The Interpretation of Advertising—The Perspective of the Consumer

If the meaning of images and texts were simply transparent, there would be little reason to
ask: What does this mean? Instead, we struggle to understand ancient inscriptions, sacred
texts, modern novels, films, and even statements made in conversation. Also, perplexing
are visual images: Neolithic cave paintings, frescoes from the Italian Renaissance,
children’s drawings, art from other cultures, and the latest television commercials. 
In future years, it may well be the case that advertisements from the 19th, 20th, and 21st
centuries will grace the walls of museums of art. Although it is interesting to know what
those who create ads intend, such information is seldom available to consumers. More
commonly, ads simply appear on TV, in magazines, and on billboards, and leave
consumers to make what they will of them on their own. Corporations and their advertising
agents, of course, hope that consumers will “get” their intended messages, and they often
conduct research to determine how consumers interpret particular ads. However, there is
often slippage between consumers’ understandings of ads and what corporations intend to
communicate.
Advertising is everywhere—in virtually all print media and television, in motion pictures,
on clothes, in the streets, and even in schools. Although there are occasional complaints
about the excessiveness of advertising, society’s general response is passivity.  Consumers
today are so savvy about advertising that it is almost as if the word “Advertisement”
automatically pops up on every single advertising message. Advertising is tolerated, even if
it is not appreciated. Consumers understand that its primary purpose is to promote goods
and services for sale and consumption. The secondary messages—about family, race, social
class, gender, values, and so on—tend to be passed over with only occasional commentary.
Few people think of advertisements as a powerful teacher of role models, aspirations,
relationships, citizenship, and happiness, although many such additional messages are
conveyed in ads.
What then do consumers think advertising means? Many claim to be uninfluenced by it,
although it is doubtful that this is really true. Some talk about liking or hating ads or finding
them silly or funny. Others can summarize a commercial but fail to remember which brand
was being advertised. In this case, the ads function generically rather than promoting
specific brands.
For the most part, consumers do not take ads very seriously. Since the earliest TV
commercials, consumers have often tried to avoid them by going out of the room or turning
their attention to another activity. The usual strategy for interpreting ads employed by
consumers is to “let them speak on their own.” This means largely taking ads at face value.
This is what the producers of ads hope the audience will do, and it is also their hope that the
intended message is straightforward and interesting enough for this to happen. 
There are other issues associated with the interpretation of art that are also relevant to
understanding advertisements:
 a) Creating emotional bonds with consumers
Many ads attempt to create bonds of shared emotion between advertisers and consumers.
Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in the recent American Airlines campaign
claiming, “We know why you fly.” Various ads give reasons like “Grandma’s cobbler” and
“Seeing your niece turn five years old.” These ads attempt to show consumers that
American Airlines understands their motives for flying. In doing this, the ads attempt to
forge an emotional and aesthetic bond between corporation and consumer.
b) Understanding the larger narrative within which the advertising image belongs
Ads—whether they are single images or little movies—represent moments in the larger
narratives of consumers’ lives. For example, an ad for, say, a vacation or a new car places it
in the context of a narrative about work, play, family, leisure, happiness, and so on. If one
were to collect such ads and arrange them into a life story, the narrative would highlight
hard work, success, rewards, family life, time for relaxation, and so on. Specific ads
become illustrations of particular moments in this larger story about life. Just as important
are the narratives that are absent in advertising representations. It is uncommon, for
example, to find ads that tell the story of the life cycle of commodities, from their
production through distribution and purchasing to consumption. Although ads promote
commodities, the stories they tell are about consumers and the role that commodities play
in their lives. 
c) The context in which the image was produced
Understanding that a company is banking everything on a new product, or that the TV
networks censored several earlier versions of a commercial, or that a commercial was
filmed in such-and-such a place does add to a consumer’s interest, but this information is
not usually a part of the interpretive process. Rather, consumers often must determine what
ads are saying to them in the absence of such details.
d) The manipulation of meaning
Art invariably works to produce certain meanings and to exclude others. So too does
advertising. Camera angles, cropped photographs, carefully considered perspectives, and
other technical aspects shape and influence meaning. But no amount of technical
manipulation can change a basic fact about the meaning of ads—namely, an ad must
always be understood to tell a positive, beneficial story about the advertised product. A
picture of a middle-aged man giving a glass of juice to a small child must be interpreted in
a product-supportive way. It must be understood to represent a father (or other close
relative) giving a healthy drink to a child for which he cares. It simply would not do to
understand such an image as representing a pedophile giving drugs to a child. There are
specific boundaries within which ads must be interpreted, and this particular rule must be
respected in interpreting the meaning of all ads. Within these bounds, images are
manipulated for maximum positivity. For example, strawberries are made to look fresher
and sweeter, models younger and more attractive, water bluer, and clouds whiter. Just as
there are boundaries as to what an ad can mean, there is also the general understanding that
images are, as a matter of course, manipulated in ways that enhance them.
e) The depiction of feelings, relationships, and other non-narrative factors
Sometimes advertising departs from its usual world of narrative representation to link
advertised products to emotional states. Music, motion, color, and other features are
sometimes used in an attempt to evoke attitudes and feelings in consumers rather than to
tell specific stories. As difficult to accomplish in advertising as it is in art, non-narrative ads
communicate messages about products and the emotional states they seek to invoke. 
The culture of symbolic representations
Ads draw heavily on cultural symbols, especially those
whose meanings are widely shared within a society. An
apple can evoke the Garden of Eden and Eve specifically.
Red, white, and blue colors in combination evoke
patriotism. A mortarboard signifies education. And on it
goes. Sometimes ads themselves create new symbols that
enter the culture. Whether symbols have been around for a
while or are of more recent origin, ads depend heavily on
shared symbolic representations. As ads seek to operate
globally, they must attend to possibilities that colors,
gestures, and other symbols do not mean the same thing in all cultures. Recent print ads and
TV commercials proclaim the sensitivity of the international banking corporation, HSBC,
to cultural differences that can affect business success around the world.

The Interpretation of Advertising—The

Perspectives of Expert Analysts
Decoding Advertisements
Judith Williamson’s Decoding Advertisements:
Ideology and Meaning in Advertising (1978)
proposes a strategy for interpreting
advertisements ideologically. Using semiotic
theory, she argues that ads communicate in many
ways beyond the strict, overt messages they offer.
Many of these additional messages are, according to Williamson, messages that encourage
consumers to accept the dominant ideologies of the power of corporations, the values of
consumptions, and their tacit role as purchasers and consumers of products. Her analysis is
geared toward an understanding of advertisements by “reading against the grain” in order to
decode or uncover such deeper meanings.
Analyzing Advertisements
The remainder of this unit is devoted to the analysis of four TV commercials using the
various analytic concepts discussed above. All four concern computers—two for Apple,
and two for IBM. Two commercials date from the 1980s when personal computers were
being introduced to the American public. Two are contemporary commercials advertising
the same brands more than two decades later. 
The two earlier commercials appeared at a time when IBM had overtaken most of its early
competitors and only Apple remained a serious challenger. IBM, as category leader,
focused on the benefits of using a computer for small businesses. By contrast, Apple
promoted itself as an alternative to the commodity standardization of IBM.  
The current commercials also reflect the competition between
Apple and IBM. The Apple commercial makes the point that IBM
computers are more susceptible to computer viruses than Apples.
The IBM commercial focuses its strategy on helping companies
identify their unique features in the competitive global
marketplace.
- Apple, 1984
The corporate logo—an apple with a bite missing—evokes
another biblical story in which the apple signifies knowledge. In
that story, taking a bite of the apple signifies challenges to divine
authority and submission to the forces of nature. As with Eve’s apple, Apple computers
offer humanity a means of taking control of its destiny.
- IBM’s Little Tramp
The IBM commercial appeared a few months before the Apple 1984 commercial. Its
message is about the business benefits of using PCs to help manage small companies. In
this commercial, IBM introduces a product and discusses its benefits to consumers. Most
advertisements today do not introduce new products. Rather, they serve to reinforce brand
loyalty or to encourage brand switching. This commercial is one of the exceptions. 
IBM’s ad: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/208167/video/video02.mp4
IBM produced a series of print ads and TV commercials to introduce the personal computer
and educate the public about its use. Specific settings and messages varied across the ads,
but the “Little Tramp” character made famous by Charlie Chaplin during the silent movie
era appeared in them all. The Little Tramp never spoke on screen but rather communicated
as Chaplin always did, through movements, gestures, and antics. Other consistent elements
in the ads were an IBM PC on a literal desktop and a single red rose.