Unit 5. Advertisement
1. Look at “Know your logos!” Identify the brand in each case. Choose the correct brand in each case.
2. Discuss the following questions.
a) Which of these brands are popular in our country? What products are advertised most of all?
b) Do you own anything of these brands? What do these brands advertise?
c) How many logos can you draw? Show your logos to a partner and see how many brands they can identify.
d) What is an advertisement? Are the ads useful or harmful?
3.
Transcribe
the following words:
1. papyrus; 2. excavations; 3. Cyprus; 4. Cairo; 5. archeologist; 6. specialized; 7. technique; 8. announcement; 9. contemporary.
4. Give the Russian equivalents for the following words and word combinations:
1. public announcement; 2. to promote the sale; 3. a form of mass selling; 4. advertising technique; 5. commercial persuasion; 6. excavation; 7. announcement; 8. to attract customers; 9. goods; 10. an integral segment of urban industrial civilization; 11. single advertising campaign; 12. trade
5.
Read
and translate the text.
Advertising
Advertising is a collective term for public announcements designed to promote the sale of specific commodities or services. Advertising is a form of mass selling, employed when the use of direct, person-to-person selling is impractical, impossible, or simply inefficient. Advertising techniques range from the publishing of simple notes in the newspapers to the use of television, radio, direct mail, and other communications media in the course of a single advertising campaign.
It isn't easy to establish when the first advertisement appeared, and it is not surprising since it goes back to very ancient times. A papyrus in the collection of the British museum, in London, advertises the sale of a slave. Rock drawings and inscriptions along the roads were also an excellent way to advertise things.
Probably the oldest advertisement was found in the excavations of the ancient Egyptian town of Memphis. It says: "I, Rhinos from Cyprus, live here. God gave me the gift of the true telling of dreams." This advertisement is 2,500 years old. It is carved in stone and visitors to one of the Cairo museums can inspect it. In the excavations of one of the towns of ancient Greek archaeologists found about 300 stone fragments with letters of the Greek alphabet. When they put the fragments together they found it was a tablet for a shop window with a list of goods and their prices.
The first newspaper in the world that put in an advertisement was a handwritten Roman newspaper "Daily Happenings". It contained announcements of meetings, births, and marriages in the noble families of Rome.
To attract customers bright signs with the name of the owner and his goods painted on them appeared above shops. Fruit, vegetables, sheep, shoes, hats were painted by "naive painters." Some of these painters were really outstanding masters, such as Niko Pirosmanishvili.
Modern advertising is an integral segment of urban industrial civilization, mirroring contemporary life in its best and worst aspects. Advertising falls into two main categories: consumer advertising, directed to the ultimate purchaser, and trade advertising, in which the appeal is made to dealers through trade journals and other media. Both consumer and trade advertising employ many specialized types of commercial persuasion.
Advertising may be local, national, or international in scope. The rates charged for the three different levels of advertising vary sharply, particularly in newspapers; varying rates are set also by newspapers for amusement, legal, political, financial, religious, and charitable advertisements.