The Language of Love and Feelings

in Advertising

• Mass- media world was considered as the submission and manipulation kingdom

• Parallelly, in mass- communication studies, advertising has also represented an area without any specificity

• In the last ten years, the situation has deeply changed

• A comparative analysis had the observation results come out: advertising in Italy and in England

• Social- anthropological and semiotic start point of my search : the content and the text analysis

• I distinguish the language of love and feelings in advertising

• In the first phase of the search, I have considered all social and feeling aspects in advertising

• In the second phase, I underline women role evolution in advertising and the role of love and seduction

Love and Food

Nature and Variety• The most published

food are ready to be eaten, they need minimal ability and care to be cooked

• What is the claim in this case? Save time!

• The only ingredients appearing in the English sample in 1989 were the tinned tomatoes

Wet nurse’ s Ethics

• More than in England, in Italy, the baking moment is sacred: and the temple of this ritual is the kitchen

• There is a great emphasis both on who has food, and on its activity of cooking.

• In a spot series for “ Buitoni” a woman waited for her man, she day- dreams he would be happy to arrive and to stay

• The end comment is : “Rasagnole Buitoni, the ones with feeling”. Doing something sentimentally means to do it in the right way, Italian food is good and good made because it is done for someone.

• Another subject, in the commonest ones, is the attribution of sensual and pleasant connotations to food.

• In English advertising there are not lots of sensual connotations but voluptuousness is linked to stranger food, especially French food

• This kind of attitude is less common in English advertising, but in someone as “Cadbury”

Amor Patriae

• In Italian advertising, the product range is wider than in English one, the accent is placed on cooking phases more than the consumption

• A national pride sense shines in lots of spots ( “ eat in Italian way” ). Cookery art of other countries is not mentioned, but national food and tradition are really emphasized

• Another aspect of English advertising is about variety of countries and cookery tradition: a series of spots for ready soups is entitled “ Cooking with Culture”

Raw and cooked foodRaw and cooked food • In English In English

advertising the advertising the cooking process is cooking process is less emphasized less emphasized than the than the consumptionconsumption

• The Italian spots The Italian spots insist more on taking insist more on taking care of family with care of family with natural ingredientsnatural ingredients

Private character • In Italy, every meal is a social

chance, both when it is circumscribing by nuclear family and when it is an expanded family circumstance

• When women interact in advertising, we can see them in two ways: the interaction target is not the relation, but the acquisition of knowledge and ability for a better performance

• The second way to represent women interaction is the leisure, in a pleasure moment after work

• In the series for stock cubes, women break an old stereotype of being alone in the kitchen, they share a job and a chat, and it shows a new prospect both about relation and the social character of cooking

Alimentary habits and consumption model

• In England, the most important meal is called dinner, and it is the real meal

• In English spots there is a clearer boundary line dividing a urban way to consume meal, a gorgeous one, from an ordinary way to eat food, that is popular, domestic.

• In Italy, the boundaries between luxury and ordinary are softer

• In the Italian food consumption, the environment is less variable, home is the right place, and the table is prepared

• We rarely found people eating at the office and, when it happens, it does not mean a real meal, but a snack

Social variables linked to consumption

• In England the target for the snacks for children is undifferentiated, in Italy instead, it is made for children and mothers

• In England, it is possible to find a wider range of different situation and people; in Italy, when family is not complete, a mother with a son are the members mostly shown

Represented subjects and working division

• Cosmopolitism is an interesting aspect of English advertising, it is signifying, as the spots for travelling companies, more than in Italy.

• The equation family food= love= value lives in advertising , in English one too, but, family meals are working class’ ones and that is not a rule, but an exception.

Food for Animals

• In English spots people are on intimate terms with the pets, more than in Italy

• In a spot for “ Sheba” , the end comment in England is: “ It seems, it smells, it is like it was cooked by you”, in Italy, the same spot ends with “ Sheba, love for cats”

Drinks: variety and presentation modality

Soft drink: consumption and cultural order

• In England, drinking tea is a ritual that is repeated for more times in the same day

• In Italy, it is mostly a domestic act and it happens in free time, in advertising solitary men prevail

• The spots for sparkling drinks show a growing trade towards individualism, competition, success

• Humour prevails in English spot, and life style prevails in Italian ones, and there are two different ways to link drinks with time, people, environment, occasions

Alcoholics as context branders• In Italian spots, the

alcohol consumption is always a social activity; it is limited to free time because of its effects on self-control and awareness

• English TV cannot publicize super alcoholics

Wine has a cyclical character and it is important in the Italian meal

In English spots, beer is mostly consumed in public places, it is drunk by men only and not with food.

Car: the mechanical bride

•The High Priest of Pop-Culture •Objects of Desire •Technology as Extensions of the Human Body

Love is Agape and Eros

• Love and Seduction

<<Forgive me this my virtue:For in the fatness of these pursy

timesVirtue itself of vice must pardon

beg....>>

William Shakespeare

Bread and dreams

• Vito Varvaro suggests: a little of emotion, a first rate product, rationality, information. But Advertising is not information.

• There are other elements giving something more to the message: the human expectation of “ bread and dreams” as told Séguéla.

Dreams to hand

• Advertising is like Cinema: it asks for being a spirit farm. In this way, consumption can become a cultural act

• With it, dreaming is easy like going to the supermarket, like switching on TV

• We need suggestion, that one which the spot-creativity stages. So, Advertising is seduction

She stares you in the eyes

• The first kind of seduction: woman. The Italian telecamera is feminine, but it wraps the woman up with a male look

• It is linked to the products that do not concern passion, especially in Italy

• Especially in the spots for scents, the female feature becomes a simple symbol signifying values over itself

Women as communication archetype

• The feminine face would embody the communication archetype which everybody understand

• While the male gaze is giving the status of the vision object to the woman, the female audience recognizes in the male desire

• Naturally, the achievement of the desired image is possible only with the product purchase.

Reality and Advertising reality • Advertising acts as a mirror,

but it shapes the reality which it reflects and sometimes, it shows a distorted image

• In a spot of “San Paolo’s Bank , the agency avoids a sexy woman, because it has decided to start with reality

• There is a new simulacrum: the superwoman who masters every domestic technologies and seduction, by combining career and house, being attractive and professional

The Mainstream march

• We can find the Mainstream march from moralism and sociality, towards to the opposite directions: individualism and hedonism

• The Anglo-Saxons accept rules as Kantian imperatives, for the Italians, the biggest deterrent is the fear of sanction

• Because of a very indulgent system, and the propensity to life pleasures, giving up and sufferings for a very sense of duty or for gaining a result are decreasing

Parts of women

• We are still stereotypes, we must not think only about that spots which have whole women

• Hands, eyes, or legs only are visible, in a female body shattering that communicates womanliness more than the whole body

Men too become feminine

• Near the super woman there is the new man, who holds new connotations of aestheticism and fatherhood

• The male nude and its ambiguity are a taboo no more, a man is free from the old image of strength and of the “never asking for” man

• Self-care, relation ability, patience, the attention for relations, listening ability, have been emerging both in Italy, and in England, as the other side of sensitivity and thought

Creativity deficit

• We are the fatherland of design, Renaissance, and of other creative beauties, but we have no Advertising creativity

• There are not many Italian brands with the problem of doing a global communication. This fact causes a professional culture that is isolated from the English one

• The second structural element which causes backwardness is the advertising crowding

The second kind of seduction: intelligence

• Brain seduces. Seduction is a spider web which is burnt by capturing a person until it arrives to the mind

• Some spots are memorable because of the unusual situation and seductive because of irony.

Politician, a great seducer

• “Labour is not working”. Persuasion is not fundamental, because who is not sure is not persuaded, he needs to be seduced

Men or “Lovemarks”

• Emotion take us to the act, reason to the conclusions

• Lovemarks are a new way of thinking about the things we love. They transcend brands. Lovemarks embody Mystery, Sensuality and Intimacy

• “Observe how much providence Nature, human genus mother, has given a little madness everywhere. It gave to men more passion than reason, to let everything be less sad, difficult, hard, bad, insipid, troublesome. If mortals avoided every relation with wisdom, there would not be the old-age. If they were more fatuous, happy, mad, they would enjoy a never ended youth. Human life is only a madness game.”

Erasmo da Rotterdam