TOW #14 Advertisement analysis

An advertisement for wood stain couldn’t be trying to trick its viewers, could it? This add for Minwax wood stain features an older man standing next to a chair with the words “Show&Tell” above. The man standing in the advertisement is an older man who is well dressed and handsome. This ad appears in the magazine publication “This Old House” a magazine very popular among older women. This ad juxtaposes the strapping older man with a chair, presumably stained with its product, to attract the eye of the women reading the magazine and to make the chair look more handsome in comparison. The average reader of any magazine doesn’t spend lots of time picking through the articles, they usually just flip through until they find a title or an image that catches their eyes. This article has a simple background, which makes the chair and handsome man pop out. The model is completely unrelated to the polish but is included to attract its female audience. This article abuses the use of a model to catch the wandering eyes of unsuspecting readers. The juxtaposition of the handsome man and the chair also plays a factor in the appeal of this ad. One could say that this attractive man has “chiseled features” and “in good shape”, the makers of this stain hopes to say that their polish will make the reader’s furniture look the same. They say that this stain makes the chair look “in good shape” and will bring out it’s “chiseled features. While this article has legitimate, underlying reasons for adding the model into their ad, it also had ulterior motives to unfairly catch the eye of a reader who would have otherwise not given a second thought to this picture.