Sugupoolte representatsioon reklaamis ja selle tõlgendamine vastuvõtjate poolt Piimstream'i reklaamikampaania näitel
Date
2007
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Tartu Ülikool
Abstract
Description
The aim of the present BA thesis “The Representation of Gender and Its Interpretation
by the Recipients Based on the Advertising Campaign of Piimstream” is to analyse
the depiction of gender in advertisements targeted to the teen market and its
interpretation by the teenagers themselves. The keywords of this thesis are:
advertising, teenagers, stereotypes and gender identity/gender roles.
The research has been formed around one particular advertising campaign –
Piimstream – designed to increase the consumption of milk among school aged
children in Estonia. More specifically, the objects of this research are two advertising
posters used in the campaign. One of the posters, titled “Milk is Beauty”, depicts an
attractive female model and is designed especially for girls. The other ad “Milk is
Strength” is aimed at boys and portrays a BMX rider performing a mind-boggling
stunt.
Along with the research paper “The Different Representation of Boys and Girls in
Advertising: Based on the Advertising Campaign of Piimstream” (Kõmmus 2007),
the current BA theses forms a cycle of research, analysing the production and visual
discourse of the two advertisements as well as their interpretation by the recipients.
Analysis of the production process of the advertising campaign is presented in the
research paper mentioned above.
The present thesis focuses first on the analysis of visual discourse of the adverts “Milk
is Beauty” and “Milk is Strength”. The bases of this analysis are the conceptions of
Roland Barthes, Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen. The aim of the study is to
identify how gender is represented in the advertisements meant for teenagers and
pinpoint the differences between the representations of boys and girls.
The second goal of this thesis is to study the interpretation of the two advertisements
by the recipients via an e-mail survey. The questionnaire was sent to the candidates of
Miss School Estonia 2006 and 2007. Altogether 32 girls replied.
The main intention of this survey was to find out how the recipients interpret
advertisements which are designed for either boys or girls, what kind of messages do
they decode from the ads and how do they assess them. How do the recipients feel
about the practice of creating differentiated commercial messages and visuals for boys
and girls? What do they think about using stereotypical messages and models in
advertisements? Do the recipients believe that young girls attempt to imitate the
people they see in adverts?
The results of the cycle of research show that the representation of gender is very
different on the two advertising posters – “Milk is Beauty” and “Milk is Strength”. On
the ad aimed at boys advertising specialists prefer to expose an active male model
with a strong physique, whereas on the advert intended for girls they choose to depict
a girl who symbolizes passive beauty. These kinds of portrayals of beauty and
strength, plus activeness and passiveness, are also in keeping with the myth of
femininity and masculinity present in today’s society.
Recipients considered the message of both advertisements to be mainly positive, but
on the whole the evaluation given to the advert “Milk is Strength” was slightly better
than to the poster “Milk is Beauty”, although the recipients were female and the later
advertisement was designed especially for them. Even though most of the recipients
considered it useful to use the message of beauty in ads aimed at girls and the
message of strength in adverts meant for boys, about half of them did not consider it
to be wise to use only female models on commercial messages intended for girls and
only male models on advertisements aimed at boys. Meantime almost all of the
recipients declared that they themselves do not mimic models depicted in
advertisements, but did in fact ascribe that tendency to other girls.
Because there has been little or no research on the subject of representation of gender
in advertisements aimed at the teen market previously in Estonia and the current cycle
of research analyses only one specific advertising campaign, there is still a lot of room
for further investigation in this field.
Keywords
H Social Sciences (General), bakalaureusetööd, turundus, reklaam, sugupooled, strereotüübid (psühh.), esindatus, representatsioon, reklaamikampaaniad