Ancillary Research - Red Hot Chili Peppers Album Advert

 This advert poster for the album “By the way” by the Red hot Chili Peppers appears very chaotic and disordered almost as if it where graffiti. The roughness of the advert constantly relates to the fact that this band’s genre is mostly rock based. Along with the messy layout this advert contains multiple colours, types of typography and symbolism, all of which can accumulate together and produce many different advertising aspects.


The layout is a complete random mess portrays to the viewer’s just what type of band they are… And from the disorderly layout I would suggest that this was a rock related band as rock is usually associated with untidiness. Not only does the layout inform the viewer about the band but it also allows the poster to stand out and catch the viewer’s eye. Since the layout is out of the ordinary and differs greatly compared to other adverts thus allowing it to stand out and make the viewer look twice.


The typography is also very different compared other adverts, all the texts look as if they have been roughly painted on again relating to the scruffiness that is rock. But the text doesn’t just show what type of genre the band is related to but it also links to the specific targeted audience which in this case I would presume would be teenagers who are also seen as a very messy generation. The fact that this advert is specifically targeting there audience will help in obtaining an audience which mostly contains teenagers and possibly young adults. But by doing this they are restricting the overall amount of audiences. Some of the text is so rough and similar to the background that it has almost become completely illegible, this has most probably been done to add more of a rebellious/ scruffy effect and make the advert appear like a sort of rebellious poster not to dissimilar to the 1959 Cuban revolution posters by Che Guevara.


Amongst all of the disorder and mess there appears to be a half-naked drawing of a woman smack bang in the middle of the advert. Even though she can be clearly seen as a person the way she has been drawn is again very messy and rough, so even though she may be different compared to the rest of the poster she still can relate to it by being in such a state. However she is half naked but at the same time she is clearly not trying to be seductive… What with it being a fairly bad drawing, but this shows that this poster is instead being non-conformist. Since nudity in public is technically illegal in most, if not all western societies by her showing signs of nudity it again is showing the rebellion that rock is usually linked with.

 This advert is clearly following in Theodor Adorno’s theory in a way that would suggest that the audience is mass. After analysing the poster I found that there is only really one main objective and that is to show the audience that this band along with its album is related to some form of rock. In turn this would suggest that the creators of this advert assume that nearly all rock fans are mass and all like the same themed genre as there is really hardly any other elements within this poster that would try and advertise to an individual audience.