Task 1 - Comparison of 'Uncle Sam Range' and Savile Lumley's poster.

In this essay I am going to compare and contrast two images with a similar intention but with very different ways of delivering it. The first image is one from ‘The Uncle Sam Range’, an American advertising campaign for a range cooker, this particular example by Schumacher & Ettlinger of New York. The second image is a British campaign image by Savile Lumley created to encourage recruitment for the armed forces during the First World War.

            Both images are created with the intention of advertising by making something appear better than it is.  For example Savile Lumley’s poster has a very personal approach to encouraging recruitment, by putting emphasis on the word ‘you’ in the tagline and also making the father figure look directly at the viewer.  This gives the feeling that it’s aimed directly at you. The American poster takes rather a different approach, by giving the product the appearance of wealth and trying to instil feelings of pride and patriotism for an American viewing the image. It uses really simple and almost brash imagery such as including a black slave, and a stereotypical African American face on the earth, which is sat at the table. This is to make other races and countries appear inferior to the Americans, almost trying to advertise the cooker as providing them with the American dream. This is a style advertising that would almost certainly be illegal nowadays because of its references to race.

            The reason for the Uncle Sam advertisements brash use of imagery is its target audience, probably aimed at the middle classes, but giving the image a very upper class feel, implying that that’s how the viewers life would be by buying the cooker. Also this type of imagery and use of references to inferiority was not considered wrong at the time of the images production in 1876, it was merely a way of trying to instate Americas ‘superiority’ over other countries. Savile Lumley’s poster is much more subtle and is based around some fairly clever references to wealth and trying to change the perception of stories people ‘back home’ heard about the war. For example the use of the royal crest on the arm chair to imply wealth, and placing a family in a front room setting, almost showing how the children look up to their father for being a part of the war. The term ‘Great War’ is also used to put a positive outlook on the war, as it persuades people that they will be involved in something honourable and will be fighting for their country, although the reality was often very different.

            To conclude, although the two posters are used to encourage something, recruitment and purchasing a product, in Savile Lumley’s and Schumacher & Ettlinger’s respectively. Due to the social contexts in which they were produced they both have very different approaches, despite both trying to show wealth and pride, Savile Lumley’s poster takes a much more subtle approach which I think works much more effectively.