2. The main colour of this poster is black which is associated with death and absence of information, which
leads to not distracting to the focal point of information. The black background also makes the horse look
isolated which emotionally appeals the audience to feel empathetic to the horse. They have decided to
show only a horse’s head without a body which creates unnerving connotations surrounding it when
combined with the previous points related to the colour black.
The information shown on the poster is very direct as there is an absence of qualitative and qualitative
information, which makes the audience solely focused on the the text that is presented. Therefore this
doesn’t allow the audience to question the issue raised. The meaning behind the campaign is that horses
are forced to take performance enhancing drugs that is dangerous to their health. The use of these drugs
can lean to death which isn’t widely publicized by the event organisers and those involved in the sport.
The aim of this is therefore to encourage a change in the mindset and habits of people involved in the
sport and to make them more aware of animal welfare.
3. The purpose the campaign is to change change peoples attitudes towards the sport. The horse racing industry relies on
the audience making bets to make money. The campaign therefore is aiming to bring about national change as the
industry will lose the ability to fund itself if the audience boycott the races. The ending sentence of the poster following
on from the initial three words focuses on the audience reading the poster as well as the horse as the image and text are
juxtaposed together. This is very cleverly done as people will see the words “horse racing is a bad bet” and consider that
the races might be fixed due to drug educed horses which eliminates the competition. Horse racing is a dominant agenda
especially in British culture. It is a very popular spectator sport and collects millions of pounds. By suggesting that people
should boycott the races there is a challenge to the dominant agenda that higher society profit on from the expense of
other classes who contribute to the sport by betting. The poster is very carefully worded as the it rises the issue of
cruelty to horses and the corruption in the sport.
There is a contrast in the copy between the black background and white text which is a binary opposition to represent
the good and bad elements of this campaign. The large percentage of the image being black gives a dominant reading
that this is largely negative. However, the text which encourages the social action to improve or boycott the sport is in
white reflecting the good change. They also use capital letters and full stops to create impact to place emphasis on the
words.
The composition of the page layout positions the text and imagery in the center of the page. Which is the area which
draws the eye’s attention at a glance. There is also no other elements of the poster besides the PETA logo which creates a
large area of white space to draw focus. On this image of the horse it’s natural markings have been digitally manipulated
to a syringe shape which creates shocking and unsettling tone to the poster because it is physically placing the drug onto
the horse which is represented as a natural, organic and helpless being as the colour brown connotes.
Finally PETA position their logo in the bottom right of the page which is a recognised convention of
branding and therefore is where the logo is expected to be on a social action poster. The logo is also in the
colour white again which connotates the same thing as was expressed with the main font. It is all in capital
letters which suggests that each letter stands for something and gives impact to show that they are an
active company. The word “ethical” is in lowercase which makes the word more friendly and inviting, and
is their main agenda as they have isolated it.
