Tide

• A level Media Studies – Set Product Fact Sheet
• Image Courtesy of The Advertising Archives
• Tide print advert


  • (1950s)
• Focus areas


  • Media language
  • Representation
  • Audiences
  • Media contexts
• Tide


  Procter & Gamble launched in 1946 and quickly became the brand leader in America, a position it maintains today
• D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles advertising agency


  Handled Procter & Gamble's accounts throughout the 1950s. Its campaigns for Tide referred explicitly to P&G because their market research showed that consumers had high levels of confidence in the company
• Procter & Gamble


  Uniquely used print and radio advertising campaigns concurrently in order to quickly build audience familiarity with the brand. Both media forms used the "housewife" character and the ideology that its customers "loved" and "adored" Tide
• Post-WWII consumer boom of the 1950s


  • Rapid development of new technologies for the home designed to make domestic chores easier. Vacuum cleaners, fridge-freezers, microwave ovens and washing machines all become desirable products for the 1950s consumer. Products linked to these new technologies also developed during this time, for example washing powder
• Print adverts from the 1950s


  • Conventionally used more copy than we're used to seeing today. Consumer culture was in its early stages of development and with so many 'new' brands and products entering markets, potential customers typically needed more information about them than a modern audience more used to advertising, marketing and branding might need. Conventions of print-based advertising are still recognisable in this text however
• 1. line and a rough rule of thirds


  Can be applied to the composition of the Tide advert
• Bright primary colours


  Connote the positive associations the producers want the audience to make with the product
• Headings, subheadings and slogans


  Are written in sans-serif font connoting an informal mode of address
• Comic strip style image in the bottom right-hand corner


  With two women 'talking' about the product using informal lexis "sudsing whizz"
• More 'technical' details of the product


  Are written in a serif font connoting the more 'serious' or 'factual' information
• Suspense


  Is created through the enigma of "what women want" (Barthes' Hermeneutic Code) and emphasised by the tension building use of multiple exclamation marks (Barthes' Proairetic Code)
• Hearts above the main image


  Have connotations of love and relationships (Barthes' Semantic Code). It's connoted that this is "what women want" in addition to clean laundry
• Hyperbole and superlatives


  "Miracle", "World's cleanest wash", "World's whitest wash", as well as tripling "No other..." are used to oppose the connoted superior cleaning power of Tide to its competitors

  
• Binary oppositions


  Such as "Tide gets clothes cleaner than any other washday product you can buy" and "There's nothing like Procter and Gamble's Tide" reinforce the conceptual conflict between Tide and its commercial rivals (Lévi-Strauss' structuralism)

  
• Representations of women


  In the advert, including stereotypical 1950s hairstyles and fashion, connote domesticity and focus on household tasks. This links to theories of representation by Stuart Hall and David Gauntlett
• Endorsement from Good Housekeeping Magazine


  Makes them an Opinion Leader for the target audience, reinforcing the repeated assertion that Tide is the market-leading product
• Preferred reading


  Of the advert's reassuring lexical fields "trust", "truly safe", "miracle", "nothing like" is that despite being a "new" product, Tide provides solutions to the audience's domestic chores needs (Stuart Hall's reception theory)
• Indirect mode of address


  By the woman in the main image connotes that her relationship with the product is of prime importance. Tide has what she wants. This is the dominant or hegemonic encoding of the advert's primary message that should be received by "you women" (Stuart Hall's reception theory)
• Direct mode of address


  In the images in the top right and bottom left hand corner link to the imperative "Remember" and the use of personal pronouns "your wash", "you can buy" (Stuart Hall's reception theory)
• Cultivation theory


  Explains how the advert aims to cultivate the ideas that Tide is the brand leader, nothing else washes to the same standard, it's a desirable product for its female audience, and its "miracle suds" are an innovation for the domestic washing market (George Gerbner's theory)
• A level Media Studies – Set Product Fact Sheet
• Image Courtesy of The Advertising Archives
• Tide print advert


  • (1950s)
• Focus areas


  • Media language
  • Representation
  • Audiences
  • Media contexts
• Tide


  Procter & Gamble launched in 1946 and quickly became the brand leader in America, a position it maintains today
• D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles advertising agency


  Handled Procter & Gamble's accounts throughout the 1950s. Its campaigns for Tide referred explicitly to P&G because their market research showed that consumers had high levels of confidence in the company
• Procter & Gamble


  Uniquely used print and radio advertising campaigns concurrently in order to quickly build audience familiarity with the brand. Both media forms used the "housewife" character and the ideology that its customers "loved" and "adored" Tide
• Post-WWII consumer boom of the 1950s


  • Rapid development of new technologies for the home designed to make domestic chores easier. Vacuum cleaners, fridge-freezers, microwave ovens and washing machines all become desirable products for the 1950s consumer. Products linked to these new technologies also developed during this time, for example washing powder
• Print adverts from the 1950s


  • Conventionally used more copy than we're used to seeing today. Consumer culture was in its early stages of development and with so many 'new' brands and products entering markets, potential customers typically needed more information about them than a modern audience more used to advertising, marketing and branding might need. Conventions of print-based advertising are still recognisable in this text however
• 1. line and a rough rule of thirds


  Can be applied to the composition of the Tide advert
• Bright primary colours


  Connote the positive associations the producers want the audience to make with the product
• Headings, subheadings and slogans


  Are written in sans-serif font connoting an informal mode of address
• Comic strip style image in the bottom right-hand corner


  With two women 'talking' about the product using informal lexis "sudsing whizz"
• More 'technical' details of the product


  Are written in a serif font connoting the more 'serious' or 'factual' information
• Suspense


  Is created through the enigma of "what women want" (Barthes' Hermeneutic Code) and emphasised by the tension building use of multiple exclamation marks (Barthes' Proairetic Code)
• Hearts above the main image


  Have connotations of love and relationships (Barthes' Semantic Code). It's connoted that this is "what women want" in addition to clean laundry