Tesco Advertisement Analysis
Advertisement analysis –Tesco’s
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We humans are programmed or born with the inherent desire to satiate our needs. Freud talked of this primitive libido, this innate need of humanity to want (perhaps for self-preservation ultimately.) Freud argued about the importance of the unconscious mind in understanding conscious thought and behaviour .
Advertising has tapped into this primitive human libido or want desire. Advertisers use the unconscious mind to foist implicit and explicit signs and signifiers, applying cultural connotations, employing exclusion as much as inclusion, the advertiser’s intention is to gain a proliferation of positive attention for their product.
I have selected an advertisement made for Tesco’s ‘Fair-trade fortnight’, found in The Guardian’s weekend supplement.
We read adverts as a whole, unconsciously absorbing all of the elements, signs, implicit and explicit, that are designed to work in unison. The mental short-hand we use for deciphering pictures and words to decode them, which is especially pertinent to advertising, immediately informs us that the advertisement is not for pleasure, but for our attention; to encourage us to choose one brand over another, and to consume.
Tesco’s advert implicitly implies nature’s bounty with its visual choice of hessian and wicker staging, the use of cardboard for the pricing tickets suggestive of company ethics imbued with moral high-ground. The foreground is awash with pictorial suggestions of far-off fields and farming, with healthy, working age, seemingly relaxed workers, enjoying their tasks in the sun.
The advert presents what we in the West would consider every day luxuries. The visual signifiers of consumable pleasure: bananas, coffee, chocolate, nuts; these are all food stuffs that cannot be produced in Britain. Freud’s theory of the Id would tap into our want of these luxuries. The future consumer, having seen the product, may acknowledge the want, and convert it into a reality,
1097
We humans are programmed or born with the inherent desire to satiate our needs. Freud talked of this primitive libido, this innate need of humanity to want (perhaps for self-preservation ultimately.) Freud argued about the importance of the unconscious mind in understanding conscious thought and behaviour .
Advertising has tapped into this primitive human libido or want desire. Advertisers use the unconscious mind to foist implicit and explicit signs and signifiers, applying cultural connotations, employing exclusion as much as inclusion, the advertiser’s intention is to gain a proliferation of positive attention for their product.
I have selected an advertisement made for Tesco’s ‘Fair-trade fortnight’, found in The Guardian’s weekend supplement.
We read adverts as a whole, unconsciously absorbing all of the elements, signs, implicit and explicit, that are designed to work in unison. The mental short-hand we use for deciphering pictures and words to decode them, which is especially pertinent to advertising, immediately informs us that the advertisement is not for pleasure, but for our attention; to encourage us to choose one brand over another, and to consume.
Tesco’s advert implicitly implies nature’s bounty with its visual choice of hessian and wicker staging, the use of cardboard for the pricing tickets suggestive of company ethics imbued with moral high-ground. The foreground is awash with pictorial suggestions of far-off fields and farming, with healthy, working age, seemingly relaxed workers, enjoying their tasks in the sun.
The advert presents what we in the West would consider every day luxuries. The visual signifiers of consumable pleasure: bananas, coffee, chocolate, nuts; these are all food stuffs that cannot be produced in Britain. Freud’s theory of the Id would tap into our want of these luxuries. The future consumer, having seen the product, may acknowledge the want, and convert it into a reality,
Bibliography: Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams Gillian Rose, Visual Methodologies Jonathan Bignell, Media semiotics http://www.tescoplc.com/plc/ir/, accessed 20-03-11 8 June 2010 20.13 BST, accessed 10-03-11 , accessed 16-03-11