A comparison of how women have been represented in fragrance advertisements from 1920s, 1990s and 2011.

 

     (MAVIS Vivaudou 1920s Print Ad.)

      The focus of the representation is on the woman performing a pose like a dancer. This is observed from the fact that the woman is being held up by the character dressed as a pierrot and that the woman represented is stretching out her arms the same way a ballet dancer would. This is a theatrical illustration in a way that the use of this fragrance allows women to be a part of a "show" the same way the represented woman would. The woman is dressed in a bright gold skirt which is reflecting the delicacy in her fashion and its wideness is imaging the woman like a swan along with her highly stretched arms. Her shoes match the golden design of the skirt and its unique and sophisticated design is an impressive figuration of the Art Nouveau style. Her theatrical illustration in this advert matches the way she is dressed and it's a major cause the woman is 'irresistible' as the advert suggests.

      We also observe the oriental representation in the architectural format of the building surrounding the woman. The main focus of this advert from the presentation of an oriental style is a message of co-existence with the European environment around it. What this would refer to is the fact that such contrasting position is presenting an opportunity for the users of this fragrance to experience the traditional East Asian styles along with the use. Possibly and most likely, this would be a crucial attraction to women who have placed their interests in the Oriental scent. The shadows that cover the arc proves to the observers that the print advert is not just a print, but rather provides a feeling that we are actually in the midst of the experience of the orient. The architect makes a perfect parallel to the women's skirt and doesn't give us the feeling that the co-existence of the Oriental feeling along with an European one is awkward. 

( Red for Men 1990s Print Ad. ) 

     My second choice, Red for Men, forms a great contrast to Vivaudou’s Mavis advertisement in its representation of women. Where the female in Mavis is considered the epitome of feminity in her dainty and balletic pose, the female in the Red for Men advert is featured as almost masculinised in the fact that she is taking a predatory and an assertive pose. This is derived from the motion her body is taking such as grasping the man’s hair as if to control him and taking the higher stance in their relationship. Whilst in the Mavis advert, the woman was presented more as a controlled figure in contrast to the man in the pier rot outfit, the Red for Men advert presents her as the person in command.

     Also, as the Mavis advert shows an idealised romantic image of the woman, the Red for Men portrays a different image. In the Mavis one, it has been stated that the whole atmosphere of the advert is giving us a theatrical feeling due to the woman's stance and the art nouveau style of her clothing and surroundings, as if by using the fragrance a woman would feel they were being involved in a fantasy world. However, Reds for Men shows a direct contrast. The woman in the advert is of an earthly image with her short hair and strong possessive stance. She is somewhat taking the image of a man in the way she is portrayed as a strong figure and she shows a great want showing a unique side of the fragrance’s attraction. 

     Furthermore, the woman represented in Reds for Men  is significant in the fact that she is undressed along with the man to disperse sexuality and a sense of joyfulness. An achievement of this illustration is to indoctrinate the observers that they are at a beach or a summer holiday sort of location. This convinces people in a sense that, 'If fun is what you are looking for, this fragrance will do the job'. Not only does being undressed give you the feeling of enjoyment and interest, but this is also a good way of presenting sexuality and grasping extreme awareness, leading to the purchase of the fragrance. Such illustration is not noticed from the Mavis Vivaudou print advert, and this is from the fact that the timeline of 1920s focuses on theatrical attraction rather than natural sexuality. 

    ( Miss Dior Cherie, Moving image Ad. 2011 ) 

    The third advert that I chose is Miss Dior Cherie. This advert concentrates more on the representation of freedom from being dependant on anyone to make her happy. This is much like a post-feminist assertion of independence that women will experience unlike the first and second advert which describes the attraction the user might experience from it. The advert has a 'main colour' of pink to show an elegant and soft image of French sophistication. From the woman's clothings to the backgrounds of the scene, the woman is portrayed as if she is in her own world that was created for her to enjoy. The information that is passed on from the advert is that the fragrance allows the user to enjoy life the way the model in the advert does. This is a very well portrayed engagement with the busy lifestyles of today and creates another sense of attraction for women to be interested in. 

     The woman in the advert carries a free spirit allowing her to carry out what she desires to do. From the start to the end of the advert, every second illustrates the open life that the woman is enjoying. For example, in the scene where the woman is walking across the bridge, we realise that she has an elegant smile over her face and her posture represents her freedom of belonging to where she is. As the advert moves on, she designs her own dress, rides a bike along the city, and tries out what she wants to. This acts as an incentive for people with busy lives to realise the message that life is there to enjoy. She never loses her smile throughout the advert and this is a sign of her bliss and happiness.

    

      Furthermore, the Miss Dior Cherie advert has the main theme colour of pink which is a representation of girlish and daintiness. Throughout the advert, numerous objects and background settings carry the colour of pink which is a unique characteristic that this fragrance wants to represent. What the advert wants to conclude from the use of such a bright yet soft colour is the presentation of a dainty image the user will contain. This characteristic can be compared to the Mavis Vivaudou which represents the woman as dainty from the use of her pose as a ballet dancer as well. This proves that the Miss Dior Cherie is trying to portray the woman in  an elegant yet old-fashioned way which shows a highly contrast to representations from the 1990s such as the Reds for Men print advertisement. 

     Additionally, the Miss Dior Cherie advert focuses on the dream and fantasy that the user will experience from the fragrance. All the events in the advert not only show the image of a, ‘free woman’ but also, the representation of a woman in her fantasy world. The advert shows scenes of the woman riding her bike unreservedly inside the city, meeting the dream man of her life, and flying over the city of Paris on a bundle of colourful balloons. Nothing in her world can disturb her from her freedom and allows her to do whatever she desires. This can be compared to the first two print adverts which both represent the women as full of freedom and fantasy. Especially in the Mavis Vivaudou advert, the theatrical representation is a comparison factor to the Miss Dior Cherie woman and her fantasy dream. Even though the city is full of cars and is clearly a busy background, the woman rides freely with a graceful smile on her face. One of the most significant events in the advert is her confrontation with the dream man of her life. This is because after she sprays the Miss Dior Cherie perfume on herself, the man she has dreamed of arbitrarily appears on the streets with a warm smile directed at her. The scene that comes up next shows the two sharing deep love with each other in an elegant background with bright sunshine and dazzling colours. The advert meets the end by showing the woman flying high above the city of Paris with a bundle of balloons. This concludes that freedom and fantasy are rewarded to the user of the fragrance and in a very splendid manner.                

     

  

       

Adverts for my Essay

  

The adverts are focused on the analysis of women portrayal over time. (1920s, 1990s 2011)

Mavis > Oriental, Art Nouveau, Theatrical, French sophistication   

Red> Man is the central focus but the representation of the woman as equally powerful is a sign of the 1990s, In mid shot they are naked on a beach, pure sex(animal attraction) 

Coca Cola Advert Analysis

    During the media lesson last week, we looked at three different coke TV adverts, the, 'Hilltop campaign', 'I wish', and the, 'Northern Lights' advert. We then had to analyse the first two adverts for our prepwork and we found that each one had different meanings to it, and were broadcast in different ways around the world.

    The, 'Hilltop Campaign' sends a message to the audience about the unity of all ethnicity and the harmony of all people. In the advert, young people from all around the globe has gathered on top of a hill, and sings the song, 'I want to teach the world to sing' with a few changed lyrics. The people in the advert hold coke bottles from their countries and use it to look like a microphone. The advert is very symbolic in a way that not only coke is a famous brand all around the world, but that coke can create a unity between people from different cultural backgrounds. The lyrics in the song also has meanings to it. "I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony" is the most symbolic verse. Harmony in this case can be understood in two meanings. The first meaning would be people singing together, which in this case we can observe in the advert. The second meaning is more important, and this also means the unity between people, once again emphasizing the campaign's main messages. This advert was created by Bill Backer, the creative director of the coke company after a plane was delayed to Heathrow airport due to heavy fog. Passengers were angry about the situation but the next day, they were enjoying the people around and were drinking cokes. This gave him the initiative for the campaign and had a clear message aimed at everyone.

     The, 'I wish' advert's message is in a similar direction with the hilltop campaign. The message of the, 'I wish' advert is that coke has no discrimination and is a sharing company. In the advert, the background is America, with people from different ethnicity in the background. An African-american woman is handing out coke to people she meets on the street and sings a song with the lyrics,

  "I wish I could share all the love that's in my heart
Remove all the bars that keep us apart
I wish I could say all the things that I should say
Say em loud, say em clear, for the whole round world to hear
I wish I could give like I'm longin to give
I wish I could live like I'm longin to live
I wish I could do all the things that I can do
And though I'm way overdue, I'd be startin anew

In comparison to the advert, we see that coke is compared to love and she wants to give out love to people. The reason the woman giving out coke is African-american is not because of a racial discriminative purpose but rather, to illustrate the clear background of the advert, and to show that coke has no separated zones for different backgrounds. Both of these adverts show coke's side of view as a fair and loving company and this was coke's main focus in the 1970s, not far from racial tensions, not only in America, but across the world. The Coca Cola company used this fact as their weapon and saw great success upon it.

     Also in the advert, we can see that there is no discrimination from the people in the background. The most symbolic people is the black and white couple in the advert towards the end, and from the assumption that this was America, coke had a clever attempt.

Levi's changing attitudes towards men in adverts < 1985 ~ >

     In media, we had to choose a topic to do for our prep work and I was interested the changing attitudes of Levi's since 1985 in TV adverts. The reason the topic's starting point is 1985 is because of the advert that was broadcast in 1985. The Levi's 501 advert featuring Nick Kamen features him as a perfected being. The background of the advert is at a laundrette, and Nick Kamen walks in and takes off all his clothes and puts in in the washing machine. Everyone looks at him because he is good looking, and at this time, the adverts from Levi's featured men in a completely different league than women. The advert below is the 1985 Levi's 501 advert.

In the 1990s, Levi's adverts still mainly focused on portraying men's bodies as the main theme of adverts. The creek advert is a good example. The Levi's 501 creek advert starts off with a group of 4 people in very traditional clothes and seems at first that the advert's main focus is on women. After the group settles to have a light snack, the two girls that were part of the group run off together to a creek near where they were. There they find a man bathing in the waters of the creek 'looking' naked. One girl finds a pair of jeans and hides it so that the man can't take it on when he comes out. As in the 1985 advert, the man is portrayed as very attractive and turns out to be the theme of the advert. Surprisingly, when he comes out, he has jeans out and the girls wonder who's jeans the one they stole are from. The next scene of the advert shows an old man searching for his jeans in the creek which makes the advert entertaining at the end. We can see that the main focus on men in the adverts haven't changed that much but has changed in a way where both men and women are used in the advert to make a storyline. The creek advert is shown below.

In 2002, a very symbolic advert is released. This advert using Jennifer Love Hewitt in it, was banned because of the way she was illustrated. From the word banned, very explicit content is expected but that thought is misdirected. The advert is a simple advert just portraying the women in a way never done before. She is the powerful and men just look at her without any control over her and just in a powerless way. Her walking style represents that of a soldier, she walks very firmly as if she's trying to say, "I am the most powerful". This advert was not banned because of it's content but because of the new way that Levi's presented a woman in it. From 1985, men were portrayed as the greatest being in the advert, but this goes along the opposite road. Directors of the time found this as unacceptable and not suitable for an advert and that's why it was banned. However, for a fact, this was just a rare case where the advert was banned and still, women were portrayed powerless in front of men in many other adverts. Still, time was changing, and the illustration of different genders was starting to show it's point in the adverts.

The last advert I'm going to present is the Go Forth advert presented in 2010. By 2010, sexual discrimination had almost completely disappeared in not only Levi's adverts but other adverts as well. This advert is portraying more of a free image of both men and women. They do what they want to do and feels excitement in it. It shows certain activities that people enjoy as hobbies and shows not a single piece of discrimination within the advert. Women will be what they will be, and the same goes for men. Levi's wasn't trying to attract a certain gender by portraying the other gender in an attractive way, but rather presented a message saying that Levi's allows you to do what you want to do freely.

Levi's is a sensitive brand when it gets to adverts, they mostly try to get customers by appealing them with a good looking image. From 1985, men were dominant over everything because of a non sensible stereotype that existed. Women were the same from the start but people just didn't notice it. If we look at how adverts have changed, the past ones all showed good images of men to attract men in a way that they could be like the person in the advert, and women, just for the comfort of it. This is changing as time passes. Not only in the advertising industry of Levi's but all the other adverts as well. These days more adverts try to present women in the way they did with men in the past, and it is a very positive example of a change.

The ASA website

     In class, we were already informed of the ASA website which is the Advertising Standards Authority. They control any inappropriate adverts that might be of harm to any person, and regulates any adverts that people find discriminative. Our prep was to explore the website and find an interesting part of the website and it's workings.

     Something I found interesting was a tab called, 'Parent's page'. This tab was created so that parents or guardians of a child can easily access the ASA and give complaints or ideas about what type of adverts are allowed for children and stop anything inappropriate. This page had a direct relationship with the regulations page and was a compulsory part of the website.

     The ASA classifies anybody under the age of 16 as a child, and classifies any form of media adverts as their regulation range. This includes all the adverts such as TV, radios, websites, newspapers, magazines, E-mails, texts, and direct mails. The tab was holding a parents debate forum in order to develop the website which I found very clever.

     The tab also had a space where all the information of child security websites were written. This includes The Family and Parenting Institute, and The Child's Society. Just in case all the complaints of parents are not heard, the ASA has posted website URLs so that parents can easily find where to ask for protection of their child and improve on the advertisment system that exists.

THE ADVERTISING STANDARDS AUTHORITY

In today's lesson we looked at the website for the ASA which regulates the contents of advertising. We looked at several case studies to see what complaints to the ASA were based on and what the ASA's adjudication had been. 

The TV advert for 'Coors Light' was accused of breaching two codes: racism and appealing to the audiences under the age of 18. We viewed the advert and discussed the adjudication: the advert was cleared of breaching the first code but accused of breaching the second code.

CONTRASTING TV ADVERTS: GIBBS SR & CADBURY

     In class, we watched two contrasting TV adverts,the ' Gibbs SR ' TV advert from the 1950s and ' Cadbury's ' TV advert from the 1990s. Gibbs SR featured a male scientist who gives a narration to his audience about the product. On the other hand, Cadbury's was playful and entertaining, with an upbeat soundtrack along with the story of a photographer who is working on a fashion photoshoot but who keeps seeing Cadbury's chocolate when he tries to make a shot.

The Cadbury's chocolate advert was in black and white, but the Cadbury's was full colour and used the brand's main colours to dress both the people and as the final screen colour.

The Gibbs SR advert focussed more on the proven scientific benefits of using the toothpaste. This was seen in the charts provided within the advert where the narrator explains how we need to keep our gums healthy for the mouth to be happy and that the toothpaste can do the work.


Cadbury's, on the other hand, had a story included in the advert about a photographer trying to be awarded in a photo contest and succeeds by handing in the photo of Cadbury's colours.
The toothpaste advert was serious, with only scientific facts that prove the benefits of the toothpaste and some animation that makes people feel more clean and cool.


However, the chocolate advert was more of a visual advert, as seen in the animations used to make the product look more attractive to others and used their main colours to elaborate on their product.


Both adverts used animation, the Gibbs SR used the toothbrush and the toothpaste in the ice and ice covering the toothpaste at the end in order to emphasise that the toothpaste gives you a cool feeling after you brush whilst also cleaning your gum.
whereas the Cadbury's used a person symbolising the product in order to show both how the chocolate is made and still continue with the narrative part of the advert.


Sound was used differently too. Gibbs SR had more of a classical old fashioned tune which was very soft so we can hear it but not concentrate on it. The advert wanted to emphasise how good the toothpaste's effect was and the music wasn't of very much importance. However, Cadbury's had an exciting tune that makes the advert interesting and people want to continue on watching it until the end. Sound is effective in how the advert is portrayed to the viewers and both adverts used it effectively.

Why did the 1998 Lucozade advert feature Lara Croft?

    The Lucozade advert of 1998 features the character Lara Croft from the video game series, 'Tomb Raider'. The lucozade drink which was first designed for the ill in hospitals, rebranded into a energy drink for people that engage in sporting activities. Due to this fact, the firm needed an advertising character that symbolises strength and energy, and that came to be Lara Croft.   NOT FINISHED

My Prezi

http://prezi.com/dnlhhlvuboei/edit/#6_381424

British Airways

British Airlines Advertisement Essay

Garry Na

The Aviators, British Airways (television, 2011)

      In this essay I am analysing The Aviators campaign  which is very distinctive as its focus is on tradition, dedication and service, which sets it apart for other current campaigns such as the Virgin Airways campaign, whose focus is more on the ‘trolley dolly’ representation of staff. This message is delivered through the slogan “To fly, to serve”, words engraved on the emblem of British Airlines.

      The aviator advertisement created by the BA is releasing a certain message in an unbelievably clever way. The major aim of any airline company would be to attract people to be passengers on their aircrafts. The question is who can do better at it? An advertisement is usually seen without knowledge of how the advert was created. This advert was created with focus on the representation of BA’s staff. Rather than using someone famous to attract minor interest in the company, by using the staff in the airline company as part of the advert, it shows a very honest image of the company and the representation of the airline staffs in the advertisement.

      The aviator advert from the BA was the first major airline company to start a campaign on facebook, the largest social networking site in the world. This had an incredible effect on people’s interest as it was a fundamental way in getting to know certain companies easily. The advertisement is created in a timeline where their company evolves and evolves from just a small number of cadets flying to one of the greatest airlines in the world. The narration in the advert converts their service into words and produces trust in observers’ minds.

      The costumes that come up in the advert changes as the aircrafts change into newer versions. This is not just saying that the airline company is very traditional, but that the value and the traditon that he company treat as important hasn't changed. Also, as the airplanes develops, the weather and the climate changes from dark and cold to bright and warm. If we look at the weather in the first scene where there were only a few men taking off, leaving behind their families, thunder roars and it is very dark. Also, the people’s clothes are thick and are suitable for cold weather. However, as time passes, we can infer that the climate goes warmer by looking at people’s clothes, and that the background has become brighter. The last scene shows the aircrafts of BA soaring above the clouds, and this is the brightest background in the advert.

      Another significant part is that both the staff and the extras that come out in the advert have suitable clothes for that timeline. For example, if we take a close look at the family seeing the pilot off, or the couple that is heading to the airplane in the second scene, we realize they have traditional clothes on from the twentieth century, which is very well analyzed from the making so that the observers of the advert can understand the development of the company a lot better. Their brilliance of the campaign and the making places BA on the top.    

Airline Advertisements

We are going to observe the changes that have been made in the advertising side of airlines.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hbib-A6NpW8  << This is a great advertisement from Virgin Atlantic. The values that the advert is sending is quite simple. In the advert, it actually shows you the real inside of the planes that are being flewn in Virgin Atlantic. It is a very clean environment with a very friendly staff. The image itself is exaggerated in a positive way to attract the views of the future passengers. In it, it also shows the meals and desserts served in the airlines and tries to attract public views. Have a go, see if you feel the same. ^^

Creating my blog

 Hello, I am a year 10 student at Claremont Fan Court School in Esher. For my media GCSE, I face many tasks that will help me later on in my career disregarding whatever it should turn out to be. One of my primary tasks was to create this blog. I had to sign my email account to create it and had to design it in the design templates section. I was to add others in my media classes and create a new post about the creation of this blog. It is a pleasure to be in the class and I enjoy having to do what I do.