"...It Looks Incredible."

For advertisements, it is crucial to maximize the effectiveness and impact of your visual elements. This is the case, even when the subject of an advertisement is a household name. Advertisements for the Los Angeles Lakers or the Call of Duty series, for example, are easy. 

It's easier to convey meaning when a majority already knows of your subject

For our exercise involving visual rhetoric, I researched and found an advertisement one of my favorite video games, Elden Ring. After it's release in early 2022, Elden Ring was recognized as a mainstream, widely popular video game title, and later on it even won Game of the Year at The Game Awards. 

However, it is a fact that before release, no one was quite sure how Elden Ring would compare to other similar games coming out at around the same time. Many people did not even know it existed until it exploded in popularity, not just among it's usual audience, but within the mainstream gaming community. Elden Ring belongs to a particular niche of video game, after all. Unlike the Lakers, we shouldn;t expect the average person to know it exists. Thus, advertisements need to reflect this fact and adjust accordingly. 

For this post, I took a look at what was called the "Elden Ring Bus". It is literally a bus with an advertisement for the game plastered on the side. In my opinion, it does its job as an advertisement very well. Let me explain first with a description.

Two figures, a massive beast and an armored person dominate the free space. The atmosphere is blue and foggy, giving the viewer a dreary, darker impression of the world of Elden Ring. Between the figures and underneath windows, the game's name is proudly displayed, along with miniature representations of the physical game's case for various consoles. A release date is here as well, giving viewers something to look forward to. 

Lower on the bus, the names Hidetaka Miyazaki and George R.R. Martin show up. Even if the viewer doesn't know the former name, the latter is likely to ring a bell. In this way, the advertisement effectively displays the competency behind Elden Ring's production. Free space on the bus is used effectively like this, showing crucial information in ways that feel like a well-cut puzzle, rather than an array of unrelated images. It all fits, and as the quote along the bus's right side says, "it looks incredible". 

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Orig. article: https://www.vg247.com/elden-ring-bus-london-advertisement

Picture of the bus: https://twitter.com/EldenRingUpdate/status/1492872321698308099?s=20