Tide Print Context — 1950s

Product context

→ designed for heavy duty machine cleaning (cleaning product)

→ Procter & Gamble (a famous, well trusted consumer goods company) launched tide in 1946 and became leader brand in USA

→ Darcy maisus benton & bowles were the advertising agency that handled the P&G accounts throughout the 1950s

→ intended audience was women specifically typical housewives

→ campaign explicitly refers to P&G because their market research showed that consumers had high levels of confidence in the company

→ DMB&B used print and radio advertising campaigns in order to quickly build audience familiarity with the brand

Social context

→ despite womens new/ improved roles post war - domestic products of the 1950s continued to be aimed at the female audience

→ however the likely target audience would be the increasingly affluent lower middle class women — due to their supposed need for innovative domestic technologies (fast, quick, reliable while tackling other tasks)

→ increasing popularity of the 1950s of supermarkets stocking a wider range of products led to an increased focus by corporations on brands and their USP.

Representation & context

→ advert uses intertextual reference to J.. Howard Miller’s Rosie the riveter (We can do it!) — WW2 advert for the war production committee

This was used to encourage women to start working during the war and therefore could possibly be making women believe this product is their duty like how working during the war was their duty

→ the rep in these ads challenge stereotypical views of women being confined to the domestic sphere — what society needed as traditional male roles were vacated due to war

→ dress code for the main character is of typical house wife of the 1950s

→ short, wavy hair made fashionable by contemporary film stars however the start of the hairstyle was more due to practicality than beauty - less likely to get caught and tangled making it safer at the time while working on farms etc.

→ headband also for practicality (keeps hair out of face) so the women focuses on work

→ binary opposition to the full face of make up (red lipstick)

Contextual Background

→ post WW2 consumer boom in the 1950s — rapid development of new technologies to make domestic chores easier

→ vacuum cleaners, fridge freezers and microwaves all became desirable products for 1950s consumers

→ consumer culture was still in early stages with new developments and new print adverts so they had to include more information as it was a new concept — consumers had to trust the advertisements first before the product.

Considering semiotics

→ suspense is created through the enigma of ‘what women want’ (barthes hermeneutic code) emphasised by the tension of the exclamation mark

→ hearts and woman’s gesture codes have connotations of love and relationship

→ use of hyperbole and superlatives (miracle, worlds cleanest wash) as well as tripling (no other) to oppose the competitors.