Ad Campaigns & Semiotics

In class, we created political campaigns for and against gun control and for or against a candidate. Let's look at signs. A sign is made up of a signifier, which points to a signified. A signifier is some kind of thing (generally a tangible object, color, or something that a 10 year old could describe). What is signified is a little more difficult to get to. What is signified has cultural connotations, and you must keep context in mind. A signifier can point to many different things, and it is very subjective, but the goal is to be as objective and relevant to your context as possible. Now, we can take a look at some of these ads created in class, and we can distinguish what is a signifier and what it points to.



Danielle's Ad Campaign:

Signifier: Red curtains at the beginning of the movie..
Signified: There will be some sort of show or entertainment.

Signifier: The Statue of Liberty..
Signified: This generally represents freedom and America. (It is also indicative of something good.)

Signifier: Capitol of United States..
Signified: This, again, represents the United States. It can blur the line between what the candidate is saying and American standards.



Holly's Ad Campaign

Signifier: A girl in a white dress with her hair done and makeup on..
Signified: She is a bride in a wedding.

Signifier: A girl in a dress holding a gun..
Signified: Guns are harmless.

Signifier: A man sitting under a dead animal with a gun propped over the animal (the man is smiling).
Signified: He just hunted the animal, and he is proud.



Josh's Campaign Ad

Signifier: Balloons and campaign advertizements..
Signified: A celebration is taking place. (The person in the photo may have done something successfully.)

Signifier: Black and white image of news microphones held up to someone's face..
Signified: The person is being questioned about something. (Probably something that isn't so good..)

Signifier: Penny - (There is red text that says flat out that Mitt Romney is two faced, so we can't quite ignore that...)
Signified: The penny and the words two faced over the penny are pointing to two things:
When people are two faced, they say one thing to one person and say another thing (with their other face) to another person. The reference to the penny is really a reference to a coin. Some people would trick others by using a two faced coin (with the head of a president on each side) to flip, when making a deal or bet on the flip of a coin. That way, if the person always called heads, the person would always win. It has ONLY negative connotations; it is not good to be two faced.

Rosser Reeves' Political Commercials & The Persuaders

It's funny that war, taxes, skyrocketing prices, and the theme of "change" was used in Eisenhower's ad campaign, just as it is today. The creators of the campaign ads rely less on full pathos, and more on flawed logic. The political commercials seem to use a lot of fallacies of logic in their ads. They use forms of bandwagoning and irrelevant facts to sway people's decision making.

Song Airlines relied purely on pathos, giving no ethical or logical arguments in their main advertisements. Song airlines focused on specifically not making arguments. They focused on visuals, music, and symbolism. These elements were made to create feelings, rather than arguments.

One thing to make note of is the fact that these are completely different videos with completely different purposes. Yes, both sets of videos are created to persuade people. However, one set of videos is geared towards creating lasting customers and primarily persuading people to buy something. The other set was created to persuade citizens of a country to vote for a person. The creators, then, have different things to pull from. Voters' freedom, liberty, and patriotism is focused on as a responsibility. The commercials tend to create a culture out of imagery that focuses on feelings, as well as telling the audience that the audience has a problem (and the creators of the ad have the solution to that problem). Now, of course, there is plenty of overlap, but the mindsets are different for the end result, so the strategies do differ.

As the video The Persuaders talked about, success in advertizing and persuading goes beyond logic. This is why advertizing companies study cults and apply theories of that sociology to exploit peoples' need to belong. In both advertizing to sell and advertizing to vote, the goal seems to be to create loyalty beyond reason. Even if this is not the goal, it is definitely the end result. People have loyalty without thought, and it's scary on any side of the spectrum. We are a society conditioned to avoid the use of our most precious gift: the freedom to think.

Class Discussion - Changing Content Style

"Travis was reading articles on cracked.com, feeling happy and laughing. After all, the site describes itself as 'America's Only Humor Site since 1958.' He read an article called 5 Bad Ideas for Dealing With Bullies You Learned in Movies, and it was a bummer. Read the article and some of the other Cracked content. Do you think the blog site was right in presenting material that was outside of the type of content normally featured? Do you think there would be a better way to manage it? In your opinion, what is the responsibility of a site editorial team?"

Okay, let's start by establishing that there is no good or bad, right or wrong, move in this situation. This means that there is no better or worse thing to do in this situation. We can only bring ideas like good or bad into a situation when we define the parameters and limit the context.

We are all just a bunch of organisms living, and communicating with each other. In the grand scheme of life, this is not that big of a deal, to me. Somebody giving a depressing story and opinion on a comedy based blog just doesn't matter.

If we limit the context to the site getting viewers, I can only talk from my perspective and what I would want. If I go to a website for a person's writing, I would probably like this insight into the person's life and beliefs. If I go to a website for the intended purpose of the site, maybe to learn about video techniques, I would absolutely not want to read something like this.

If we broaden the context and perspective of this, a little, to include the intent of the creator of the website and their satisfaction with the site, it could be a successful move. The creator wanted to talk about a situation that happened to him, and have people listen. From his perspective, it was a success.

It comes down to whose perspective we are looking from, the creator, the audience, or the website/company. In my opinion, the responsibility of a site editorial team would be to define what the goal of the site is, and help each other follow that definition of those guidelines. A better way to manage it would really depend on the creators' intent for what the website should be and what it should function as. This includes personal satisfaction, if they want revenue, how revenue is attained and how it is divided, if they have a target audience that they make content for or if they make content to express themselves and an audience finds them, etc.

Waka Flocka - A Serious Lyricologist

For my video, I chose the contemporary literary genius Waka Flocka, the most lyrically gifted artist on the market. The video does highlight some women. Some Questions that we will look at are those presented by Sut Jhally: How are women shown?, What is their role? Whose desires are being fulfilled?, What is their attitude?, Are they a part of the story, members of the band, dancers, or the audience?

Some of the women highlighted in this video are shown in quick cuts back and forth between the girl and the artist. [This implies that, somehow, Waka FLocka is responsible for or has some connection to hardly clothed women who dance and want you (the audience).] The women are hardly clothed, and what IS covering their bodies is skin tight. Wind is blowing in their hair as they dance and have gangster looks on their faces. The gangster looks are interchanged with confident “I know I’m hot” looks, involving eye contact with the camera, and looking off camera, still with the sense that they know they are being viewed.

Another woman highlighted in this video is a woman in the car with the great Waka Flocka. She is seen doing her makeup in the car, and holding the phallic stick shift with Waka Flocka. This girl is shown looking at Waka Flocka in a very admiring and flirtatious way.

There is one shot showing only the hands, phones, and breasts of women. The women all have their phones out texting people, as if that is a gender role. [Ex: stereotype of women always texting on their phones..]

Something very interesting is the exclusion of women in shots of people having fun, dancing, and being a part of the group. There ARE group shots including women, but that is when the shots are of the whole neighborhood. When it is just a select group of 25 or less, the shot usually only contains males. This shows a distinct separateness of women and men. Regardless of the intercutting and the shots of women with men in shots of the whole neighborhood, there is a distinct separation of women and men in most of the shots in this video.

In conclusion, women are shown as a part of a young male fantasy in this video. They are shown dancing in similar settings as the main singer. The highlighted women of the video all seem to want sex from the great Waka Flocka or the audience (when the dancer makes eye contact with the camera, as if piercing an arrow of true love right through audience members’ souls). The role of the women is to be a sexual figure that is unrelated to the video, other than the deeper implied meanings and connotations. The only thing that seems close to a story, including a woman, is when Waka Flocka is in a car with a girl who is all over him.

Photo from Che Men's Magazine - Complements of adverbox

I chose a men's magazine ad for analysis.

Surface Meaning:

Most of the image is filled by a woman. The woman is wearing a green top, carrying a purse, wearing a white skirt with tabs that have numbers on them with red text that says "My number". The woman seems Caucasian, and has brown hair. It seems that she is walking toward some sort of train station. At the bottom of the image is a logo in red and white with "Men's Magazine" written under it. To the left of the logo, white text reads: "Let us keep dreaming of a better world." A gradient darkens the top of the image.

Advertiser's Intended Meaning

"Let us keep dreaming of a better world" implies that if women were more like objects and their numbers were more easily accessible, the world would be better. The gradient, darkening the top of the image, is not a polarizer (which is commonly used to darken bright skies). The gradient also darkens the top of the girl, leading the viewer's eye to the bottom of the image. The brightest part is where the audience's eye automatically is drawn. The brightest part of this image is the girl's butt, and the red text, on her butt, emphasizes that it is the focal point of the image. This ad is clearly not being serious. They are playing on a stereotype of men. Part of what makes it successful is the fact that the ad is not attempting to be taken seriously. It is an ad for men, making fun of men.

Cultural / Ideological Meaning

The image's focus is on the girl's butt. The camera isn't just focused or angled toward the girl's butt, it was taken at the level of the girl's butt, rather than her face. Also, the girl's face is not even shown, implying that she -- as a person -- is not as important as her assets. Showing bits of her butt and a lot of leg further objectifies women. The girl is wearing a small purse and a bracelet, as if she is going out. [Middle class and upper class men usually pick up girls that are going out, rather than the girl with the big purse who has a life.] This image is full of hair, skin, and butt and asks the audience to keep dreaming of a better world. It's obviously intended for men. Arguably, the only people who would understand this ad are a class of people who would see an ad with tabs like the one that the girl's skirt is made out of. So, this might be a middle and lower class ad. (Maybe the higher class wouldn't know so much about these tabs?)

Favorite Ad Campaign

My favorite ad campaign is Apple's Apple and Itunes campaign. Visually, they stick with the simple aesthetic that drives all of their marketing campaigns. They keep a simple aesthetic, but the effects are actually very complex. The color and contrast [lights and darks] are always well balanced. Every little detail is accounted for, and controlled with precision.

They started with a one color background with a dancer silhoetted. The iPod, in the videos, as well as the headphones and headphone cables were silhoetted as white [good branding].

Technologic

Are You Gonna Be My Girl

Hey Mama

Feel Good Inc.

Jerk It Out

Later, they took things to the next level with gradients, shapes, patterns, and textures [that move to the beat of the music and that are coordinated with the dancers' movements]. The animation eases in and out, and it all looks very controlled. These are, by far, my favorite commercials in this campaign.

Shut Up and Let Me Go

Wolf Train

Mi Swing Es Tropical

They even decided to pair up with artists, featuring their songs. They didn't focus on the ipod, as much, in these videos.

Work That

Viva La Vida

This ad campaign, for their products, has made a universal connotation of music to their brand. To the group of creatives responsible for these videos - if they are one group - my hat is off to you.