band, as well as other Web 2.0 features. Furthermore, on the bottom left is the logo of iTunes. This gives the audience an example of a distributor where they will be able to consume the product.

Ideology:

The main ideology running through this advertisement is that the band are older and much wiser now, as compared to what they were when they released their debut album. This is shown by the usage of Tim Roth as the model. He is an aging actor, highly respected and critically acclaimed, having starred in Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Funny Games, to name but a few. His Hollywood status gives the advert a celebrity status, in a sense, connoting that the band are huge and have friends who are much loved and very powerful (especially in terms of wealth). The ideology created is also that the band can afford to have a top Hollywood actor feature on their album cover and print advertisement campaign, because they are successful. They are also staying true to their British heritage, hailing from Wales, by using a British actor, as the same effect wouldn't be achieved if they'd used, for example, Brad Pitt. The band also don't need to appear on their advert, which is a convention if they did, because they don't need their image to sell their product.

Audience:

The target audience will be mostly males in their mid-20's, in the ABC1 section. This is because the band have a large following from when they started out, and their fans have aged with them. Furthermore, the advert features an older actor, as opposed to a teen icon, suggesting that teenagers aren't the target audience. They will most likely be quite wealthy, as they are reading Q magazine, in this instance, which is an expensive music magazine compared to the likes of NME magazine and Kerrang! magazine. The audience for Q magazine is also middle-aged, as it focusses on catering for an older audience which has been left out by the new generation of music magazines, which tend to focus on the new music, aimed at a younger audience.

Representations:

The male featured in the advert is taking a picture of himself topless. This represents him as being a bit weird, but it is also an iconic thing for a young person to do (showing off their muscular bodies on Facebook, for example) and the title of the album it is promoting refers to this possibility. The band, on the other hand, are represented as being wealthy and popular by having friends who are famous and well-known, in this case Tim Roth, who is both of the aforementioned. The usage of a polaroid camera further enhances the male's age. Not much can be said on representation, as no social groups or issues appear in it.