Tide Flashcards
What is the target audience for Tide?
White American and British women, 18-40, married with children, domesticated, aspirers to have the ‘perfect’ lifestyle. Increasingly affluent, lower middle class.
Why were women appealed to Tide?
Because of their supposed need for innovative domestic technologies and products. It is also beautifully illustrated to entice women visually.
How does the advert portray a ‘happy housewife?’
Smiling and attractive visual codes, fashionably dressed, embracing body language towards product. Use of language suggests positive impact of product on a woman’s life.
How are females represented in the Tide advert?
Domesticated, part of a community, valued and not alone, happy to please their husbands and family, enjoy their housework.
What is the preferred meaning of the Tide advert? (Hall’s reception theory)
Tide is a new and exciting product that will save time. It is the best on the market, and this is the washday product you should purchase.
What audience was most likely to have a dominant response?
Women in the 1950s who may have taken pleasure in consumer goods such as washing machines and their associated products.
What is the negotiated response to the advert?
A partial acceptance of intended meanings and ideologies. May identify with some nostalgic meanings and take pleasure in familiar 1950s iconography- but may reject come elements, reflecting social changes.
Who is likely to have a negotiated reading of the advert?
An older contemporary audience. E.g an elder lady who once was much like the lady in the ad, but has moved with social changes.
What is the oppositional reading of the advert?
A rejection of the stereotypical domesticated representation of women and perception of it being outdated and irrelevant. Unlikely to think a washing powder can bring fulfilment to a woman’s life.
Who is likely to have an oppositional reading to the advert?
A younger contemporary audience is more likely to reflect the stereotypical preferred reading.
How is Gerbner’s theory of cultivation applicable to Tide?
Ride reflects an exposure to repeated patterns of representations that can influence people’s perceptions, such as the stereotypical domesticated woman that reinforces mainstream values of the time.
What does the Tide advert try to cultivate?
That it’s the brand leader.
That nothing else washes to the same standard.
It is desirable for females.
It is an innovation for the domestic washing market.
What dominant ideologies are reinforced by repeated representations?
That women are happiest in the home with the ‘cleanest’ and ‘whitest’ wash was prevalent in other adverts, therefore these repeated representations cultivated the idea women should be housewives.
Finish the copy used in the advert: “No soap- no other ‘suds’- no other washing product known…”
“…will get your was as CLEAN as TIDE!”
Finish the copy used in the advert: “No wonder you women buy…”
“…more TIDE than any other washday product!”
