Brett Babigian
Mrs. Fleischer
English 1A
4 March, 2014
Fast
Food
There are so many different types of writing texts that
are seen around the world as we go throughout our daily lives that sometimes express
the same topic just in a different way. A
topic can be expressed through several different ways of writing including:
academic articles, advertisements, bumper stickers, photographs, and much
more. Each of these different styles of
texts applies to us differently, for instance, one may appeal to our logical
side while another may tend to focus on our emotions. Throughout this essay I will discuss the
similarities and differences of an academic article, advertisement, and a YouTube
clip about fast food and also which one I believe is more effective than the
other.
The academic article “How Television Fast Food Marketing
Aimed at Children Compares with Adult Advertisements”, by Amy M. Bernhardt has
some similarities and differences as the advertisement from McDonald’s for
happy meals. The form and layout of the
article is long and includes multiple pages of writing about happy meal
advertisements. The advertisement is
simply a picture with toys of McDonald’s food that turn into little robots and
some writing encouraging people to collect all eight. The tones of these two types of texts are
very different because the article is more formal and serious by talking about
how these advertisements are targeting our children and encouraging them to eat
at the restaurants which are unhealthy while the advertisement is more exciting
trying to lure kids to buy the happy meal to collect all eight toys. The article has an intended reader of parents
with kids who have some concerns about fast food while the advertisement is
directed at children. The research
article has tons of evidence throughout its study about how children are
targeted with toys and other incentives to go to fast food restaurants. Toys that change shape and look like food are
examples of the toys the kids could get if they got a happy meal. Both of these texts have similar messages
about children’s fast food meals but the article talks about how incentives
such as toys are put in to attract kids. The author felt this was wrong while
the advertisement wanted kids to collect all eight toys. The purpose of writing
the study was to get public awareness out about advertisements targeting out
children to make unhealthy choices and the advertisement did the exact opposite
by offering toys to achieve higher sales in happy meals.
The third type of text I chose to analyze and compare and contrast was a YouTube video that was titled “Advertising fast food to children and its major shift” posted by sunnyvisa. This clip has three different adult ladies that discuss when and how the problem of children advertisements occurred. The tone of the video was similar to the academic article in the sense that they were both very formal and were addressing a serious topic. The intended viewer and readers of this video would be the same as the research article which is parents. The examples this YouTube video uses are actual McDonald’s and Burger King commercials that show kids eating happy meals and then playing and having fun with the new toys they just got with the meal. By adding popular toys with kids playing and having fun to commercials, kids are targeted and convinced to want happy meal to collect the toys in them, is a message that is present in both the article and the video clip. The purpose of the clip is to produce awareness of how the advertisement of fast food to children has changed.
This part of my paper will focus on my personal analysis of the three texts and how persuasive they each were and why they chose to add certain things into the text. I think what makes a specific text more persuasive and effective than others is by the evidence they choose to use. For example in the video clip one of the ladies talks about how the advertisements target our kids and then they show a commercial where a bunch of kids are smiling and happy eating their kids meals and playing with a Barbie mermaid doll that they just got out of their happy meal. This commercial they showed made me realize that if I were a kid I would see that and instantly want to go and get the toy so that I could be as happy as the kids in the commercial by having the toy. Another aspect of text that makes it more effective than another would be good imagery. If an article has a good image of a product combined with a good catch phrase then I would feel drawn into the product more like in the McDonald’s ad that presented a series of collectable toys with a phrase “Collect All 8 for a Galactic Robot Team”.
Of the three documents I have reviewed I believe that the YouTube video had the most effective message of them all and that the McDonald’s had the least effective message. The YouTube videos message was more effective to me because the topic on which they discussed is a major controversial topic that deals with children and parents alike. This video provided direct evidence of commercials targeting kids to eat at fast food restaurants to gain toys and be happy. The author also discussed how even though the kids may not be old enough or have enough money to buy these items they will bother and annoy parents who will eventually give in to the kid and buy the meal for the child. Most parents would likely feel the same way to a degree because no one wants their kids to be eating unhealthy or coerced to buy something that is bad for them. The McDonald’s advertisement, while still very effective, was the least effective of the three texts to me because its target audience was children and was mostly a picture with little writing. The advertisement included eight different toys that you could get from the happy kid’s meal but there was no writing that specifically told you that by purchasing the kids meal you could get the toy. More people would be interested in preventing kids from viewing commercials about fast food especially now that obesity in children is on the rise.
Even though the three texts shared a similar topic of fast food advertisement to children they were not similar in all the same ways. For instance while the academic article used research to back up its argument of how kids are being targeted the YouTube video showed a commercial of a happy meal to help with its thesis. They hose different way to express evidence because different people react to different types of evidence. Some people are more visual and react greatly to seeing video clips and pictures while others like to hear the facts and research behind an article to have that concrete support.
There is a great relationship between texts that have to do with genre, message, and mode of delivery. The relationship I noticed in the academic article was the genre of academic research was related to the way it was delivered. For instance since it was a research document the delivery was very formal and academic, it had citations from other articles as well as its own findings. Because the audience of the academic article would be other professors the mode of delivery would be formal which is connected back to the genre because depending on who your audience will be decides how the text is delivered. While some genres have lots of writing others have very little like the McDonalds advertisement. The ad got its message out with very little writing and a picture because the space is limited because of the genre. The delivery mode therefore is informal and meant for viewers to just glance at it and not read to into it.
Lastly I feel that the type of text we read impact us as individuals and sometimes as a society for several reasons. This topic I am talking about especially is an example because if someone read the article I did about the advertisements targeting kids to lure them in then parents will begin to not let their kids watch those commercials. When people read articles in the newspapers about new studies that show certain activities such as tanning can lead to skin cancer then much of society moves to not tan for fear of getting cancer. People begin to put on more sunscreen and go to the tanning booths much less often when there is a health risk discovered from research.
In conclusion topics can be talked about and portrayed in many different genres to focus on different purposes. Images and pictures can appeal to those who like visuals while writing and text to those who like the research and evidence behind the statement. These different genres have similarities and differences to persuade their audience of the message they have. Throughout my paper I have discussed these similarities and differences as well as offered my own opinion on which is the most persuasive and effective in portraying its message.
Works
Cited
Advertising Fast Food to Children and its Major Shift. 2010. Video. YoutubeWeb. 4 Mar
2014. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tTsU78MO84>.
Bernhardt
AM, Wilking C, Adachi-Mejia AM, Bergamini E, Marijnissen J, et al. (2013) How
Television Fast Food Marketing Aimed at Children Compares with Adult
Advertisements. PLoS ONE 8(8): e72479. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0072479
"Changeables." Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia.
Wikipedia Foundation, 30 Dec 2013. Web. 4 Mar 2014.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changeables>.
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