McDonald's & Burger King. Advertising History from the 1960s to Today (PDF)

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2015 in the subject Communications - Public Relations, Advertising, Marketing, Social Media, grade: 2, University of Salzburg, language: English, abstract: This thesis will mainly look at two fast food restaurants, McDonald's and Burger King, and will look at several advertisements from the 1960s to today. It will analyze the advertisements in terms of linguistic structures and will look at how advertisements have developed over the decades.

They are in our everyday life, on our phones when we look for a new app to install, on television while watching our favorite show, on our notebooks when we check our emails, or even when we walk down the street to get our morning coffee-advertisements are everywhere and one cannot escape or ignore them. Yet, as much as pop-ups, billboards and commercial breaks crowd our lives, in a way, they do not bother us at all, and that is the cunning beauty of advertising. It should get the point across, making us aware of something, telling us about a new product, convincing us to purchase an item, by subtly trying to persuade us that we need it when in reality we do not, whatever it is.

Advertisements can come in many forms and genres, they can be a poem, they can be a little short story, a catchy jingle, or just a picture; whatever form they might take, the message of persuading the consumer to buy the advertised product makes this accumulation of genres a genre in itself. It, moreover, is important to mention that whos and wheres of advertising are factors that have to be taken into consideration when drafting an advertisement for a product. What is the product and who could benefit from it? Where should the advertisement to the product appear so it can be easily seen by the target group? How can the features of the product be made easy to read and easy to understand, and furthermore and more importantly, urge the target group to purchase it?-here is where language comes into play.