Tide ad analysis

Tide is a historical print based ad from the 1950s; the ad is produced by proctor and gamble. The ideas attitudes and beliefs are outdated. In addition, the ad came out at the time of the post war, Americas technology developed rapidly especially within the domestic sphere. These products became desirable and symbolized status related to the American dream. Adverts such as tide in American melodramas, due to this these programs became known as soap dramas.

The ad use hyperbole and explanation marks make the product seem essential to the target audience. Nevertheless, the target audience is women as they sole for the home; the product would have mainly appealed to middle class women who are attracted to saving time. Tide also uses endorsement of the Good Housekeeping magazine; this relates to the target audience and allows immediate positive connotations attached to the product which emphasizes the effectiveness. The Theories of Representation by Hall states that stereotypes as a representation, reduces people to a few simple traits. In Tide they use the stereotype that all women love being housewives and cleaning.  Furthermore Hall also adds that stereotypes occur when there are inequalities in power, this excludes groups from constructing a different representation. At the time of the Tide advert (1950) there was a hierarchy of power leaving men at the top and women at the bottom. despite the roles women took on In world war 2 they was expected to return to their domesticated chores , as a result Tide uses this to their advantage and explicitly targets women by using the phrase “got what women want” this tells us the target audience without having to work it out. Rationing ending in 1956 and the post war economy rebounded; many families had a large disposable income due to this meaning that they could afford to invest in time saving domestic equipment. This is proven by the fact that the sales of these products increased by 70% in the 1950s.

Tide is a hard cell advert which uses bright, strong primary colors to emphasize positive connotations. Additionally, Barthes semiotics theory explains the idea of signs which in this case means the from and signification which is the meaning attached. Within the Tide ad a women is shown hugging the bottle this is the sign and the signification is love, this conveys the message that it is so good you will love it. It also directly addresses the audience by using “you”. According to Gerbner’s Cultivation theory; exposer of the repeated patterns of representation over a long period of time cultivates particular opinion. It could argue that the Tide advert reinforced this representation causing it to reinforce mainstream values, although the 50s became a better age for women but equality was not achieved.