Tide: Audience

Question 1

Target audience of Tide

Answer 1

• White, American or British women, aged 18-40, Married with children, who stayed at home,and aspired to have the perfect lifestyle.

Question 2

Secondary audience

Answer 2

• Men/Husbands of these wives, providing for them.

Question 3

How are the target audience appealed to in the advert?

Tide

Answer 3

• Use of beautifully illustrated women would appeal to women aspiring to a better life.
• Use of female specific words which targets a female audience (‘Tide’s got what women want’ - Mode of address)
• Multiple use of direct address, e.g. ‘you’ engages audiences and speaks directly to them. (Synthetic Personalisation)
• Use of recognisable intertextual war references would engage post war audiences (art style).

Question 4

Identifying target audience in Tide

women

Answer 4

• Costume and hairstyles in the advert were popular and fashionable with audiences at the time. (e.g. the woman’s curls and headscarf mimics famous filmstars of the time such as Betty Grable and Veronica Lake).
• The clothes on the washing line indicate that the target audience is married women with children. (Male clothing and chilldren’s clothing hang on the washing line.)

Question 5

Identifying the target audience in Tide.

Period-typical consumerism

Answer 5

• Featuring popular new technologies would have engaged audiences who wanted to be overtly affluent and trendy.
• Brand reliability: There is a small stamp on the advert which says ‘Guaranteed by Good Housekeeping.’ Endorsements by popular brands like ‘Good Housekeeping would have appealed to audiences wanting quality and reliability.

Question 6

Good Housekeeping

Answer 6

• Beauty, health, food, home and travel magazine aimed at women 40+.
• Aimed at women who are primarily based in the home.
• ‘Good Housekeeping’ was seen as quite an aspirational opinion leader for audiences, it was a magazine that was very well respected by women of this particular demographic.

Question 7

Identifying the target audience for Tide.

Product superiority

Answer 7

• Use of hyperbole, and binary opposites (Tide vs all other washday products) helps audiences to see Tide as magical and great. This encourages a ‘preferred reading’ (Stuary Hall’s Reception Theory)

Question 8

Relevant Theory: Stuart Hall’s Reception Theory

Answer 8

• Audiences may ‘read’ the product in different ways depending on their gender, class, historical time period, marital status, sexuality etc.
• Preferred reading: Tide is a best product in the market.
• Negotiated and Oppositional: Some women with feminist ideas may have thought the advert was old-fashioned and sexist, dismissing the narrative that all women are Housewives loving domestic chores.
• Additionally, some women may have felt that the advert oversimplyfied their lives. (Particularly modern audiences).

Question 9

Relevant Theory: George Gerbner Cultivation Theory

Answer 9

• Advertising developed significantly during the 1950s.
• Many women would have been exposed to a lot of adverts like this in the 1950s and so the effects of the representations of women enjoying housework and perfect lifestyles in this advert may have ‘cultivated’ over time.
• Repeated use of media language throughout the advert might be designed to cultivate ideas about Tide. There are three separate bullet points where the producers reiterate over and over again that this product is the ‘cleanest’ wash, the whitest wash. Additionally: “miracle suds.” religious connotations.
• There is lots of repetition within the advert about how Tide is exactly what women want this is giving the audience , giving women what they desire and so repeated messages throughout the advert hopefully from Procter and Gamble’s point of view are going to cultivate the idea in the audiences mind that Tide is the best product on the market.

Question 10

Other Tide adverts

Answer 10

• The persuasiveness/ effects of the Tide advert may have been cultivated over time if an audience had seen lots of other Tide adverts.
• Enforces the idea with the audience that Tide was the greatest product on the market.

Question 11

Relevant Theory: Uses & Gratifications Theory

Answer 11

• Entertainment: The novelty of advertisment was still around in the 1950s, so many audiences would have liked to look at adverts and been entertained by the brigght colours, bold images and fun wording. For example, the colloquial language: ‘Tide’s a sudsing whizz even in the hardest water.’ –> the cartoon strip itself
• Information: Some audiences might have found the advert useful to get information about Tide. A lot people did not have televisions at this point so adverts like Tide were the only viable source.
• Escape: Some womeen may have enjoyed the escapist, aspirational nature of the advert, dreaming of their own perfect home life.
• Identification: Some Women may have identfiied with the people/lifestyles in the advert.