Advertising, Marketing and Magazines | OCR A-Level Media Studies (H409)

Advertising, Marketing and Magazines

194 questions
15 subtopics
Component 01: Media messages
Component 01

Advertising, Marketing and Magazines is examined in Component 01, Media messages.

It covers the codes and conventions of print advertising, then three campaigns in turn: Dove's Real Beauty and Beautifully Real Moms campaign and its representation of motherhood and the maternal body; River Island's Labels are for Clothes campaign and its representation of diversity, disability and self-expression; and Shelter's charity advertising, its direct call to action and its representation of homelessness and housing insecurity, with the media language of each advert and the social and cultural contexts of all three. It also covers The Big Issue: the street paper model and its market position, the media language of its front covers, its alternative representations, and its social, cultural and political contexts.

Sample questions from Advertising, Marketing and Magazines

Answer each one closed book first, then open the answer.

Codes and conventions of print advertising

Why is direct address to camera so common in advertising photography?

Show the answer
Eye contact imitates a personal encounter, so the reader feels individually spoken to and a relationship with the brand appears to have been established.
Dove, Real Beauty and the Beautifully Real Moms campaign

How does a brand benefit commercially from taking a position on a social issue?

Show the answer
It differentiates itself from competitors selling on function alone, earns unpaid press and social media coverage, and builds loyalty among consumers who share the position.
Representations of motherhood and the maternal body in the Dove advert

Explain the claim to realism that the campaign makes.

Show the answer
It presents its images as unposed records of real mothers rather than of models, so the advert asks to be judged as truthful reporting rather than as persuasion.
River Island and the Labels are for Clothes campaign

Explain why a strapline criticising labelling is a risk for a clothing retailer.

Show the answer
Because the brand's whole business is selling labelled goods, so the message can be read as contradicted by the product it advertises.
Representations of diversity, disability and self-expression at River Island

Why does representing race through casting alone attract criticism?

Show the answer
Because visible variety in front of the camera can coexist with an entirely unchanged industry behind it, so the representation changes while the power to make representations does not.
Shelter, charity advertising and the direct call to action

What is meant by destigmatising a social problem in an advert?

Show the answer
It means representing the problem as something that happens to ordinary people through circumstance rather than through personal failure, so that admitting to it does not feel shameful.
Representations of homelessness and housing insecurity in the Shelter advert

Explain the criticism captured by the phrase poverty porn.

Show the answer
It is the charge that images of suffering are used to move an audience while stripping the people shown of dignity and agency, which can entrench pity rather than understanding.
Social and cultural contexts of the three advertising campaigns

State the main risk to a brand of taking a social position in its advertising.

Show the answer
If the brand's own conduct does not match the claim, it is accused of hypocrisy and the campaign becomes evidence against it.

The 15 subtopics

One subtopic is one session. Work down the list.

Subtopic	What it covers	Questions
Codes and conventions of print advertising	Recall questions on straplines, mode of address, typography and anchorage, camera angle and direct address, mise-en-scène and lighting, calls to action and layout, persuasion through connotation, and the conventions of beauty, fashion and charity advertisements and campaigns.	16
Dove, Real Beauty and the Beautifully Real Moms campaign	Recall questions on Unilever's Dove brand, the 2004 Campaign for Real Beauty, the 2018 Beautifully Real Moms campaign for the baby care market and its photojournalists, the commercial value of a social stance, and the femvertising and inconsistency criticisms.	12
Media language in the Dove advert	Recall questions on natural light, domestic setting, the absence of retouching, physical contact in the composition, and what a small product presence signals.	13
Representations of motherhood and the maternal body in the Dove advert	Recall questions on how the Dove campaign represents motherhood and the maternal body, its countertype and claim to realism, the values it invites and the anxiety it addresses, criticisms that it curates and commodifies authenticity, and differing audience responses.	13
River Island and the Labels are for Clothes campaign	Recall questions on River Island as a high-street retailer, the 2018 anniversary campaign Labels are for Clothes, the wordplay in its strapline and its casting, why it was called a milestone, earned media, inclusive advertising, and the risk of criticising labels.	12
Media language in the River Island advert	Recall questions on the River Island advert's strapline presentation, plain backgrounds, casting as media language, direct address, group composition, styling and posture, bright even lighting, minimal copy, the logo and the repeated strapline.	12
Representations of diversity, disability and self-expression at River Island	Recall questions on how the River Island campaign represents disability, body shape, race and self-expression, positive stereotyping, inspiration porn, tokenism and commodified identity, under-representation in fashion, and how different readers interpret it.	13
Shelter, charity advertising and the direct call to action	Recall questions on what Shelter does, who its campaign addressed and why that is unusual for a charity, and how addressing people at risk changes the media language.	13
Media language in the Shelter advert	Recall questions on the domestic interior, the desaturated palette, the single figure, and how second-person address and imperative verbs drive a call to action.	12
Representations of homelessness and housing insecurity in the Shelter advert	Recall questions on the dominant stereotype of a homeless person, hidden homelessness, homelessness as a process, poverty porn and agency, the political attitudes carried by representations of homelessness, and why the Shelter advert shows a home rather than the street.	12
Social and cultural contexts of the three advertising campaigns	Recall questions on the social and cultural contexts of advertising, body positivity, pressure on new parents, diversity in fashion casting, UK housing after the 2008 crisis, advertising regulation, brands taking social positions, and the purposes of the Dove, River Island and Shelter campaigns.	13
The Big Issue, the street paper model and its market position	Recall questions on The Big Issue's founding in 1991 by John Bird and Gordon Roddick, how vendors earn, a hand up not a handout, social enterprise, street selling, niche magazines, its content mix, independent ownership, weekly schedule and the international street paper movement.	13
Media language of a Big Issue front cover	Recall questions on The Big Issue's masthead and cover layout for street selling, cover lines and puns, political cover images, typography and colour, direct address, house style, price and vendor information, intertextual covers and cover portraits.	15
Alternative representations in The Big Issue	Recall questions on what an alternative representation is, how the magazine represents homelessness differently from most news media, and the place of vendor self-representation.	13
Social, cultural and political contexts of The Big Issue	Recall questions on the social conditions The Big Issue addresses, vendors' earning opportunity, its engagement with housing and welfare politics, cultural content, its public sphere and agent-of-change roles, editorial independence, the declining use of cash, and readers who buy to support vendors.	12

Advertising, Marketing and Magazines is 194 of the 1,986 questions in the guide.Get the guide, £7

How the guide is worked

Answering a question from memory stores it far better than reading the answer again. The guide runs that as a fixed procedure on one subtopic at a time, about twenty minutes a session.

Step 1 · Closed book
Cover the answers. Work through one subtopic and write down what you can. Leave blanks where you have nothing.
Step 2 · Open book
Go back to the top. Read each printed answer and write it out in full, including the ones you had right.
Step 3 · Closed book again
Same questions, same order, from memory. The gap between pass one and pass three is the session result.

Read the full method, the return schedule and the research behind it.