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TIDE ADVERT (REPRESENTATIONS (The dress code of the advert’s main female
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TIDE ADVERT
PRODUCT CONTEXT
Procter & Gamble launched Tide in 1946 and it quickly became the brand leader in America, a position it maintains today.
DMB&B used print and radio
advertising campaigns concurrently in order to quickly build audience familiarity with the brand. Both media forms used the “housewife” character and the ideology that its customers “loved” and “adored” Tide.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
The post-WWII consumer boom of the 1950s included the rapid development of new technologies for the home, designed to make domestic chores easier.
Vacuum cleaners, fridge-freezers, microwave ovens and washing machines all become desirable products for the 1950s consumer.
Products linked to these new technologies also developed during this time, for example, washing powder.
CULTURAL CONTEXT
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Consumer culture was in its early stages of development and, with so many ‘new’ brands and products entering markets, potential customers typically needed more information about them than a modern audience, more used to advertising, marketing and branding, might need.
CODES & CONVENTIONS
- composition - Z-line and a rough rule of thirds - Bright, primary colours - connote the
positive associations the producers want
audience to make with product
- Headings, subheadings and slogans are
written in sans-serif font, connoting an
informal mode of address.
- This is reinforced with the comic strip style
image in the bottom right-hand corner with two women ‘talking’ about the product using informal lexis (“sudsing whizz”).
- The more ‘technical’ details of the product are written in a serif font, connoting the more ‘serious’ or ‘factual’ information that the ‘1, 2, 3’ bullet point list includes.
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REPRESENTATIONS
- The dress code of the advert’s main female
character include a stereotypical 1950s
hairstyle incorporating waves, curls and rolls made fashionable by contemporary film stars
- The fashion for women having shorter hair had a practical catalyst as long hair was hazardous for women working with machinery on farms or in factories during the war.
- The headband or scarf worn by the woman also links to the practicalities of dress code for women developed during this time. For this advert, having her hair held back connotes she’s focused on her work, though this is perhaps binary opposed to the full make-up that she's wearing.
Stuart Hall’s theory of representation –
the images of domesticity (including the two women hanging out the laundry) form part
of the “shared conceptual road map” that
give meaning to the “world” of the advert. Despite its comic strip visual construction,
the scenario represented is familiar to the audience as a representation of their own lives.
David Gauntlett’s theory of identity – women represented in the advert act as role models of domestic perfection that the audience may want to construct their own sense of identity against.
Liesbet Van Zoonen’s feminist theory –
while their role socially and politically may
have changed in the proceeding war years,
the advert perhaps contradicts Van Zoonen’s theory that the media contribute to social change by representing women in non-traditional roles and using non-sexist language.
bell hooks’ feminist theory - argues that lighter
skinned women are considered more desirable and t better into the western ideology of beauty, and the advert could be seen to reinforce this by only representing “modern”, white women.
- This could also be linked to Gilroy’s ethnicity and post-colonial theories that media texts reinforce colonial power. Contextually, this power has perhaps been challenged at this moment in American history by the events of WWII.
AUDIENCES
The likely audience demographic is constructed
through the advert’s use of women with whom they might personally identify (Uses and Grati cations Theory). These young women are likely to be newly married and with young families (clothing belonging to men and children on the washing line creates these connotations).
- The endorsement from Good Housekeeping Magazine makes them an Opinion Leader for the target audience, reinforcing the repeated assertion that Tide is the market-leading product.
- The preferred reading (Stuart Hall) of the advert’s reassuring lexical elds (“trust”, “truly safe”, “miracle”, “nothing like”) is that, despite being a “new” product, Tide provides solutions to the audience’s domestic chores needs.
Reception theory – Stuart Hall
- The indirect mode of address made by the
woman in the main image connotes that
her relationship with the product is of prime importance (Tide has what she wants). This, according to Hall, is the dominant or hegemonic encoding of the advert’s primary message
that should be received by “you women.”
- The direct mode of address of the images in the top right and bottom left- hand corner link to the imperative “Remember!” and the use of personal pronouns (“your wash”, “you can buy”).
Cultivation theory – George Gerbner
- Advertising developed signi cantly during the 1950s and this theory, developed by Gerbner in the early 1970s, explains some of the ways in which audiences may be in uenced by media texts such as adverts.
- The Tide advert aims to cultivate the ideas that: this is the brand leader; nothing else washes to the same standard as Tide; it’s a desirable product for its female audience; and its “miracle suds” are an innovation for the domestic washing market. Gerbner’s theory would argue that
the repetition of these key messages causes audiences to increasingly align their own ideologies with them (in this case positively, creating a product that “goes into more American homes than any other washday product”).