Tide Print Advert Flashcards
What was Tide specifically designed for?
Heavy duty, machine cleaning.
When did Procter & Gamble launch Tide?
1946.
What position in America did/does tide still hold?
Brand Leader
Who handled P&G’s accounts through the 1950s?
The D’Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles (DMB&B).
Why did DMB&B’s campaigns for Tide refer explicitly to P&G?
Their market research showed that consumers had high levels of confidence in the company.
Why did DMB&B uniquely use print and radio advertising campaigns concurrently (simultaneously)?
In order to quickly build audience familiarity with the brand.
Both the Print and radio campaigns from DMB&B used what character and ideology?
“housewife” character and ideology that customers “loved” and “adored” tide.
What did the post-WWII consumer boom 1950s include?
Rapid development of new technologies for home, designed to make domestic chores easier.
What linked to the new technologies also developed?
Products such as washing powder for washing machines.
Why did customers need more “copy”?
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.
What can be applied to the composition of the advert?
Z-Line and a rough rule of thirds.
What connote the positive associations the producers want the audience to make with the product?
Bright primary colours.
What are the headings, subheadings and slogans written in and why?
Sans-serif font to connote an informal mode of address.
What else connotes an informal mode of address in the bottom right-hand corner?
The comic strip style image with 2 women “talking” about the product using informal lexis (“sudsing whizz”)
What are the more formal/technical details of the product written in and why?
Serif font connoting the more serious or factual information that the 1, 2, 3 bullet point list includes.
How is suspense created?
Through the enigma of “what women want” (Barthe’s Hermeneutic Code).
How is suspense emphasised?
The tension building use of multiple exclamation marks (Barthe’s Proairetic Code).
How could Barthe’s Semantic code be applied?
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”.
What Hyperbole and Superlatives are used to oppose the connoted superior cleaning power of Tide to its competitors?
“Miracle”
“World’s cleanest wash!”
“World’s whitest wash!”
triple use of “No other…”
What was successful about Tide’s print advert?
The Symbolic Code (Barthes), P&G’s competitor products were rapidly overtaken, Tide brand leader by mid-1950s
What is Lévi-Strauss’ theory?
Binary oppositions whereby texts are constructed through them and its meaning is made by audiences understanding these conflicts.
What reinforces the conceptual binary oppositions between Tide and its commercial rivals?
“Tide gets clothes cleaner than any other washday product you can buy!” and “There’s nothing like Procter and Gamble’s Tide”
What connotes that other inferior products do not offer what tide does?
It’s “unlike soap” gets laundry “whiter… than any soap or washing product known” and is “truly safe”.
what are some interesting intertexts texts?
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.
What views do the inter-texts challenge of women through representations?
Stereotypical views of women being confined to the domestic sphere, needed as “male roles” were vacated as men left to fight.
while men were being targeted for the post-war boom in America’s car industry what were women being targeted by?
they were the primary market for technologies and products being developed for the home.
What stereotypical representations were used in advertising?
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.
What is significant of the hair of the main female?
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.
What is significant of the clothes worn by the main female?
Headband or scarf practical, hayrack connotes she’s focused on work, binary opposed to full make-up she wears.
what shares part of the “shared conceptual road map”
The images of domesticity, these give meaning t the world of the advert.
What does Stuart Hall’s theory of representation say about the comic strip style?
Despite the comic-strip style construction, the scenario represented is familiar to the audience as representation of own lives.
What does David Gauntlet’s theory of identity say about women?
Women represented in advert act as role models of domestic perfection, audience may want to construct own sense of identity against.
How does the advert contradict Van Zoonen’s feminist theory?
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.
What does Bell Hook’s feminist theory argue?
Lighter skinned women are considered more desirable and fit better into western ideology of beauty, advert reinforces by only representing “modern” white women.
What do Paul Gilroy’s theory of ethnicity and post-colonialism say about Tide?
Media texts reinforce colonial power (hooks lighter skinned more desirable) contextually power challenged in US history WWII.
What led to an increased focus by corporations on brands and their unique selling points?
the increasing popularity during the 1950s of supermarkets stocking a wider range of products, more innovative domestic technologies.
How is the audience demographic constructed?
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).
What makes them an opinion leader for the target audience?
The endorsement for Good Housekeeping, reinforces the repeated assertion that Tide is the market-leading product.
What does Stuart hall’s Preferred reading theory say about the advert?
the reassuring lexical fields (“trust”, “truly safe”, “miracle”, “nothing like”) despite being a new product, Tide provides solutions to audience domestic chore needs.
What does the indirect mode of address by the main image of a woman connote?
That her relationship with the product is of prime importance (Tide has what she wants).
What is the dominant or hegemonic encoding of the advert’s primary message (according to Hall)?
That Tide has what “You Women” want.
What does the indirect mode of address of images in top right hand corner/ bottom left link to?
The imperative “remember!” and the use of personal pronouns (“your was”, “you can buy”).
What does George Gerbner’s theory say?
Advertising developed significantly during 1950s, theory made in 1970s explains some of the ways audiences may be influenced by media texts e.g. adverts.
What ideas does the Tide advert aim to cultivate (Gerber Cultivation theory)?
Brand leader, nothing else washes same standard, desirable product for female audience, “miracle suds” innovative for domestic washing market.
What does Gerbner’s cultivation theory say about the repetition of key messages in the advert?
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”).
