Beasley and Danesi describe the goal of semiotics in the study of advertising is to unmask the arrays of hidden meanings in the underlying level" (2002).
Iain McRury defines semiotics as "the attempt to offer insights not just to what ads mean, but proposing how they mean" (2009).
Umberto Eco (1976) views semiotics as a science in the traditional sense of the word for five reasons:
- it has an autonomous discipline
- it has a set of standardised methodological tools
- it has the capability of producing hypotheses
- it affords the possibility of making predictions
- its findings may lead to the modification of the actual state of the objective world.
In advertising, semiotics allow advertisers to identify the target market - it mostly plays on common references and cultural knowledge etc.
Let's take a look at the latest advert from Flash celebrating their fifty years:
For the purpose of this blog, I scoured through some Flash adverts that had been uploaded from over the years and recognise a few of these in this advert. They've combined their TV advertisements over the past five or so decades and are able to target their product to all age groups (providing they're in the role of cleaning houses, that is). The retro feel of this advert enables those that were raised in the sixties onward to recall the era and therefore understand the context of the advertisement. By recalling the viewer's era they are using nostalgia. Nostalgia is used when an advertiser wants to evoke a feeling of happiness to sell their products so that it is linked to a happy feeling. A number of things can trigger a feeling of nostalgia:
- Sound (music - John Lewis using Billy Joel’s “Always a Woman”)
- Taste (an old beverage one used to drink in the park in summer)
- Touch (the feel of rough wood reminding one of helping their dad do DIY)
- Images (iconic people or fashion from teenage years)
- Smells (the smell of petrol or stale cigarette smoke).
In advertising, semiotics attaches positive feelings when associated with visuals. Take the Lynx advert for example. This shows an array of angels falling from the sky and travelling along until they bump into a man with a Vespa and proceed to smell the air, throw off their halos and the scene cuts to a flashback of the man spraying himself with the new Lynx Excite.
The connotations behind this are simple - buy our spray and good looking women will flock to you - no doubt a positive image for any man.
Semiotics is to be differentiated from what has come to be known in the last fifty years as 'communication science' - semioticians focus their attention more on what some advertising feature means and on how it generates this meaning (Beasley, 2002).
Semiotics can be used to help identify the culture of a brand - taking the above example, Lynx is obviously more targeted at males and uses the element of humour to convey a message. The same can be said about BMW:
Interestingly enough, BMW are showing a younger character than what would normally be associated with the brand. This could be to attract younger buyers and increase the target market somewhat.
The semiotics of advertising can be characterised as a study of the power of sound and sight (Danesi, 2002).
As the great English novelist Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) wrote in 1912 - "he who wants to persuade should put his trust not in the right argument, but in the right word. The power of sound has always been greater than the power of sense". This can be updated a bit here to include the power of imagery as well. Using the above Lynx advert as an example - of course it makes sense to buy a body spray and of course smelling better will help women be attracted to you but simply SAYING that in an advertisement is, well, boring and doesn't quite stroke the ego of a man as much as "good looking women will drop from the sky and travel to you because you smell so damn good".
When looking at the semiotics of advertising, it is important to look for the meaning BEHIND the signs. So, yes Lynx are very obviously conveying that wearing their scent will attract women but WHY does it attract, WHO is this advert so clearly targeting etc.
Questions such as when, where, why and for whom provide a preliminary framing for any close analytic reading of advertising (2009).
Reference List
Beasley, R. & Danesi, M. (2002). Persuasive Signs: The Semiotics of Advertising . Berlin: Mouton de Grutyer. 20.
Beasley, R. & Danesi, M. (2002). Persuasive Signs: The Semiotics of Advertising . Berlin: Mouton de Grutyer. 24.
Beasley, R. & Danesi, M. (2002). Persuasive Signs: The Semiotics of Advertising . Berlin: Mouton de Grutyer. 26.
McRury, I. (2009). Advertising. UK: Routledge. 190.
No comments:
Post a Comment