What a semiotic analysis of an ad tells us about our own culture.
This is an essay I wrote for my Communication & Media - Cultural Anthropology class.
The semiotic analysis of advertisements reveals cultural norms and values that are associated with a particular society or group of people. In fact, in order for people to decode meanings or effects of an advertisement, it necessary for them to do so within their own sign system, which depends on language, historical context and culture. In this particular case, I perform a semiotic analysis of the a contemporary print advertisement for Heinz Ketchup that will reveal such meanings and effects of our culture, such as the ambivalence that there exists in our society towards food - with people both desiring to be healthy and skinny, while also being indulgent.
In this advertisement, we observe many different semiotic concepts. In the first place, the slices of garden-fresh tomatoes and drawings of the label of the Heinz ketchup bottle on them are organized in such a way that together they look like a Heinz ketchup bottle. Therefore, we can say the whole figure that is made up by those elements is an icon of the Heinz ketchup bottle. At the same time, the picture of the slices of tomatoes is in fact iconic of tomatoes. Also, at the upper part of the figure found in the advertisement we find the top part of a tomato, which is the part of a tomato from where leaves come out. This slice of the top part of a tomato build on the upper part of the figure, which is iconic of the Heinz ketchup bottle, is more specifically an icon of the cap of the ketchup bottle. This could also be viewed from the other way around, as the Heinz ketchup bottle being an icon for a tomato.
In either way, in this advertisement campaign, the Heinz ketchup bottle as being sliced like a ripe tomato or the construction of tomato slices as being an icon of the Heinz ketchup bottle indexes that Heinz ketchup is purely made out of tomatoes. Thus, it indexes that Heinz ketchup is natural, fresh and has no added artificial preservatives. While ketchup is generally loaded with sugar and artificial preservatives, with this advertisement, Heinz tries to redefine the ingredients in ketchup by transforming the bottle into a healthy vegetable. In this way, Heinz attempts to change the general presupposition that there exists in society that ketchup is unhealthy and artificial.
This idea is consistent with the text found in the lower part of the advertisement that reads:
"No one grows ketchup like Heinz."
While ketchup is made in a factory and is by no means "grown," the particular usage of the word "grows" in relation to Heinz ketchup instead of the accurate usage which would be "produces" or "fabricates" indexes once again that Heinz ketchup is completely natural and in no way artificial.
In this way, the marketers behind this campaign again attempt to transform a sugary condiment into a wholesome, raw ingredient and try to attribute a “healthy” connotation to ketchup, and more particularly to Heinz ketchup.
The fact that the text is white is also very relevant to the message, since the color white in the Western culture is a symbol of purity, simplicity and cleanliness.
The usage of the color white in this sentence thus aligns with the meaning of the text and the Heinz bottle made of slices of tomatoes in again trying to index that Heinz ketchup is natural and made simply and purely out of organic tomatoes, with no artificial ingredients.
Moreover, the fact that
The ripe tomatoes that are arranged to build what looks like the Heinz ketchup bottle are stacked on one another in a disorganized way and not in a perfectly straight construction can also be seen as an index of Heinz ketchup being "real" and "natural," and not as a "fabricated" or "superficial" product.
Heinz presumes that, with this advertisement, its target audience will read these particular meanings of Heinz ketchup as being healthy and natural because of the shared code of the target customers.
With this product-image format advertisement,
Heinz responds to the demand of people in our nowadays society for natural, healthy food. This demand, which is causing people to move away from artificial and unhealthy food, comes from the desire of people in society to conform to social and cultural norms such as being "healthy" and, in particular, "skinny."
Such desire originates from the fact that a person who is seen as healthy and especially skinny is accepted in our society, since having
a thin body has become a symbol of "correct attitude."
(Bordo, 195)
In our society, having the "right type" of skinny body is an index of the person caring about oneself and about how one appears to others, "suggesting willpower, energy, control over infantile impulse, the ability to ‘shape your life’"
(Bordo).
Therefore, people are looking to index those attributes to others around them by eating healthily and achieving the “right” body. In this way, the advertisement consolidates a particular ideal of the human body in the Western society and perhaps promotes a healthier way of life.
This message can also be observed in the form of the Heinz ketchup bottle. Instead of being big, wide and short such as other ketchup bottles, the Heinz ketchup bottle is long and thin.
The form of the ketchup bottle can thus be seen as an icon of the form of the ideal human body, skinny and healthy, and as an index that the “natural” and “healthy” Heinz ketchup will contribute to one achieving that type of body and lifestyle, and become accepted in society in this way.
In this way,
Heinz responds to an ambivalence that there exists in society. Many people want to eat foods such as ketchup that are generally viewed as being unhealthy and that make you fat, which then indexes attributes such as undesirability and lack of control.
At the same time, however, people want to be skinny and have a healthy lifestyle in order to be accepted in society. With this ad, Heinz solves this problem by suggesting that you can eat Heinz ketchup, which is indulgent and desirable, while still remaining healthy and skinny.
Meanwhile, it indexes the ideology that the Heinz brand stands for, such as having a healthy lifestyle.
Even an advertisement about a universally known brand such as Heinz has the potential to be interpreted in different ways simultaneously. The interpretation is dependent on the values and norms of society and perceived because of the shared code of the target consumers. Customers can perceive the Heinz product as iconic of either tomatoes or ketchup and indexical of healthy or indulgent, or as a product that represents all of these ideas at the same time.
