INTRODUCTION
Semiotics is the study of sign and how the sign construct or reconstruct meaning, and this relates to any kind of sign, road signs, star signs, etc (Chandler, 1997). Semiotics can be applied in many things which signify something—in other words, ‘to everything which has meaning within a culture’. We can apply semiotic analysis on media texts (articles, advertisement, poster) or in the interpreting of the text itself.
Advertisements use signs, codes, and social myths which are already used in the society for a long time. On reading an advertisement, without realizing it, we have taken part on understanding the meaning of the advertisement. When analyzing an advertisement, you can not just analyze what is in the surface or what is shown by the advertisement.
In this essay, I will use semiotics to analyze an advertisement of sleeping pills taken from Oprah Magazine. I think this advertisement is more interesting compared to other advertisements in the magazine. I think the advertisement I took will be a good example for the advertisement will not mean denotatively as seen from the advertisement, and how the verbal texts is also important on constructing the meaning. So I decided to take this advertisement.
DISCUSSION
Before I start on my analysis, I’m going to ask some things. What do you see on the advertisement on the cover page? What crosses your mind when you see the advertisement? What kind of product do you think being advertised in the ads? Bed? Or blanket? Or bed cover?
The first thing that popped into my mind when seeing this on is the bed cover advertisement. When asking my friend, he said the same thing. This is the advertisement of bed cover which can make you relax and such thing. Let’s see the full advertisement. This is the part I cut from the advertisement that states clearly that Lunesta is a sleeping pills. At the first sight, the image of a woman sleeping as the sign represents the advertisement. However, the sleeping woman has denotative meaning since it corresponds the real meaning of the sleeping pills should be. The image of sleeping woman along with his relax expression in here signify the product actually, something related to sleeping, although a bit unclear from the first sight, if we only look at the image.
Through the process of being advertised, a product becomes a representation of everything the reader desires to become. "What the advertisement clearly does is thus to signify, to represent to us, the object of desire" (Williamson 1978, p. 60). An advertisement should portray the image of ‘me’ so that the advertisement is successful. By applying this, when a reader watch the advertisement s/he will think, ‘this is so me’, and by doing this “the product is given personality, communicating not only information, but also image”.
The sign which gives out the effect of the advertisement is the sleeping woman and her relax expression with slight smile, the butterfly, the lighting effect, and the texts. If we look at the images as the signs on this advertisement, it will be clear the theme of the advertisement, the soothing or relaxing feeling.
The first sign is the sleeping woman along with her expression. The woman’s expression tells everything that the product will be something relaxing, that by using the product you could get relaxation feeling on your sleep. This is shown from the texts in the bottom part of the advertisement. Soothing Rest For Mind and Body. The close up image of the woman also emphasized the important of the expression on the advertisement. The woman used for the model is the middle-aged woman, not a beautiful-full-make-up woman signifies that the product is not to beautify her. I can almost relate this to how busy the Americans are on their working hour, thus they need the time for relax. In addition, the woman seems to be make-up-less.
The butterfly also supports the relaxing effect of the product. Butterfly is closely related to the fairytale-like effect and something beautiful. When we see the butterfly with illuminating green light and slight red color made us feel more relaxed as green is commonly related to soothing feeling. The image of the butterfly is also emphasized for its beauty. The use of butterfly like this rather than using the common one like monarch butterfly give more stress on how beauty image is important for the advertisement.
Next sign is the lighting. The lighting used is dim light, for it correspond the relaxing effect for resting. Most Americans sleep lightless or only by using small lamp near the bed. This correspond that image, that by using dim light you could sleep well. But still the lighting fell on half part of the woman’s face to make the expression is clearly seen. Moreover, the light seems to come from the butterfly rather than from any lamp near the woman. The whole advertisement exploits blue light as blue is closely related to calm and relax in most culture in the world.
The next important sign on the advertisement is the texts used on the advertisement, as like I said previously the texts in here construct the meaning and explains more on what kind of product being advertised. If we only look at the image, the product could be everything, as long as it is related to sleeping. But the text in here gives more explanation for the product. The first sentence ‘Lunesta Lullaby’ clearly states something related to sleep. The second sentence ‘soothing rest for mind and body’ doesn’t only gives emphasize on sleep for resting our mind and body, but also implicitly tell to the reader about the busy day that the woman and all Americans have been through before they can rest.
The next sentence makes everything clear, of what kind of product being advertised. The sentence that states ‘taking it night after night’ and ‘talk to your doctor first before using sleep aids for extended periods’ makes the reader understand that this is the advertisement of sleeping pills.
I found same advertisement of sleeping pills in the same magazine. Although they advertised the same product, both advertisements used different model, lighting effect, animal, photo shoot, expression and environment. The second advertisement used tired-expression man and beaver for the model, lighting from the ceiling—making the whole environment clearly seen, the setting is on the attic with chairs and chess board. The photographer doesn’t make close up for his expression, rather he took the picture for the whole setting. Looking at the whole second advertisement, the nuance that comes from it is the tiredness and how the man tried so hard to sleep.
There’s still a question lurking on the analysis. This is an ad for sleeping pills, why don’t use the picture of the pills in the advertisement? Instead the advertiser uses picture of woman, and a butterfly. Perhaps the most logical reason is that the picture of pills usually associates in negative way, something bad, something addictive, and so on. The absence of the pill picture make the ad is acceptable in any kind magazine, and will not arouse negative meaning; like in the following picture. The picture on the right side looks so simple, with the different angle and emphasizing on the sleeping pills rather than on the model, and she didn’t put any relax expression.
CONCLUSION
The advertisement contains the image and texts which both couldn’t be separated to each other since the language will give more explanation on what kind of product is being advertised. The advertisement of Lunesta® gives the best example of how the text is important for the meaning construction.
In the Lunesta® advertisement the signs that should be analyzed are the model and her expression, the animal as the symbol, the lighting, the angle for the shoot and the setting. They played great roles on making the perfect nuance on the advertisement and represent the text, the soothing and relaxing effect. If ever one of the signs is omitted, it will create different nuance and effect for the whole advertisement.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Chandler, Daniel (1997): Semiotics for Beginners [WWW document] URL http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/semiotic.html
Clare, Alexander (1998): A Semiotic Analysis of Magazine Ads for Men's Fragrances [WWW document] URL http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Students/awc9401.html
Reschke, Nadin (1998): A Semiotic Analysis of a Cosmetics Ad and Its Interpretation by Readers [WWW document] URL http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Students/nnr9501.html
Vestergaard and Schroder. 1985. The Language of Advertising. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd.
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar