Tide Print Advert

Question 1

What was Tide specifically designed for?

Answer 1

Heavy duty, machine cleaning.

Question 2

When did Procter & Gamble launch Tide?

Answer 2

1946.

Question 3

What position in America did/does tide still hold?

Answer 3

Brand Leader

Question 4

Who handled P&G’s accounts through the 1950s?

Answer 4

The D’Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles (DMB&B).

Question 5

Why did DMB&B’s campaigns for Tide refer explicitly to P&G?

Answer 5

Their market research showed that consumers had high levels of confidence in the company.

Question 6

Why did DMB&B uniquely use print and radio advertising campaigns concurrently (simultaneously)?

Answer 6

In order to quickly build audience familiarity with the brand.

Question 7

Both the Print and radio campaigns from DMB&B used what character and ideology?

Answer 7

“housewife” character and ideology that customers “loved” and “adored” tide.

Question 8

What did the post-WWII consumer boom 1950s include?

Answer 8

Rapid development of new technologies for home, designed to make domestic chores easier.

Question 9

What linked to the new technologies also developed?

Answer 9

Products such as washing powder for washing machines.

Question 10

Why did customers need more “copy”?

Answer 10

Consumer culture in early stages of development, so many “new” brands & products potential customers needed more info. And they were less used to advertising marketing and branding.

Question 11

What can be applied to the composition of the advert?

Answer 11

Z-Line and a rough rule of thirds.

Question 12

What connote the positive associations the producers want the audience to make with the product?

Answer 12

Bright primary colours.

Question 13

What are the headings, subheadings and slogans written in and why?

Answer 13

Sans-serif font to connote an informal mode of address.

Question 14

What else connotes an informal mode of address in the bottom right-hand corner?

Answer 14

The comic strip style image with 2 women “talking” about the product using informal lexis (“sudsing whizz”)

Question 15

What are the more formal/technical details of the product written in and why?

Answer 15

Serif font connoting the more serious or factual information that the 1, 2, 3 bullet point list includes.

Question 16

How is suspense created?

Answer 16

Through the enigma of “what women want” (Barthe’s Hermeneutic Code).

Question 17

How is suspense emphasised?

Answer 17

The tension building use of multiple exclamation marks (Barthe’s Proairetic Code).

Question 18

How could Barthe’s Semantic code be applied?

Answer 18

Use of hearts above the main image, hearts and woman’s gesture codes have connotations of love and relationships. Connoted it’s “what women want”.

Question 19

What Hyperbole and Superlatives are used to oppose the connoted superior cleaning power of Tide to its competitors?

Answer 19

“Miracle”
“World’s cleanest wash!”
“World’s whitest wash!”
triple use of “No other…”

Question 20

What was successful about Tide’s print advert?

Answer 20

The Symbolic Code (Barthes), P&G’s competitor products were rapidly overtaken, Tide brand leader by mid-1950s

Question 21

What is Lévi-Strauss’ theory?

Answer 21

Binary oppositions whereby texts are constructed through them and its meaning is made by audiences understanding these conflicts.

Question 22

What reinforces the conceptual binary oppositions between Tide and its commercial rivals?

Answer 22

“Tide gets clothes cleaner than any other washday product you can buy!” and “There’s nothing like Procter and Gamble’s Tide”

Question 23

What connotes that other inferior products do not offer what tide does?

Answer 23

It’s “unlike soap” gets laundry “whiter… than any soap or washing product known” and is “truly safe”.

Question 24

what are some interesting intertexts texts?

Answer 24

WWII adverts for Women’s Land Army, J.Howard Miller’s Rosie The Riveter - We Can Do It! advert for the war production Co-Ordinating Committee.

Question 25

What views do the inter-texts challenge of women through representations?

Answer 25

Stereotypical views of women being confined to the domestic sphere, needed as “male roles” were vacated as men left to fight.

Question 26

while men were being targeted for the post-war boom in America’s car industry what were women being targeted by?

Answer 26

they were the primary market for technologies and products being developed for the home.

Question 27

What stereotypical representations were used in advertising?

Answer 27

Domestic perfection, caring for the family and servitude to the “man of the house” linked to a modern need for speed, convenience and better standard of living than what women experienced pre-war.

Question 28

What is significant of the hair of the main female?

Answer 28

Stereotypical 1950s hairstyle, incorporating waves, curls etc made fashionable film stars Veronica Lake Betty Grable etc. short hair practice, machinery farms or factories during WWII.

Question 29

What is significant of the clothes worn by the main female?

Answer 29

Headband or scarf practical, hayrack connotes she’s focused on work, binary opposed to full make-up she wears.

Question 30

what shares part of the “shared conceptual road map”

Answer 30

The images of domesticity, these give meaning t the world of the advert.

Question 31

What does Stuart Hall’s theory of representation say about the comic strip style?

Answer 31

Despite the comic-strip style construction, the scenario represented is familiar to the audience as representation of own lives.

Question 32

What does David Gauntlet’s theory of identity say about women?

Answer 32

Women represented in advert act as role models of domestic perfection, audience may want to construct own sense of identity against.

Question 33

How does the advert contradict Van Zoonen’s feminist theory?

Answer 33

Their role socially and politically may have changed after post-war, contradicts: her theory that media contribute to social change representing women in non-traditional roles using non-sexist language.

Question 34

What does Bell Hook’s feminist theory argue?

Answer 34

Lighter skinned women are considered more desirable and fit better into western ideology of beauty, advert reinforces by only representing “modern” white women.

Question 35

What do Paul Gilroy’s theory of ethnicity and post-colonialism say about Tide?

Answer 35

Media texts reinforce colonial power (hooks lighter skinned more desirable) contextually power challenged in US history WWII.

Question 36

What led to an increased focus by corporations on brands and their unique selling points?

Answer 36

the increasing popularity during the 1950s of supermarkets stocking a wider range of products, more innovative domestic technologies.

Question 37

How is the audience demographic constructed?

Answer 37

through advert’s use of women who audience might personally indetify (uses and gratification theory), young women newly married, young families (connotations of this created y male and children clothing on washing lines).

Question 38

What makes them an opinion leader for the target audience?

Answer 38

The endorsement for Good Housekeeping, reinforces the repeated assertion that Tide is the market-leading product.

Question 39

What does Stuart hall’s Preferred reading theory say about the advert?

Answer 39

the reassuring lexical fields (“trust”, “truly safe”, “miracle”, “nothing like”) despite being a new product, Tide provides solutions to audience domestic chore needs.

Question 40

What does the indirect mode of address by the main image of a woman connote?

Answer 40

That her relationship with the product is of prime importance (Tide has what she wants).

Question 41

What is the dominant or hegemonic encoding of the advert’s primary message (according to Hall)?

Answer 41

That Tide has what “You Women” want.

Question 42

What does the indirect mode of address of images in top right hand corner/ bottom left link to?

Answer 42

The imperative “remember!” and the use of personal pronouns (“your was”, “you can buy”).

Question 43

What does George Gerbner’s theory say?

Answer 43

Advertising developed significantly during 1950s, theory made in 1970s explains some of the ways audiences may be influenced by media texts e.g. adverts.

Question 44

What ideas does the Tide advert aim to cultivate (Gerber Cultivation theory)?

Answer 44

Brand leader, nothing else washes same standard, desirable product for female audience, “miracle suds” innovative for domestic washing market.

Question 45

What does Gerbner’s cultivation theory say about the repetition of key messages in the advert?

Answer 45

Causes audiences to increasingly align their own ideologies with them (positively creating a product that “goes into more American homes than any other washday product”).