Visual Literacy in Advertising: The Hidden Agenda

World Literature 10
Period Length: Forty Seven Minutes minus Independent Reading for one week.
Standards: 9.9.7.7 A-D; 9.9.3.3
Essential Questions:
In what ways does advertising affect our perceptions of the world around us, and why/why isnt
that a problem?
At what point does advertising cross ethical boundaries, and how do we find and enforce those
boundaries?
How can we use the knowledge of different advertising techniques in our own lives?
Enduring Understandings:
Advertising has a strong impact upon our perception of the world around e.g. the portrayal of
young women in society, the portrayal of different cultures across the world, etc.
Advertising has pushed many different limits over the years, and it is important that we hold high
standards for the moral and ethical standards of our society.
By knowing the different techniques used by advertising agencies not only do we provide
ourselves with protection from the propaganda that is put out by advertising agencies, but we are
able to implement it in less harmful ways through our writing and speaking to increase our
ability to be persuasive.
Vocabulary: Advertising/Advertisement, Campaign, Circulation, Commercial, Direct Mail,
Hype, Launch, Mass Media, Ethics, Product Placement, Prime Time, Spam
Assessments: Students will be assessed mostly with formative assessments within this unit. This
will allow for students to build their understanding through discussion and create a low-risk
environment, so that they will feel comfortable with the material once we reach the end of the
unit with summative assessment. There will be a separate participation grade for this unit, a
vocab quiz, a mini-project, as well as a final test that will be essay based, so that they may show
understanding.
Overview: This units goal is to get students to think more diversely about the skills that they are
learning to apply to novels as well as other skills that can be found within the English classroom
and utilize them in different ways. This unit in particular is focusing on visual literacy through
propaganda, and how advertising agencies use subtle techniques in order to convince the mass
population that they ought to act in a certain way through their use of language and depiction of

art within commercials. It starts off with the basics, and gets more in depth as the unit progresses,
ending with a small test and a small project that focuses on having them apply the skills we
discussed early on in the unit.
Lesson One: Begin with a group discussion about students favorite commercials, leading into
different questions e.g. Why do you like specific commercials? Where do you see advertisement
the most often? Whats the oldest commercial that you can think of and why did it stick? Have
you ever done anything because of a specific commercial or advertisement?
Go deeper by handing out the vocab sheet for the unit. This vocab sheet has some terms that
make understanding the process of advertising much easier, as well as some different
techniques/facets of advertising. These terms can be tested on for formative points after a couple
of days, so that I can assess whether students are grasping the language of advertising before we
move on to talking about the more complex topics within the unit.
Ill take time to go through each definition with the whole class asking students whether or not
they have an example to provide for each of the different words. Some of these words are
common enough that students may already know them; however, some of the words are not used
much outside of the academic context, so this will probably be the first time that at least some of
the students are encountering these words.
Lesson Two: Explain large group that advertising agencies strive to make their commercials and
ads as inviting and desirable as possible, in order to garner the attention of consumers, often
hiring entire teams of people to design and edit the commercials. They use many different
techniques, much like the persuasive writing they have done before, and that it pays to know the
techniques not only to use them if they should need them, but also to protect themselves from
their rhetoric.
This will cover Ethos, Pathos, and Logos through advertising. Ill explain what EPL are with the
large group, and talk a little bit about different examples of EPL. This might be the first time that
they are hearing these terms, so its going to be important that I provide many different examples
of each style, so that students will be able to understand the different reasons to use EPL as well
as identify them in context.
Distribute Handout1 to the students, introducing the concepts and walking students through the
different concepts that they will need to understand in order to complete the sheet. Give them
time to work on the sheet and explain that while most of them would have one clear answer, if
they can explain why they believe it may be a different answer than the one intended they can
receive credit. It is possible for some to be more than one.
Then if necessary I will show a video (Persuasive Techniques in Advertising) while we discuss
how these techniques are used through a large array of media e.g. print, digital, video, etc. This
will tie into the second page of Handout1 with the more specific techniques that ad agencies
employ in their ads/commercials. We can also cover how these fit into Ethos, Pathos, and Logos.

Lesson Three: Begin with a brief review of the previous lesson, and ask for an example of ethos,
pathos, and logos to see what the students remember.
Move on to discuss the idea of demographics. This may be a foreign word to students, but ask
what they know, because theyll probably have a hazy idea of what it might mean. Provide the
definition that its a word that means the characteristics of the human race e.g. gender, race, age.
This will feed into a social identity map in which students break down their identity into different
groups that they may be a part of. I will provide an identity map of my own, so that students are
able to see what they ought to be looking for in their own social map.
Once students have finished their social maps, I will ask them to think about the different kinds
of ads and commercials that they may be targets of. We might pay special attention to the
different novels that they would be targeted by as they are in World Literature, however the lists
are certainly not limited to those. This will give them an idea of what ad agencies are thinking
when they are creating ads for their companys product.
Next Day: Review the different topics of demographics and EPL, hand back Identity maps that
were handed in, and instruct students to pull out their identity maps, asking students if they have
any particularly unique facets of their identity.
Move on to talking about the different ethical issues surrounding advertising. What are some
things that students feel are unethical about advertising? Can advertising be unethical? Have they
ever experienced forms of advertising that they felt were unethical? Is targeting ethical practice?
Jump from this conversation to a conversation about stereotyping. Is targeting related to
stereotyping? What types of products are stereotyped to different races, age groups, and genders?
Is it more common in certain areas/networks than others? Why would that be?
To follow up with this we may watch some Super Bowl commercials. This will give them an
opportunity to apply the past two lessons in real time defining the commercials by their appeal to
EPL as well as attempting to find a target demographic. This will test their knowledge and
understanding of the different concepts that we have covered thus far, and give me a good
formative assessment to see whether or not my teaching is reaching them.
We can then talk about the different how there are different products marketed to different
demographics. This might include movies, television shows/networks, etc. in order to drive the
point further how much targeting demographics is a part of our society.
Lesson Four: Review the past two days covering EPL, Demographics, and targeting. This will
lead into our discussion of the different media of advertising e.g. print, digital, radio, etc. Which
of these is most effective? How has advertising changed over the years? 1900s-present? What
were some of the strongest uses of advertising? Expecting answers such as the super bowl, Ill
move into American and German propaganda of the 1900s surrounding WWII. This will
illustrate how differently we can use these techniques that are often thought of in the context of
minimally harmful advertising in todays standards and bring to light the power of these different

techniques. Show some examples of WWII propaganda, so that students have a concrete image
to work with.
Lesson Five: Briefly review the past few days (EPL, Demographics, Germany, examples of
WWII propaganda).
Introduce the assignment that will require students to make different ads using the techniques
that they had learned throughout the unit. This will require them to use EPL and knowledge of
demographics as they create a targeted ad. They will create the ad in groups of two, and it can be
in any medium they choose e.g. video, print, audio, etc. I expect that this will not take them very
much time, but they will have the next day to work as long as they need.
The product they are trying to sell does not necessarily have to a real product but can also be a
real product if they choose to do so.
Lesson Six (Once they finish up their projects): Today we will remind ourselves about what we
learned throughout the unit so far. This will lead into the different projects that they have
completed. Each group will share their ad with the rest of the class illustrating why they made
the decisions that they made. This will probably take at least a good portion of the hour.
Following the presentations we will talk about whether or not the groups struggled with coming
up with good methods to lure people into agreeing with their idea/buying their product.
As homework they will have to spend time doing a reflection upon their work, as well as their
thoughts following the presentations and discussion, this will be another summative assignment
that will help me gauge their overall learning of EPL, demographics, targeting, and propaganda.
This will wrap up the unit.
Grading:
Project & Reflection
Vocab quiz