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.