• Dissertation: Advertising

    For my dissertation, I decided to focus on advertising (At the start of the year this was something I wanted to specialise in) although, things have moved on and through the MA I will be investigating Branding. Biggest regret now for not choosing my topic on branding; however I did still enjoy my topic and felt I definitely learnt a lot from this.

    I chose to discuss through my dissertation how advertising has changed from the 1950s to today. This is obviously a very broad subject, therefore I cut it down to investigate the changes within the cosmetics industry and how women were reflected through the marketing of cosmetics through three brands; Revlon,  Max Factor and Maybelline.
    To begin with I discussed cosmetics during the Victorian era, and discovered how this had developed from this to the mass production of cosmetics and the start of the department store.
    I then went on to discuss social changes and the effects as a result of the Women's Liberation Movement, and discussed the changes that took place in the 1960s. Including this, I learnt there were changing trends within cosmetics throughout the decades, and looked at how this affected the marketing of cosmetics, and what this meant for women during these times. I did this through deep analysis of semiotics and an investigation into the beauty myth throughout my chosen advertisements.