This essay concerns a semiotic analysis of advertisements whose similarity is based on the fact that all concern the advertising of men's fragrances, and all were found in the within the textual context of print advertising.

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This essay concerns a semiotic analysis of advertisements whose similarity is based on the fact that all concern the advertising of men's fragrances, and all were found in the within the textual context of print advertising.

In more specific terms, the advertised products included Dune, Polo Extreme Sport, Xeryus Rouge, and Cool Water. The adverts were located within recent editions of the popular men's magazines, namely Sky, FHM, and Esquire. Thus this essay will individually analyse these advertisements in terms of their status as signs, whose associative meanings not only gave a favourable impression of the product, but were also compatible with, and complementary to, the masculine context in which they were situated; thus illustrating Umberto Eco's claim that the medium and message may be 'charged with cultural signification.'

Although all of the advertisements do not physically represent the product, they all provide an important iconic representation of both the product and what the product, should stand for. Thus, analysis of all of the adverts will strongly focus upon the advertisements' photographic imagery, and the ways in which this imagery generates the appropriate signified concepts (or emotional overtones) which promote the image of the product.

The first advert, ('Example A') strongly relies upon this use of photographic imagery. 'Example A' features an advertisement for the fragrance 'Dune Pour Homme.' The advertisement uses a variety of signifiers which publicise both the identity of the brand, 9 and an image which is in line with the ideology of the text in which it appears, which, in this case, is the youthful, glamorous Sky magazine. The advert predominately features a male model in his early to mid twenties, and he is kneeling on a sand dune. Adjacent to him is an iconic image of the product itself, which is projected as being disproportionately large. Underneath this image of the product are the words: 'Essence Of Freedom,' and together these separate components form an effective and unified message. On a simple level it is easy to deduce two obvious things. Firstly, that the subject, (the image of the man) provides a youthful element of glamour, which serves both the product and the text in which it is being advertised, and secondly, that the image of the sand dune is a physical reiteration of the product name. However, the more interesting semiotic elements of the advert exist within its notion of freedom, which is the advert's primary signified concept. The notion of freedom is 'primarily conveyed by the image of this lone man; who, in his lonesome location; seems extremely at ease, and unrestricted by normal life, thus providing a sense of liberation which is also conveyed by his loose, unorthodox, clothing. Furthermore the softly focused quality of the photography, and the advertisements colouring of gentle blues and pale browns. are further signifiers which contribute to this dreamy, utopian image of liberation.

However, these images alone certainly do not convey this central signified concept, for this is only guaranteed by the inclusion of the advertisements of the statement: 'essence of freedom.' Thus, a strong relationship is allowed to be forged between the 'signifiers,' (the photographic image of the protagonist and his physical environment) and the 'signified' which is the linguistically expressed 'essence of freedom.' Therefore, this stabilisation between the signifier and the signified allows for the creation of a plausible 4commodity code.' This code attributes basic meaning to the advert, whose conventional combination of iconic image and linguistic representation (of words and pictures) allows the recipient to receive a message, which is justified and reiterated by the relationships of resemblance at play.

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Thus, although the average reader of Sky Magazine will not be aware of the terms discussed, or the technicalities of this process, he or she will still be aware of the mutually complementary relationship between words and imagery. This relationship not only ensures the advert's uniform message, it also ensures the advert's plausibility: For it is the adverts typically obvious contrivance between word and image which allows the recipient to view the advert within its generic context. For only within this genre does the ridiculous image of a man wearing pyjamas and after-shave in a desert maintain an element of acceptability. ...

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