It's almost time for the 2010 Winter Olympics! I love watching the Olympics (yes, I was one of those people who didn't know what to do with themselves once the 2008 Summer Olympics was over...) and I was lucky to find an old ad from the 2006 Torino winter games for my first "official" blog.
This is a McDonald's advertisement that plays off the event of ski jumping. From a distance, the viewer immediately notices the yellow arches located at the bottom center of the ad. Without being told, the viewer knows that this is a McDonald's ad because the arches have become an accepted symbol of the fast-food restaurant. Upon closer examination, the viewer can see that the image is not only the McDonald's symbol, but also the tips of two skis held closely together in preparation of the event.
I feel that this ad is a good representation of the argument presented in Chapter 11 about whether visual metaphors must be associated with contextual cues so that there is no doubt to the angle in which the metaphor is taking (p.170). It is difficult to decipher what this ad is saying about McDonald's- that it's fast like the ski jumping event?; that it's daring?; or that it is just a sponsor of the Winter Olympics? Either way, it's effective; I am not a consumer for McDonald's, but I am a fan of the Winter Olympics, so I'm going to do a double take at the ad, therefore granting some of my time to McDonald's.
