Shelter Campaign Ad Analysis


How is media language used in the Shelter advert? Refer to the social, political and cultural contexts in your response [15 marks]

Shelter is a non-profit organisation that helps millions of people every year who struggle who struggle with bad housing or homelessness, through advice, support and legal services. On their website they claim, that they campaign to make sure that, one day, no one will have to turn to them for help.

All Shelter ads follow a certain theme and are quite similar to each other in terms of composition,shot types, fonts and ideologies communicated. Every ad contains a close up shot of what appears to be a middle-aged person from an unknown ethnic background(could be British white, Middle-eastern,etc.). The use of the close up shots is supposed to emphasize the facial expression, and in this case the facial expression of the models is sad, desperate and hopeless, which is generally how homeless people feel when they've got nothing left and are living on the streets by themselves. The mastheads of the ads and the cover lines are supposed to strike empathy in the audience. For instance, the lines 'But where will we live', 'Debt can seem too big to face, but if ignored can threaten your home. We can help.' and 'Losing your job doesn't have to mean losing your home. We can help' refer to the major reasons why people end up homeless on the streets, which are debt, losing your main source of income, etc. As I mentioned earlier the goal of the campaign is early-intervention, i.e. to prevent homelessness from happening in the first place, so when a desperate person loses his job and sees this advert he may relate to it and seek help. Cameron's coalition government was responsible for the massive cut in funding for social housing had a catastrophic effect on people who had previously depended on affordable/social housing. The housing budget for England went from £8.4bn to £4.4bn and the loss would be covered by new social housing tenants who face rental charges up to 80% of market rates. In fact, the Shelter campaign was initially launched as a response to the massive social housing cut the government made in 2010, offering help and advice for people struggling with high rents. The colours of the mastheads and cover lines are red and white, which are the conventional colours for Shelter Campaign ads, used to reinforce branding. The use of people from different ages and ethnic backgrounds as models in their ads could be to show that homelessness and poverty can happen to anyone despite where they are coming from and who they are. The dramatic statements coloured in red are always followed by a reassuring sentence, in order to show people that there is hope for them as long as they seek help.

In conclusion the non-profit organisation Shelter was originally launched as a response to the massive social housing funding cut made by the government causing large numbers of people ending up homeless. The charity's main objective is to prevent that by giving out help and advice to those who need it and such ideas are clearly communicated in their advertisements as explained previously.

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