The Relationsual Analysis Of Roland Barthes's Theory Of Advertising

Advertisements have become a huge part of society in the modernized world of today. Around the world, many people can see all of the various advertisements not only on TVs and newspapers but also on billboards, buses, and walls of buildings. Advertising is an influential part of life and we can easily realize that it has useful purposes for public and private manufacturers and companies throughout the world. Advertisements can either give consumers a great amount of knowledge about the products or just convince them to buy and want the products. Advertisements also help sell the products which keep the economy growing, but people should also be aware of how much they spend because they may not actually need every product that they see that they want to purchase. In the Daisy by Marc Jacobs’s perfume advertisement, the artist uses many different techniques to emphasize the advertisement. Some of the different techniques that the artist uses are color, symbolism, and composition.

Do you ever watch the Super Bowl for its commercials? Have you ever bought a more expensive product because you had seen its advertisement? If the answer is yes, then you might have been a victim of today’s marketers. Jean Kilbourne, the author of “Killing us Softly” stated in one of her lectures, “The influence of advertising is quick, cumulative and for the most part, subconscious, ads sell more products.” “Advertising has become much more widespread, powerful, and sophisticated.” According to Jean Kilbourne, “babies at six months can recognize corporate logos, and that is the age at which marketers are now starting to target our children.” Jean Kilbourne is a woman who grew up in the 1950s and worked in the media field in the 1960s. This paper will explain the methods used by marketers in today’s advertising. An advertisement contains one or more elements of aesthetics, humor, and sexual nature.

Advertising in a mass consumer society such as America is a very competitive industry. Advertising companies continually come up with new and more creative techniques of increasing sale. Advertising companies decide which group of people would be more attracted to a specific product and link that product to the feelings of excitement and anxiety of the targeted customers. The ads are carefully crafted bundles of images, frequently designed to associate the product with feelings of pleasure stemming from deep-seated fantasies and anxieties (Craig 197). For example, usually advertisements of beer and cars demonstrate masculine men, loners and free of

In Chapter Seven of Practices of Looking, we start to explore in the ideas of advertising, consumer cultures and desire. Everyday, we are faced with advertisements through newspapers, magazines, TV, movies, billboards, public transportation such as buses and taxis, clothing, the internet, etc. Logos, such as signs, or anything that resemble a brand, are everywhere, they are on clothing, household items, electronics, cars, etc. Consumers are always showing off their brands and advertisements and we are used to seeing those brands and advertisements in an everyday setting. In modern media, advertisers are pressured to always change the ways they show off and get the attention to consumers, old and new. Advertisers also used present figures who were glamorous. Advertisements set up a certain relationship between the product and its meaning to sell the products and the hidden meaning we link to each of the products. Advertisements use the language of conversion. Advertisers try to create a customer relationship to the brand to try to form them as familiar, necessary, and also likeable.

The commercials producers successfully capitalized on societies yearning to live a lavish and prominent lifestyle. The advertisement plants a growing seed inside the audience’s head that drinking Hennessy is an assure way to access a life of social elegance as well bump elbows the beautiful and wealthy. Possessing the skill and knowledge use a controversial substance and responsibly glorifying the drink is an exemplary method on how to market an ad. The Hennessy Cognac commercial is swarming with high-end materials: expensive cars, glistening jewelry, and designer clothing. It is understandable that society gets captured in the belief that Hennessy is the missing variable in the pursuit to live a life of luxury. Comprehending the dynamics behind marketing is a crucial skill when it comes to successful advertisement. Realizing the importance of selling a product that opens the doors to an iconic lifestyle is tremendous

Newspapers, Magazines, Television, Online… advertising is everywhere. Within the myriad of advertisements displayed in front of viewers every day, there are appeals. Society neglects and overlooks these marketing strategies that toy with their minds, resulting in skyrocketing purchases after the release of an advertisement. In “Advertising’s Fifteen Basic Appeals,” Jib Fowles identifies the appeals he believes are implemented in advertisements. These appeals include sexual innuendos, powerful images, or comforting displays which draw the audience into the desired product. After analyzing the ads within the Vogue January 2018 edition, an extremely popular fashion and lifestyle magazine, the demographics can be determined as a market with expensive taste. The graphics are extremely feminine and contain Fowles’s previously mentioned appeals, like the “need for prominence.” Although not all of the fifteen appeals apply to these advertisements, Fowles’s list is still valid and does not need revisions as the readership of Vogue magazine is just a small sample of the population. Through the appeals of each advertisement, this clear readership is developed, rather than using all of the Fowles’s appeals and not addressing the correct audience.

Sexualizaton and objectification in the advertisements we see and the media we watch has become a very strong issue in our society. With the idea that “sex sells”, consumers don’t even realize that they’re not viewing the advertisements for what they are, but for the women (or men) that are being portrayed in a very erotic way, posed with whatever product they were hired to sell. Many articles have been written so far to challenge and assess this problem, but one written by Jean Kilbourne (1999), “”Two Ways a Woman Can Get Hurt”: Advertising and Violence” holds an extensive amount of authority. Using her personal experience with the subject, as well as studies she has conducted herself on the topic of sexualization, she talks about how the amount of sexualization in advertising affects how society views the culture and products consumers buy. She also notes that because of the quantity and prevalence of these ads, the rate of all forms of sexual assault, specifically rape (mostly towards women of all age), increase, as well as other forms of assault. It is important to examine Kilbourne’s use of rhetorical devices, such as ethos, pathos, and logos, and how effective these devices make her article. This way, it can be examined for its validity and her understanding of her own research. Kilbourne’s article is very effective through her uses of pathos and ethos, but at the same time, it loses its effectiveness through her absence of a counter-argument, as well as a lack

In an advert for a female perfume by “Givenchy” a woman is shown who holds the materialistic characteristics. This is not how it really is in society. Not every woman has prominent curves, is slim and tall. This shows how advertisements do not fairly reflect society.

The most dominant mass marketing technique known as advertising has become inevitable. Advertisements are everywhere in some form or fashion. Whether it is billboards, posters, fliers, or any other print media, advertisements are there fulfilling their purpose; in other words, they are breaking down the “tuning out” barrier. In the article, “Jesus is a Brand of Jeans” written by speaker, social theorist, and widely published writer, Jean Kilbourne, she expresses that we are all influenced by advertisements. She indicates that majority of the power of advertising originates from the mentality of believing advertisements have no effect on oneself. I agree with Kilbourne on the fact that advertising affects every individual.

In the world we live in today advertising has all but consumed us as Americans. An essay entitled “Advertising’s Fifteen Basic Appeals “by Jib Fowles explains how advertisements affect and influence us daily in society. He explains how marketers through advertisements play on your needs, emotional feelings and sometimes desires to draw consumer to their brands. Fowles discusses fifteen main appeals that marketers use in ads and commercials in hopes we will purchase their product. In the October issue of Glamour Magazine there’s an ad promoting the brand BEBE. In this ad it has a timeline of a woman getting ready to go out and enjoy her

Throughout Jean Kilbourne’s film, Killing Us Softly 4, she states that advertisement is frequently used to communicate with potential consumers and persuade them to buy certain products. While advertising’s main purpose is to sell products, modern advertising does more than just sell a company’s merchandise. Advertisers create the values, images, and concepts of love and sexuality that every member of society is pressured to meet; they tell consumers who they are and who they should be. Modern advertising tends to portray the two genders, male and female, in completely different ways. Men are described as powerful beings who are believed to be insensitive and brutal; they are posed and photographed in positions that create a perception of strength and dignity. On the contrary, women are viewed as the weaker sex and taught to believe that their outward appearance determines their value in society. In a Cosmopolitan magazine, a Miss Dior perfume advertisement uses a beautiful naked woman, with long, brown hair and brown eyes, barely covered by a blanket to sell their product. While the perfume being sold should be the focus of the ad, the woman occupies most of the image lying on a bed in a provocative position. She appears to be around twenty-two years old, which appeals to the belief that sexuality only belongs to the young and attractive. In today’s society, women are viewed as vulnerable, objects used to please men, and flawless.

Dior Suavage Makes The Heart Yearn For The Wild Jib Fowles’ essay “Advertising’s Fifteen Basic Appeals” analyzes the different appeals that show up in advertisements. The appeals range from the need for nurture to the need for sex. The viewers witnessing Dior’s new advertisement for Dior Sauvage, featuring Johnny Depp, are not immune to these basic appeals. The appeals used to captivate the audience include the need to escape, the need to satisfy curiosity, and the need for aesthetic sensations.

Ads sell much more than products. They sell moral values and cultural images, such as concepts of success, love, and sexuality. Jean Kilbourne argues that advertising is a very powerful social force that should be taken seriously. Her videos (e.g., Killing Us Softly: Advertising Images of Women; Still Killing Us Softly; and Calling the Shots: Women and and Alcohol) use print advertising as a vehicle to provide careful and cogent analyses of gender inequality. (Cortese 14)

With such a broad range of effective advertising methods, Kanye West was able to create such a great hype for his shoes, everyone wanted to get their hands on a pair. Similarly, Horkheimer and Adorno recognize the importance of advertising in the culture industry, with its power to “turn all participants into listeners and authoritatively subjects them to broadcast programs which are all exactly the same” (1256). Therefore, with such influential power, the culture industry’s aspects of advertising, possesses the ability to compel the public in its intended manner, leading to the creation of a passive and homogenous

in men’s magazines. While conventional advertising practice increasingly depends upon the aphorism that “sex sells,” conventional mass communications research approaches to advertising containing sexual imagery have assumed that such images do affect audiences and such images portray inaccurate truths to audiences. This thesis, however, makes no claims about audience interpretations or media effects. Instead this thesis looks closely at the visual rhetoric of sexualized images of women used in fashion advertising in men’s magazines to ask how sexualized imagery of women functions rhetorically as part of a branding message presumably designed to sell a product.