Shelter essay

Analyse how social and cultural contexts can influence advertising. Use fig 3 to support your answer.

In your answer you should – analyse how social and cultural contexts influence advertising, and make judgements and reach a conclusion on why they advertised in this way.

Social and cultural contexts influence advertising in different ways. Figure 3 is an advertisement about homelessness, from the company Shelter. There are normal people being represented with one man and two women to show equality. This will give people confidence that no matter who they are or what they look like, they can get help from Shelter. Each one is in the same situation but have different circumstances. The women on the left advert has lost her job, the man in the middle had problems with his landlord, and the woman on the right is in debt. They have purposely used the same close up camera angle and the same font and colour to show that anyone can be homeless, and it isn’t just the stereotypical people involved with drugs and alcohol who are homeless. They have used the close-up camera angle to clearly show their facial expressions, with all of them looking exhausted. They look like this to show people that they should get help if they are at risk of going homeless. The font is bold and red, with it being slightly translucent so the red goes into their eyes. This shows the pain they are in from their situation, and Shelter have done this to try and persuade people to donate by feeling sympathetic for the people represented in the adverts.

The social stereotypes of homelessness are normally it is the persons’ fault. This is due to the general consensus of people being involved with drugs and gangs end up being homeless. This advertising campaign by Shelter is trying to show the opposite, by using normal people to show that anyone can go homeless, and this is backed up by the typography showing that it can happen for a number of reasons which can be out of our control, so it is important to not judge people who are homeless as it probably won’t be their fault, and it is the negative stereotype associated with homelessness which makes people reluctant to get help, which is Shelter’s main aim of this campaign.  

Another motivation for Shelter’s campaign was the fact that so many of the homeless are unaccounted for. A lot of these cases are due to soaring rent prices which people struggle to pay monthly, especially when they have a family to look after. Also, cuts in household benefits, so people who need to look after children who cannot go to work are struggling to pay the bills too.

Overall, social and cultural contexts can influence advertising heavily, and the Shelter campaign has taking into account these contexts and stereotypes, and they have tried to show the opposite, so instead of presenting a stereotypical person on the street with gangs, they have shown that more people need help with potentially going homeless than we think, so they have presented three normal people, and shown a few different ways in which people go homeless, none of those were drugs or gang related. So, in this case, the social and cultural contexts have influenced advertising in a positive way, as it has sent a new message which should make more people aware about the causes of homelessness.