Persil Free The Kids: Practice Questions Media Language and Audience Positioning

Persil Free The Kids Advertisment

Section A

Q1.) How does media language communicate meaning in the advertisement? 

The advertisement presents two mid-close ups of two male subjects who of which, Levi-Strauss would describe binary opposites in age. This imagery has an emotional effect on the audience as the subject to the left is a convict who is juxtaposed to an innocent child on the right. This emotional connection will create enigmas, as Barthes suggest, and will have the audience further interested in the advertisement.

The mise-en-scene, in terms of the costume, hair and makeup of the convict is symbolic of a criminal. The media producers have drawn upon stereotypes, with gang tattoos, ear piercings and shaved hair to derive negative connotations. You have a similar representation of the child on the right, where high key lighting is used connote innocence. They are both wearing a similar orange costume, this helps draw them together with similarities. Both subjects have neutral facial expressions, both maintaining eye level direct address with the audience to further this enigma of why they are juxtaposed. 

Following Stuart Hall’s theory of encoding and decoding, encoded is the typography separating the subjects. The symbolic text of “Children now spend less time outdoors than a prison inmate” is of a formal register and this statistic would come as shocking to the audience. It provides an explanation to the position the media producers have decided upon, and shows the disequilibrium of how this child could end up like the inmate. 

To further this idea in how the media language communicates this meaning of injustice to innocent children, in the setting, there is a brick wall on one half. It could connote the lack of freedom, but as an iconic reading it’s a boundary. This boundary is not represented in the background for the child, connoting choice of freedom. 

The caption beneath the advertisement anchors the brand into the campaign advertisement. It will help the brand stand with a positive image. The logo is small and positioned in the bottom right hand corner on the child. This could represent ‘Persil’ as the key to freeing this child, therefore making it desirable to the potential target audience. 

Overall media language is used to enforce ideas and beliefs into the advertisement. It will help the advertisement gain audience attention, therefore increasing the exposure of the brand. 

Section B

Q1.) Identify two way in which the media organisations categorise audiences.

Media audience can be categorised by their demographics (i.e. age, gender, religion), or it could be their psychographics (i.e. aspires and mainstreamers). 

Q2.) Explain how producers of adverts position audiences. 

Audiences can be positioned by the media in different ways. By doing this media producers can construct meaning. This is much to the theory of Stuart Hall where producers encode meaning within the text for audiences to deconstruct. Some meanings can be polysemic where the audience is able to create multiple meanings. 

In the case of Tide 1950s advertisement, producers have positioned the audience the audience to aspire to the female target audience. The model is presented with Gauntlet’s theory of identification. The camera is above the female subject, showing a sense of dominance by the product. This could connote the power of the product in the washing machine, but on a more contextual level of the 1950s society could be a representation of how ‘white washes’ are more important and could suggest that women are functional. 

However the female is well made up. The producers have instated Bathes myth of beauty into this advertisement. The perfectionism represented will have personal identity with the audience and they are able to build a rapport with the model. Ultimately this positioning is used to persuade the target audience that they could be like the woman on the advertisement if they purchase tide. 

Another iconic encoded image is cartoon hearts on the advertisement. Producers would hope the audience would engage in the preferred reading of how in love the subject is with the product. After the war, women were repurposed to working in homes. The connotations of the heart show the love, but it might be reference to the loneliness they felt during this time. It’s another direct emotional connection to suggest this product will give them the love and attention they need. This semantic code would help persuade the target audience to purchase the product. 

Tide also tries to engage with the audience symbolic text ‘World’s cleanest wash!’ The typography is sans-serif to deconstruct an informal mode of address. The producers have chosen to use exclamation marks repeatedly throughout the advert. Bandura would suggest that they are trying to encode the message of how great the product is, in order to make the audience buy it. By using the hyperbole of ‘worlds’ and setting their own standard, audiences will be positioned to believe that the product truly is the only one on the market that is suitable for them, because they are fed this belief that their current product is unworthy. Therefore they are likely to be persuade to buy the product from this symbolic message.

Producers have encoded the ‘Good House Keeping’ Logo as a symbolic code. This opinion leader, as suggested by Katz and Lazarfeld. The audience are positioned to believe the credibility and to decode the information present by the advertisement as fact, rather than brand material. This would have been to further the ambition to create a homely brand feel for the target audience to buy into. 

The uses and gratification model by Blumler and Katz suggest that the 1950s audience would have been positioned to create personal identity with the advertisement, so they believe they too can be the ‘ideal good housewife’. Producers have encode this narrative throughout the advertising campaign for Tide in the 1950s. This is similar for most adverts and messages are encoded throughout to persuade the audience to their preferred reading and to act upon call to actions.