Media and Cultural

Studies

Analysis of print and digital

advertisements
Submitted by:
Divya Soni
Sheenam Jain
Soumya Gupta
Vanshali Sanwalka
(MFT-1)

PRINT ADVERTISEMENT ANALYSIS: DOVE

Sign
Signifier

Signified

Dove Hair therapy

Three women sitting together, smiling and
enjoying; supposedly users of dove
shampoo
Strong Friendship, Happiness, Beauty,

The image shows the Dove Split End shampoo that promises to reduce
split-ends with its fiber actives, with the tag line of Never Split Ever,
focusing upon the long cherished friendship. The product is presented with
this advertisement in many newspapers, magazines and even on various

social networking sites. This advertisement is a part of a blogging contest

entitled Beautiful ends to your Beautiful Braids, in which women could
share their stories about their friendship. This helped Dove to connect their
audiences to the product at an emotional level.
The Signifier here are three women friends sitting together, all cuddled up,
smiling happily on their never splitting friendship. The advertisement
portrays the friends posing for a group picture, which is supposed to
capture the strength of their friendship.
The Denotation here, is the use of still digital photography and the use of
certain photographic techniques with which only the women are focused
upon in white, sitting happily on a white sofa set, depicting the impact of
purity and contentment in their lives without any problems. Similar to Dove
shampoo which is as pure as snow and makes your hair problem free.
While as far as connotation is concerned, the advertisement is successful
in drawing attention of audience towards it because of the emotional factor.
It also portrays the image of strong independent women all set to fight the
world together. It also succeeds in presenting before its viewers, how the
use of dove shampoo can enhance the quality of their hair making it
stronger to fight the damage.

DIGITAL ADVERTISEMENT ANALYSIS: KALYAN JEWELERS

Sign
Signifiers
Signified

Kalyan jewelers
The trust and hope of a small girl from her grandfather.
The value of the promise made.

The advertisement shows trust and hope through the emotions of a small
girl who was promised a doll from her grandfather when he comes home.
She waits for him eagerly and hopes that he will bring that for her. Her
grandfather in the midnight wakes up the shopkeeper and anyhow brings
the doll for her. With the help of this, it is shown that customers trust for
pure and good jewelry will never be broken and their hopes will be fulfilled.
Figure 1: A promise made to the small girl for a doll from her grandfather

Figure 2: To fulfill the promise, he went to the shop at night, he somehow

manages to meet the shopkeeper so that the trust of his granddaughter will
not break. In the same way Kalyan Jewelers will do anything to save their
promise made to the customer.

Figure 3: The happiness of a child can be seen from this picture as what
she expected from her grandfather was met. And through this it is shown
that the expectation of the customers from Kalyan Jewelers will never be
broken as this is their prime objective.

DIGITAL AD ANALYSIS: GOOGLE

Sign

Signifiers

Signified

Google website
Internet access anytime, connecting
people through internet, friendship
free of religion and any boundaries,
respect and compassion of the girl
for her grandfather and other elderly
people
The balance in values between old
generation and new generation,
redefining youth and ways of utilizing
internet for communication and
goodwill of humans

Table 1: Sign analysis of the Google commercial advertisement

The advertisement on Google is a very good example of the

communicative ability of a company to Indianize and integrate itself with
the socio-cultural ethos of the target market. This is achieved by showing a
small story of two friends who are united after about 50 years with the help
of the search engine giant-Google. The ad nowhere says directly but gives
a hint about the time period for which they were not with each other. It gives
a message in the form of a childhood photograph and this is a sign which
signifies the age at which they got separated from each other .The ad
basically emphasizes on the connectivity between people through internet
as the internet itself stands for inter connection between people. The old
man is sharing his memories of childhood best friend with his
granddaughter and tells her about the various things they used to do when
they were child and lived together, before partition. Then, at the time of
partition of India and Pakistan, they got separated as they relocated to
India overnight and every possible way of communication was broken
because of the circumstances and political situations. Using the information
as told by his grandfather and relating to them, she found out contacts and
further information about her grandfathers friend and arranged a meeting
of the two friends on his birthday itself. She presented his grandfather with
the most precious gift.

Figure 1: Stills from Google Advertisement

The ad gives the implicit message that true friendship cannot be stopped
even when it comes to two rival countries. The explicit idea behind the ad
is that, Google connects the whole world with each other, breaks all the
boundaries, help people get access to everything and make there life
simpler. The concept for marketing and increasing selling ability of the
product (Google), that is used is the short story, it is something that
everyone can relate to, it touches the heart of older people and the younger
ones as well. The emotional connectivity is something that makes an ad
recallable easily. So, these elements add to the acceptability of the ad and
the product within audiences and hence the product salability and brand
value increases. There is a strong similarity observed in the old and new
generation, although the new generation is modern and hippie kind of but

still they are candid and generous at heart. The girl portrays an image of a
young modern girl from a metropolitan city and presents the image of
present generation in a very positive way.
The jingle that plays in between the ad goes very well with the theme and is
beautifully adjusted as fillers. The lyrics reflect a feeling of nostalgia as well
as celebrate friendship at the same time.