Explain how the media language in advertising incorporates the brand image the advertisers wish to convey.

Explain how the media language in advertising incorporates the brand image the advertisers wish to convey. Refer to the adverts you have studied in your answer.

Advertisers use many different forms of media language in order to convey their brand image to their target audience, such as a clear house style, celebrity endorsement and an interesting copy. This Old Spice print advert was part of Old Spice’s transformative campaign in 2013 which aimed to transform the public’s view of Old Spice in order to access a wider audience. Old Spice is stereotypically seen as a product for old men and they wanted to change this view to increase revenue from younger generations. In order to do this, they used conventional language techniques to convey their new brand image to appeal to younger generations.

                          The set Old Spice advert has a clear house style, which anchors the pack shot to the advert as the light blue colour, palm trees and a beach are on both the pack shot and the advert. This presents Old Spice as a youthful brand due to the bright blue sky and beach scene as beach holidays have connotations of youth and fun and this appeals to their new target audience as they would be interested in this lifestyle. The brand’s preferred reading (Stuart Hall) for the audience to have is that Old Spice is a new and youthful product that is suitable for all age ranges and can be bought by both men and women. The negotiated reading would be that this particular range of Old Spice products may be more suitable for younger generations. However, the oppositional reading would be that younger audiences still see it as a brand for older generations, and the older generations no longer feel targeted by the brand and so stop buying it which results in no one buying Old Spice. Having a clear house style helps advertisers to convey their brand image as it can be carried across a whole campaign or product and it helps audiences to identify and therefore buy their product.

                         Using celebrity endorsement allows brands to get revenue from the celebrity’s fan base, as well as a ‘seal of approval’ from the celebrity which implies that the product is legit as the celebrity is putting their image with the brand which can be quite risky if the brand receives backlash. However, it is also risky for brands when partnering with a celebrity as if the celebrity is involved in a scandal it reflects badly on the advertisers associated with them. For example, Lance Armstrong was involved in one of the biggest doping scandals in cycling in history and he was previously sponsored by Nike, but once the doping scandal came out Nike would have been eager to cut all associations with Armstrong. Old Spice uses Isiah Mustafa in this campaign, who is an ex American footballer and actor. Mustafa is a popular celebrity and conventionally good looking so it is likely that audiences will like him and therefore like and purchase the product. Also, fans of Mustafa would be American football fans who are traditionally male and active in which case they would need a reliable deodorant, and women who find him attractive and who would aspire for their partners to be and smell like Mustafa. This is a good audience for Old Spice to target as the leading age range for American football fans is 25-34 who would have an income to spend on grooming products.

                        Using an interesting copy is important for advertisers as it gives them a unique selling point and separates them from other brands with similar products. The copy in the Old Spice adverts uses surrealist humour and reflects the cultural context as surrealist humour was becoming more popular in advertising at the time this advert was released. The line ‘this fact has not been fact-checked’ is very post-modern as advertisers have a lot of regulations that they have to follow set by the Advertising Standards Agency, one of which is that the adverts cannot be misleading or contain false information. Therefore, having the disclaimer that it ‘has not been fact-checked’ allows Old Spice to make an outrageous claim without receiving backlash for it, at the same time as making a joke about the regulations that advertisers have to follow.