Tide

Question 1

Which company owns Tide?

Answer 1

Procter & Gamble (P&G)

Question 2

When did P&G launch Tide?

Answer 2

1946

Question 3

Historical context of Tide?

Answer 3

The post-WWII consumer boom of the 1950s included the rapid development of new technologies for the home, designed to make domestic chores easier.
( Including washing machines)
So, products linked to these new technologies also developed such as, washing powder.

Question 4

What is the cultural context of Tide?

Answer 4

Print adverts from the 1950s conventionally used more copy than we’re used to seeing today. 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. Conventions of print-based advertising are still recognizable in this text

Question 5

Codes and conventions in Tide?

Answer 5

• Z-line and a rough rule of thirds can be applied to its composition.
• Bright, primary colours connote the positive associations the producers want the audience to make with the 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.

Question 6

How is Roland Barthes’ theory relevant for Tide in relation to Media Language? (Semiotics)

Answer 6

•Suspense is created through the enigma of “what women want” (Barthes’ Hermeneutic Code) and emphasized by the tension-building use of multiple exclamation marks (Barthes’ Proairetic Code).
•Barthes’ Semantic Code could be applied to the use of hearts above the main image. The hearts and the woman’s gesture codes have connotations of love and relationships. It’s connoted that this is “what women want” (in addition to clean laundry!).
•Hyperbole and superlatives (“Miracle”, “World’s cleanest wash!”, “World’s whitest wash!”) as well as tripling (“No other…”)are used to oppose the connoted superior cleaning power of Tide to its competitors.
This Symbolic Code (Barthes) was clearly successful as Procter and Gamble’s competitor products were rapidly overtaken, making Tide the brand leader by the mid-1950s.

Question 7

How is Levi-Strauss’ theory relevant for Tide in relation to Media Language? (Structuralism)

Answer 7

• Texts are constructed through the use of binary oppositions, and meaning is made by audiences understanding these conflicts.
• In this text, “Tide gets clothes cleaner than any other washday product you can buy!” and “There’s nothing like Procter and Gamble’s Tide”, reinforces the conceptual binary opposition between Tide and its commercial rivals.
• It’s also “unlike soap,” gets laundry “whiter…than any soap or washing product known” and is “truly safe” – all of which connotes that other, inferior products do not offer what Tide does.

Question 8

Social and political contexts for Tide?

Answer 8

Challenges stereotypical views of women being confined to the domestic sphere, something society needed at the time as traditional ‘male roles’ were vacated as men left to fight.
In the 1950s, while men were being targeted for the post-war boom in America’s car industry, women were the primary market for the technologies and products being developed for the home. In advertising for these types of texts, stereotypical representations of domestic perfection, caring for the family and servitude to the ‘man of the house’ became linked to a more modern need for speed, convenience and a better standard of living than the women experienced in the pre-war era.