Hitler as a Salesman

I came across this particular article a month or two after I returned from studying in Southern Germany for three weeks. I had to read it twice: once to chuckle at the creativity and humor of the images, and once to read the message and understand the argument the writer was making.

Is ok to laugh at dark moments of history? Sure, I supposed it could be argues that Hitler's image serves as a kind of meme that most everyone can easily recognized, but does the use of him in ads desensitize the history of his hand in the murder of over 6 millions people? To be honest, I can't say that I gave the images a second thought until the author pointed out the problem.

Good food for thought though. Read on.

http://www.businessinsider.com/bad-choice-hitler-is-starring-in-these-ads-2012-7

Olympic Ads

In the spirit of the upcoming London Olympics, I decided to dive into my academic career and post some of my own Olympic research.

In my first semester of my Master's degree I wrote a critical inquiry analyzing two advertisements from the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. I have attached the images and the abstract of the paper below.

In a nut shell I discussed how the Beijing Olympics was a changing point in Olympic history and how advertising played a key role in assisting that change. I analyzed different aspects of the images as well as provided a literature review informing my analysis.

Please read and comment as well! If you would like to read the full paper, please let me know and I can send it to you. Enjoy!






Olympic Gold for Advertising: Linking Communities through Cultural Representation of the 2008 Beijing Olympics in the United States

Abstract

This project centers on the analysis of two Coca-Cola advertisements for the 2008 Olympics held in Beijing, China. These two pre-Olympic Games advertisements serve as examples of how advertising played a pivotal role in creating and portraying a particular cultural image of China to the United States. The two images that are analyzed for the paper are used to identify particular ideologies chosen to reform opinions of China as well as Chinese cultural and governmental perspectives in the U.S. Each of the advertisements was created with specific cultural goals in mind, and the analysis in this paper will attempt to uncover and discuss those goals. The approach used here focuses on cultural representation and imagery in print advertisements targeted specifically to the United States. China attempted to change the image of its culture, people, and government as well in order to present a fresh and modern picture of China that America and other countries would want to visit for the Olympic Games. Panopticism, referential information influence theory, and persuasive press inference theory have been incorporated in the analysis to provide a frame in which the discussion of the two advertisements takes place. A series of research questions are posed in this paper. Not all of the research questions are addressed here but can guide further research to attempt to answer the remaining questions. The paper concludes with a discussion of an example following China’s Olympic advertising goals, the impact China’s pre-event advertising had on the future of city bids to host the Olympic Games, and suggestions for further research.

Keywords: Olympics, Beijing, advertising, cultural image