analysis (complete)
The main target audience for this advert is women, specifically housewives — they are trying to influence women to buy tide cleaning products as ‘thats what women want’
The advert reflects post war social values, rise in consumerism and gender ideologies of the time
Media Language
Layout and composition
the advert utilises a Z-line layout in its composition, this helps guide the viewers eyes from the title to the large image and then down to the comic strip which forces the audience to view the entire advert instead of focusing on just one section.
This also helps the advert look well put together and less chaotic — designed for quick reading, which is typical for print advert
The central image consists of a woman smiling while hugging an tide box — the tide box is purposely oversized to match the size of the woman’s face to emphasise its importance and dominance
→ gesture code: the gesture code of hugging connotes her love for the product, but also shows her as gentle which is stereotypical of women — it highlights how not only she trusts the product to work but also relies heavily on it to do her cleaning.
→ there is no mode of address: she is looking away from the audience and directly at the product — draws our focus back to the product to highlight its importance
→ the woman is dressed in stereotypical housewife costuming of the 1950’s — the audience at the time would recognise this and automatically realise this product is specifically designed to help housewives, most women at the time would be housewives so this isn’t limiting their audience but targeting a specific demographic — additionally husbands would also be encouraged to buy these products for their wives.
Although both the woman character and the tide product are the main central image, the tide product is the one that sits in the middle of the advert, with all the other visual elements framed around it emphasising its importance.
As a result, although some may argue that the female character functions as the hero in line with Prop’s theory — it can be argued that the Tide product itself is positioned as the true hero of the advert.
While the woman is represented as a damsel in distress, relying on the product to solve her problem.
This reflects the patriarchal ideologies of 1950s but also reinforces the products role as a heroic, problem solving object within the narrative of the advert
The central images also reflects ‘Rosie the riveter’ which is an infamous character from the war advertisement ‘we can do it’ which symbolised women’s strength, resilience and importance.
this icon would be recognisable to the audience — allowing the advert to take symbolism of female strength and empowerment and redirect it back into household and domestic chores.
This makes the domestic role appear skilled and important rather than mundane — also implies that the world needs woman to do house work
This reflects post war patriarchal ideologies, with men returning from the battlefield women were expected to take back the traditional roles of housewife
the costuming of the character — especially the purpose of the hairstyle, short hair with headband on head to push out the hair for work (was commonly used for the functionality of it) is juxtaposed by the full face of make up — this again reflects the patriarchal ideologies of 1950’s especially the beauty standards — despite having to be responsible for all of the manual work in the house women were still expected to be dressed appropriately and glamorous
The lipstick is also an iconic fashion statement popular in the 1950’s
Typography
the headline is bold and capitalised ‘tides got what women want!’ — the use of red is synonymous with Tide as a product but also has connotations of love — women’s love for the product
The tone is informal and enthusiastic which creates a friendly tone — persuading the audience to feel more intimate with the product and want to purchase it
The use of alliteration and the exclamation mark makes it sound appealing and almost factual
The advert has a lot of text — as one of the very first print advert it was important for the company to include information on the product to gain trust
The use of superlatives ‘whitest’ , ‘cleanest’ and ‘brightest’ emphasise its effectiveness but also creates a conceptual binary opposition between tide and its other commercial rivals — no one can do it like tide ‘only tide does all three’
The language is informal and uses personal pronoun to directly address the audience
The repetitive gendered language ‘women’ reinforces the adverts direct address to the female audience and directs women’s responsibility is for domestic labour
This is reinforces with the repeated iconography of the housewife throughout the advert, in fact it is the only character used in the advert which really emphasises their belief that this product is for housewife’s only
The advert is trying to cultivate the audience, which links to Gerbners theory of cultivation, into believing that tide is the brand leader as nothing washes as well as tide — but also that this product is the desired product for the female audience and that they should only use tide
Also links to Butler’s gender theory that gender is a performance, here the advert is performing what they believe women should act and do, in this case it is that they should be in charge of the domestic chores and only that.
reference to Procter & Gamble — the company that produced this advert and Tide. This is a large company that has a good reputation — references to the company would make the new tide product more trusted by the audience and brand it as a high quality product
lack of representation of wider range of woman, the only woman used is white woman — bell hooks feminist theory that only lighter skinned women are considered desirable and fit better into the western ideology of beauty — this advert seems to reinforce that as they only use white woman believing that that would attract the largest audience