Two of My Favourite Things: Semiotics and Gender Issues

First of all, let me say that Shield and Heinecken's article "Signs of the Times: A Semiotics of Gender Ads" was of particular interest to me, besides reading Roland Barthes' "Rhetoric of the Image". Semiotics is a fascinating study in terms of rhetoric and English because it combines them in a sense to understand the basics of meaning. This is so important to the human condition, because it drives our actions, interactions and motives. What we value influences us most profoundly. To look at a series of semiotic codes, that is, "A system of associations governed by rules agreed upon...between members of a culture. The code unifies the different elements of the process of meaning construction" (67), is to look at the overall picture of how we derive meaning in life, which is so important to understanding why we do what we do.

With that said, it's interesting to see semiotic code in play in advertising because not only are we examining how an ad influences us, there is a code in play that tells us what kind of meaning and value we place on any given product, company, message or cause. The intersection between ideology and semiotic code is also important in looking at the dominant messages and ideologies communicated in ads concerning gender, particularly the female.

And so it is important to decode an advertisement based on the structural elements of semiotic theory such as the principles of Saussure to analyze it beyond its connotations and for its basic insight into the value systems placed and replaced when watching, reading or experiencing an advertisement. In light of the following analysis, I kept in mind this basic principle Shield and Heinecken articulate: "In order for this system of currency to have meaning for the viewer, he or she must be able to associate the image of the product with a value which is in turn based on his or her own cultural codes" (70)

Okay, here is the ad I chose to analyze in the light of gender and semiotic theory:



Cosmopolitan is easily the epitome of sexualisation of women in the form of a magazine. It’s messages are so blatant that it’s almost comical, and seeing them in line at the grocery store is always a joke because their covers are almost always the same: how to please your man, 6,000 new ways to have sex, how to get skinnier or how to have more beautiful [insert here hair, skin, body, you name it]. But upon closer inspection, analyzing this cover, essentially eight advertisements to buy the magazine on one page, the semiotic codes and years of historic and cultural values in place here are endless and complication. To decode this kind of series of messages, however deliberate, are none the less difficult to unpack entirely in one analysis. So I’ll try my best to cover a few of the basic semiotic implications of this kind of magazine cover as seen above.
The first thing I noticed in viewing the cover as an advertisement is the language comes across as an advice column. Here are the steps, tricks, counsel, secrets I can give you if you buy me. It’s interesting because it aims very specifically at a female audience; the women in the picture Whitney Port is surrounding by a few large print taglines: “Sex He Craves” and “Get Butt Naked”, both assumedly directed to a female heterosexual audience. Without analyzing the whole cover, I will look at these two messages in particular, as well as “Lose 5 lbs. In Just 7 Days” and how these three taglines interconnect to form an overarching semiotic code to project values onto the reader alongside the photograph. The visual image, a very photo shopped reality star from The Hills brings into play intertextality by alluding to the set of values that show exemplifies. Immediately we also have an image that exemplifies the kind of messages the taglines suggest: compare yourself to this women, if you find yourself inferior or wanting to become this image, look to these articles concerning your body image as a female to better yourself towards the semiotic code of the “ideal woman figure”. On a simple denotative basis, you have a female figure looking straight at the viewer, almost as if she is saying “Get Butt Naked”. It’s ironic because there is a definite false sense of self-esteem that comes with the vulnerability of being naked while simultaneously suggesting to their reader to lose five pounds in seven days. On the surface the magazine promotes individuality and self-confidence while suggesting a hundred different ways to change yourself...change yourself into what? There is that connotation that you need to become a better you, a more attractive you, a sexier you (sexier being their word choice, not mine.) In the end, the entire message of the magazine is in defining the semiotic code for what the article calls “ideal femininity”...and depicting the enduring definitions of this kind of ideal: thinness, flawlessness and youthfulness. The final thing I wanted to note was the use of the tagline “Sex He Craves” as an example of the female as a commodity to the male figure. It’s so interesting because it’s an obvious word-choice for this kind of perfection of oneself for the sake of the other, as the article defines it: “In this split-consciousness women are aware that they are seeing male-defined images of themselves, and yet still find themselves influenced by these images” (77) The female as a commodity directly plays into the idea that advertising can project a social code concerning the value systems we allow, create or believe in and then in turn communicate on that plain or within that semiotic code. Long story short, Cosmopolitan covers may seem ridiculous, but in many ways they epitomize the kind of values society uphold for the female body and role, but under a banner of sexuality as power rather than as a new way to communicate the objectification of the female form.

Intertextuality in Advertising/Viral Campaigns

When trying to think of advertisements that don't seem like ads, it was difficult at first to think of any (for obvious reasons). But as advertising has evolved, especially with the explosion of the internet even in the last ten years, it has changed the way our generation interacts with products, companies, movies, television, etc. This can be seen in the study done by Phillips and McQuarrie, where advertisements over time lost their verbal anchorage and layered more and more rhetorical figures into ads, relying on the viewer to participate more in forming ideas about the company or product. The complication of advertisements' rhetorical ploys has increased with new campaign avenues. An interesting one is viral marketing, which uses previously existing social networks to promote a brand or company. This is the kind of marketing campaign that relies on word of mouth to promote its popularity. YouTube is a huge facilitator in this kind of marketing. Viral marketing takes viewer participation to the extreme, functioning as part of the marketing team and taking sole responsibility in promotion.

Before looking a specific viral marketing campaign, it’s interesting to look at YouTube as a kind of advertiser that uses its viewership to promote it, in essence a massive-scale viral campaign. Here is a huge company that defies the boundaries of the kind of genre distinctions we can give it; in reading some of the kind of genre descriptions Cook gives as examples can be applied to YouTube: games, jokes, films, lessons, news, stories, web pages, soap operas. Describing it’s genre as a definition is almost impossible because of its communication context changes with every video. Promotion of individual videos lies entirely on its viewership to cultivate it as an industry. And it works.

Here is the Blendtec viral campaign:
http://www.youtube.com/user/blendtec?blend=1&ob=4#p/a/u/1/_S8sxpK4_iA

Blendtec is a strange kind of YouTube phenomenon. As a participant in the online video world, Blendtec is first most popular as entertainment. But in terms of genre definition, they are a series of infomercials to promote the power of Blendtec blenders. In turn, the videos have become so popular that other companies, specifically Apple, have been promoted through the Blendtec campaign because Tom Dickson blended the iPhone 4 and other apple products. Not only has the Blendtec brand of blenders increased in sales, but Tom Dickson has become an internet sensation on sites such as Digg, and the phrase “Will It Blend?” has garnered huge popularity. As a YouTube video, the Blendtec videos are actually paid by YouTube because of how many hits the videos have had during its duration. The iPhone blending episode has had over 100 million hits. Revver also host’s the Blendtec videos, which have given Blendtec a heavy payout due to its popularity on video-hosting website.

Intertexuality in these kinds of viral campaigns comes from the collective understanding of the products involved in the videos. Blendtec is looking to promote their blenders, but the popularity of the iPhone is what aids in their popularity as a product. Mimicking comedy videos and making fun of Bill Gates relies on the audience’s understanding of the Windows/Mac advertising war. It’s interesting because on the surface, these kind of advertising campaigns are just another YouTube video.

"The Science Behind Beauty"

When reading Cook’s analysis of advertising in terms of discourse in general, the concept of various “participants” in the advertisement focused my analysis(considering basic linguistic terms Cook mentions such as the role of the sender and receiver). When thinking of a powerful message that dominates in the advertising world, anti-aging messages are very prevalent. So in choosing two products or advertisements to analyze, I choose two anti-aging formulas, one by L’Oreal Paris and one by Estee Lauder.Both companies have various commercials, posters, etc. but I am looking at the product themselves as found on their websites.

The two ads can be seen here:

http://www.esteelauder.com/products/mpp/regimen.tmpl?CATEGORY_ID=CAT1042

http://www.lorealparis.ca/_en/_ca/brands/index.aspx?code=Collagen_Remodeler&cm_sp=Homepage_Billboard-_-Collagen-_-EN

The first thing to note is that the advertisements have clearly defined intentions concerning audience. Both ads are hard sells, since the product websites are text heavy and lack overall visual appeal. This can probably be explained because these are technically not "advertisements"...they function as extra information for the customer who is already interested in the product. The company is now tasked with convincing the audience with further evidence for its effectiveness as a product.

Estee Lauder’s age-defying serum is called the Perfectionist, the name itself functioning as a rhetorical device, drawing on a human personality trait and immediately creating a statement about the product's abilities. On a contextual level that Cook seeks to engage in, a print advertisement does little to use paralanguage. This fact alone suggests the naming and branding of the product is more important since the advertisement lacks the interest of say a television commercial. In defining the product as a “serum” verses a “cream” even engages the addressees on a language level, drawing on the ethos of the product’s material, since many creams are considered useless by cosmetic users. The words “powerful” and “dramatic” drive the point home to their audience, suggesting that the product user will see exceptional results.

L’Oreal Paris uses language as well to enthuse their audience with confidence for their products. Many anti-aging products today understand the need for scientific proof (an ethos-driven advertising campaign). The title of their one product “Micro-Pulse” engages in a textual ploy by intentional use of scientific terminology to describe their product. The addressee then unconsciously engages in the language from a scientific perspective by receiving the anti-aging message from the linguistic approach of the specific sphere of knowledge. “Science Behind the Beauty” blatantly suggests that the advertising campaign here is fully engaging in a linguistic based approach to persuasion.
While colour, imagery and visual display of the text plays into the advertising campaign, on a deeper level the language of both ads engages the audience in a way that depends on the audience’s understanding of scientific terminology.

Both of these ads challenge the audience, through language, to think of the products in terms of a genre outside of cosmetics and into the world of scientific research. For very little discourse on the effects of the product, the specific word choices make a subtle but powerful kind of influence on a basic level of understanding and categorizing discourse and information.

It's interesting to revisit this post after reading Kilbourne's "The More You Subtract, the More You Add". Beauty products almost squarely rely on this principle to sell their products. Aging is an interesting anxiety, because it ties into the fear of death and the fear of being unattractive. I think it's safe to assume that older women purchasing age-defying serums or creams is an example of the kind of fear instilled in young girls about their identity. In the same way, they are belittled in their wrinkles and grey hair to believe that aging is inappropriate, unattractive, and most of all unnecessary, thanks to such and such a product.
The parallels between adolescents and pre-menopausal women today are uncanny, the quote from Kilbourne’s article reminds me of the kind of experiences a middle aged woman might feel (often called “mid-life crisis”): “As most of us know so well by now, when a girl [woman] enters adolescences [menopause], she faces a series of losses – loss of self-confidence, loss of a sense of efficacy and ambition [perhaps this could be replaced with loss of child-rearing responsibilities or retirement...] and the loss of her ‘voice’” (129). To relook at the effects of bombardment of anti-aging solutions suggests to its audience that there is something inherently unpleasant and perhaps wrong in aging naturally...to resist nature is to resist death. In the same way that a young woman can struggle with eating disorders and body-image anxiety so to can an older woman struggle with the aging process, coming to terms with a new body all over again. The media cannot help but aid in these kinds of messages and with the hormonal changes during this time; it’s possible to be very effective on a woman in a vulnerable state. Estee Lauder’s Perfectionist serum suggests that it repairs as a step in the anti-aging regiment. Repair is an interesting and powerfully intended word choice; it explicitly suggests to its customer that there is something needing to be fixed. The more you subtracted, the more you add.

Smarties and Skittles get quirky.

The two commercials can be seen here:

Smarties:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGUriNVnKBg

Skittles:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6nDyeV0i6w

When picking out two commercials to compare and contrast, a simple selection strategy was to choose two advertisements that sell a similar product. In this case, Smarties and Skittles advertising approach or "style", as McQuarrie and Phillips describe it, is also similar. This is where my comparison of the two commercials will focus, since "Advertising Rhetoric¸ Introduction" states “It is important to recognize that although style can be distinguished from content, style also communicates. The separation of style from content, together with the valorization of style, are defining characteristics of the rhetorical perspective” (4).

It’s interesting to note that Skittles launched their “quirky” campaign about four years ago in early 2006. Skittles has several (albeit subjectively) hilarious commercial segments under their belt: the "untamed" beard interview, the Skittles midas touch, the sheep boys commercial, and the one I chose, the opera rabbit commercial (chosen due to its similarity to the Smarties commercial, both using small strange animals, to be explored in more detail further down). Skittles was wildly successful, especially with my generation, by producing offbeat humorous commercials that seek to amuse rather than to promote their product. The commercials work because they create a word-of-mouth appeal through their bizarre approach. The strategy here is to be memorable rather than use a sensory level appeal on their audience. Skittles, as a successful candy company, does not need to sell their taste. Skittles are Skittles, and their target audience appreciates or doesn’t appreciate their product due to personal taste preference. The next step in their advertising campaign was to create an alternative means of impressing their already abundant consumer base.

Smarties released their blue cat commercial in early 2010. Producing a small, colourful candy not unlike Skittles, the Smarties commercial uses a small blue (weird?!) cat that talks in a funny accent to create their own quirky message. In the same manner as Skittles, Smarties does not appeal to taste as a food commercial might, but highlights the weird blue cat in relation to their product. To return to an earlier concept, the style here is to create a niche audience through humour rather than an through the taste of their candy. The humour lies in the lack of explanation in both commercials: why is there a blue cat and where did the singing rabbit come from? By making the bizarre element seem normal, the commercial appeals to an audience who appreciates quirky humour... and it works.

I Spy an Advertisement

Here is a sample list of the advertisements, subtle or not, that I consciously encountered within roughly a day.

Facebook:
- Get Your uWaterloo gear here!
- Purchase your own Don Draper t-shirt

Campus:
- "There's no place like Homecoming" - Advertisement for Waterloo homecoming, large poster on the front of South Campus Hall featuring a pair of sparkling red shoes, an allusion to the Wizard of Oz.
- Tim Hortons posters

Television program:
- Snapple: self-aware product placement joke in a re-run episode of 30 Rock

Commericals :
- Pantene Pro-V
- "What awesome tastes like" Commercial for Orville Redenbacher popcorn
- Beneful Incredibites
- Expedica.ca
- Fashion by George, commercial for Walmart clothing brand
- Centrum, daily vitamin
-Sensodyne medicinal toothpaste
- Tim Hortons (“Every cup tells a story”)
- Vileda spunges (“Scrunge spunge”)
- Windows 7 Commercial (to combat the Mac/PC dispute)
- Yellow Pages.ca commcercial
- Morgan Freeman talking about Visa
- Lexus

Internet ads:
- Nissan Maxima
- Chrome by Google
- Nutrisystem Canada
- Honda Years End Event
- Ultimate HD Event at Best Buy