Wednesday, January 23, 2019

Amanda on Greenpeace

Greenpeace ad (Amanda Kohrman)




At a glance, this advertisement seems calming and happy. The image has vibrant colors and a brilliant contrast as sunlight refracts in the water. Without reading the full message, the words GREATEST, WONDER, and ALIVE pop out at the audience. These words give the viewer a temporary sense of tranquility before they really notice what’s going on in the ad. It only takes a moment of attention however, before the true meaning of this advertisement is revealed. Suddenly, all the feelings of peace have scattered and you are left with the uneasy weight of devastation. What you once thought were colorful fish, have now been revealed as plastic, glass, and debris. Your eyes jump around helplessly, but you realize there isn’t a single fish in sight. Confused, you look up to read the full caption. It reads…
“THE GREATEST WONDER
OF THE SEA IS
THAT IT’S STILL ALIVE”
…Composed only of words typically used to describe goodness, this caption plants an unsettling mood in the target audience. They look back at the Listerine bottles, beer bottles, crushed cans, and tubes. And they are brought to sense, while realizing this image, which is causing them internal distress, could have easily been recreated using the garbage that they themselves have been responsible for. The audience is stressed as they remember walking past trash by a river bank and stepping over flattened foam cups, justifying their actions because they felt someone else should have been responsible. The truth is, people don’t give it a second thought and they don’t write their name and address on trash they discard. Which leads to the point this ad is making, that this sea could very well be full of your own waste. And the greatest wonder you’d ask yourself is, “Why didn’t you give it a second thought?”

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