The language of advertising book notes

Goddard, A. (2002) The Language of Advertising: Written Texts (Intertext). 2nd edn. London: Taylor & Francis.

page 2 
'in terms of visual codes, the reader works to create meaning from given items... but meanings are not fixed for all readers : a wink and a handshake will have no meaning to a cultural group who do not have these signs in their communication system. even within a single culture, there are likely to be different readings...'

 unit two:  attention seeking devices  page 9

the term ' advertise meant' and ' advertising'  have, at their root, a Latin word,' adventure', meaning ' turned towards.' 

 Written advertising and have to compete with each other and with all sorts of text in our Richly literate culture.  so copywriters have to find ways to shout at us from the page.

 page 10
 one attention seeking strategy developed in recent years to increasing levels of sophistication  is the startling image.
 the Benetton  clothing company, for example, showed a series of large-scale hoardings which featured scenes of life and death- of a baby being born, covered in blood from the mother's womb, a man on his deathbed. Outcry of  public offence which followed these  advertisements   drew yet more attention to  them.  since the  Benetton  adverts, and number of different companies for example  18 to 30 holidays  and Gossard  have appeared to use a strategy of deliberately upsetting, outraging or otherwise irritating the general public in order to draw some extra attention.

 in the search for fresh ways  of startling...uncharted territory

 disturbing image, as a way of presenting the case  for the need for support.

 page 13
 readers do not simply read images in isolation from the verbal text that accompanies them nor do they read the verbal text without reference to accompanying images.
 para language