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Toronto's Anti-Littering Campaign

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The rise of environment-related commercials is currently at its peak and is one of the most discussed phenomena even in the upcoming presidential campaigns in the United States. Most of these adverts use a concept called shock advertising in order to capture the attention of the audience and evoke a response from them. It uses blunt slogans and graphic images to break the monotony of ordinary adverts. Violating social norms creates a buzz and captures the audience’s attention. The concept targets social issues that people avoid talking about in common situations. Some of them target certain behavior that people are adamant to change. Using fear, nudity, and shock to pass a message is highly efficient and makes a high impact on the audience …show more content…

It carries a lot of weight in the effectiveness of many anti-littering campaign advertisements. The noun makes the message personal, as if it is a conversation between the world and a particular individual. In Toronto’s advertisement, the city council created a series of insulting messages by combining pieces of garbage and creating descriptive words that people can associate with both in private and in public. The advertisement combined bright, eye-catching used and thrown away snack wrapping papers and plastics to form words like lazy, dumb, pig, low, selfish, and dipstick (Manral, …show more content…

It works by appealing to the emotions of the residents. People like to be seen positively by their friends, relatives, family, and the public. More importantly, people have a tag of war within themselves about their personalities. All people struggle with identity issues. Toronto’s anti-littering advertisement took advantage of this situation by making people to question their behaviour and character. The tagline, “Littering says a lot about you”, is a personalized statement that forces an individual to evaluate their behavior (Manral, 2015). More so, the advertisement gives a hint of the way the world thinks about people who litter. People have secretly despised people who are low enough to litter. The advert makes their feelings public by showing the true reflection and people’s opinions on people who

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