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Mary Zhao
Matt Wilson
Writing 2
11 March 2016
Analysis of Bus Advertisement
Theres a time and place for everything. Certain information fit better in one situation
than in another situation. It is the same for academic texts. The information that is presented in
certain academic texts are intended for one discourse community, however the information can
be just as beneficial to others, and it would be necessary to make some adjustments to make it
just as accessible and beneficial to someone else. I am taking an academic journal on childhood
obesity and translating it into a bus advertisement, trying to pass on the vital message that
parents are one of the biggest influences of childhood obesity onto the general public and an
even more specific audience who can help eliminate the epidemic. In order to do so, I analyzed
the conventions of the research article and the message that it was trying to establish, analyzed
the rhetorical situation of the bus ad, then applied my knowledge of conventions to create a bus
ad that will capture and influence the decisions of the working class parents.
The translation of the academic article into a bus stop advertisement was to address a
different audience and achieve a different purpose. Because they are two distinct genres, they
each have their own purposes along with their own conventions to achieve their purposes. The
purpose of the research article was to show that there is evidence that parental influence can be a
big factor in childhood obesity, and that there should be more research that should be dedicated
to the issue. The audience for the research article however, are other researchers. That
information does not reach the parents, who are the ones that can stop the epidemic. Therefore, I

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decided to translate the article into a bus ad, so that it would reach the parents. The purpose of
the bus ad is to tell parents that they are more of an influence in their childs health than they
think they are. In the research article, it stated, among the parents who were overweight, their
control on their childrens food intake was significantly less when compared to the other normal
weight parents, and it also stated that there was a weak inverse relationship between the control
that the parents had over their childrens eating habits and their weight. Furthermore, although
not explicitly said, it is implied that the parents eating habits eventually reaches their children
Thus I wanted to bring this information, that the parents eating habits can be what is causing
childhood obesity. Therefore, I wanted to target the working class parents who would most likely
too busy to lead a very healthy example for their children, and may not have time to control too
much of their childrens diets.
Once I had established my audience and purpose, I began to analyze the rhetorical
situation that I needed to present in my ad. From Writing with Pictures by McCloud, I knew
that I needed something that will capture a lot of information into one ad. I needed to capture the
the right moment, frame and image. One of the conventions of a good ad is something that
immediately attracts attention, so I looked for photos that would capture the attention of any
parent. I chose a picture of a mom and her young daughter both carrying alcohol and a cigarette.
Not only does that scenario capture a parents attention, I think that portrays that children really
do try to mimic their parents actions. Even more, I was trying to get the point across that parents
would not want their child to copy their smoking and drinking habits, then they should not let
their child mimic their bad eating and exercising habits either. Once I captured the parents
attention, I brought the focus to eating with a picture of Honey BooBoos mother eating pizza,
in an animal like way. I chose that because Honey Boo Boo is precisely an example of an obese

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child that ended up so because of her mothers lifestyle choices. On the show, Here Comes
Honey Boo Boo, Honey Booboo and her family are often filmed eating a lot of fried foods and
her mom is often endorsing eating those types of foods and not exercising much, which in turn is
shown to have affected Honey BooBoo. Then to link them to obesity, I added a generic stock
picture of a mother and daughter that are slightly overweight and it can be deduced that when the
parents are overweight there is a higher chance that the child will be as well.
Another convention of bus advertisements is that they contain a simple phrase or
sentence that ties the whole piece together. Trying to figure out my line, referred to Dirks
Navigating Genres to figure out how other bus advertisements go their point across, what
elements they all had in common, and also I looked into what sort of font they used most often,
what worked, and what didnt. Thinking about all of that, I came up with the line, your actions
affect your child more than you think #stopchildhoodobesity because it gets the point that a
parents action matters, and then the hashtag brings in the context of the parents actions. I believe
it helps clear up any confusion that the pictures may have caused.
Trying to bring out one message out of a whole academic article was a bit challenging but
once the focus was established, the things that came after just settled in. Translating an academic
journal to a bus stop advertisement required me to reevaluate all the audiences and purposes of
each genre. While the academic journal wrote to scholars and other public health and healthcare
officials, I tried to make the information more digestible and accessible to parents, the people
who interact and play a very active role in the childrens lives that were being affected. Because
two things had to be completely reevaluated, it comes to show that each genre has its own
conventions, purposes, and audiences, and any topic can be manipulated to appeal to a whole
different set of audiences, with a different purpose, while still delivering the same message.

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Works Cited

Dirk, Kerry. "Navigating Genres." Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing. By Charles Lowe and
Pavel Zemliansky. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor, 2010. N. pag. Print.
McCloud, Scott. Writing with Pictures. Print
Tzou, Isabel Lin and Nain-Feng Chu. " Parental influence on childhood obesity: A review
" Health. Volume 4. Issue 12 (2012): 1464-1470. Print.