In this essay I will be illustrating and discussing in detail how both the viewer and the product are ‘positioned’ in commercials aimed at a youthful market. In my discussion I will begin by analysing a commercial for Levi's Jeans (a shot-by-shot analysis of which can be found in the appendix). I will then move on to discuss how the viewer and the product are ‘positioned’ in the commercial and I will also discuss the concepts of youthfulness in the commercial. I will therefore begin by giving a brief description of the commercial before moving on to discussing how the commercial works in semiotic terms and how the opinions of various academics tie-in with my essay.

I must firstly make a point about the commercial’s music. As I have not given a breakdown of the music in the shot-by-shot analysis. I will discuss the music in the main body of the essay when and where relevant. The music is Handel’s Sarabande and plays throughout the commercial.

The name of the commercial is Odyssey, a recent commercial produced by Levi's long running Advertising Agency BBH. The commercial begins with the male character opening a door to a room, he then turns, walks away from the door and then turns back and starts to run towards the door. He then runs jumps and crashes through the walls of each room that he enters. He is then joined about a quarter of the way through the commercial by the female character; together they continue to run, crashing through the walls of the empty rooms until they reach the final corridor. They then proceed to crash through the next wall, which is the external wall to the building.

Having ran through the whole building the two characters then run through a dark lifeless forest, laden with leafless trees. The characters then run up what seems to be a never-ending tree. When reaching the top of the tree they leap into the vast space of the sky above. They run or float there in mid-air until the commercial ends. The commercial ends with the caption of the Levi company name and the style of jeans it is selling.

A reason for choosing this text is the cinematic value of its construction. It is fast in pace with excellent use of CGI (Computer Generated Images). However there is more to this commercial than just its cinematic value. The first sign that I came upon and will use as a starting point is the name of the commercial – Odyssey. I must point out that unless this is known to audiences, decoding the commercial in this way would probably not be possible, as not only with this commercial, but with all commercials the name of the commercial is hardly ever known.

The word ‘odyssey’ basically means ‘a long adventurous journey’. Therefore in terms of this commercial it could be said that the characters are embarking on something eventful. The basic connotation would be that they are running endlessly and therefore need comfortable jeans, jeans, which as we can see from the caption in shot 45C, give you ‘FREEDOM TO MOVE’.

The sign of youthfulness is ever-present in the commercial. The most obvious form youth takes is in the form of the characters. The characters are young, possibly early to mid twenties – no older. They are obviously fit and healthy looking. Youthfulness seems to be a theme in the commercial, we only have to look at what the commercial is selling, i.e. jeans, to see how youth oriented the commercial is. Bignell states ‘jeans are a sign whose meaning is ‘casual style’ or youthfulness’ he also states that jeans ‘were clothing signs in a code of clothes for manual labour’ (Bignell, 2001, p11). Therefore we must associate jeans and youthfulness together.

Looking at the text’s modality is quite revealing. There does not seem to be any clear reality claims in the text, this is due to the basic storyline of the commercial. The commercial is more surreal than real and alludes to fiction and not fact. However, the reality claims on ‘freedom’ may be real/true. This is because the characters are searching for freedom and the walls represent hurdles in which they have to jump and go through to gain freedom. If we look at shots 2E and 4 the way in which the characters jump towards the wall are similar to the way that a hurdler in athletics jumps/approaches hurdles on the track. The characters do not simply run through the walls but jump at them and then through them legs first.

Another aspect of this ‘hurdle’ of life to gain freedom is the fact that the characters are running in a straight line – this could mean that they are facing the obstacles (in this case the walls) head-on. They are not going around the obstacles or taking the possible longer route of going through each room via the doors. By entering each and every room through the walls they become closer to their freedom much sooner. We can see that by looking at some of the shots i.e. shots 2D, 7, 8,12B and 23B, there are doors present. Also there are other ways in which they can leave the building to become free, for example the corridors, as in shots 3, 21 and 25. This again could be seen as taking a longer way around.

Looking at the shots individually there are many similarities and differences among them. The main type of shot sizes are either, a medium shot, medium close-up or close-up. The commercial has very little long shots or extreme long shots.

The pace of the commercial is also very important when looking at the possible choice of shots. The commercial is about one minute long – in advertising terms this is quite a long commercial. The shots are fast moving and sometimes a single shot can have up to nine individual sequences or scenes without a cut or an edit between them. Take shot two for example. Shot two has nine different camera and character movements but no cuts. However, although rapid cutting can add to a text (I use the word ‘text’ because I feel the word ‘film’ is inappropriate) does not necessarily have to be used. Shot 2A-2I is testament to this! The sheer movement adds rhythm and pace which is carried by the music as well.

The music in the first two shots (1A-2I) starts fairly softly, with the violins playing. They slowly begin to pick up pace as the as the commercial picks up pace. The pace of the commercial is increased when the female character appears in shot 3C. The running of the characters increases in speed as though they were racing against each other in a ‘battle of the sexes’.

Shot 15A is almost a static shot and holds for a couple of seconds. This is noticed significantly because of the pace of earlier shots. The shot holds and becomes almost intense as we are waiting for something to happen, conventional codes tell us that something is about to happen. Then suddenly we realise that it is an over-head shot and crashing through the wall (as in shot 15B) comes the man. It is also significant to look at the music here also. Up until this shot the music was slowly increasing in pace and volume. When we see the man entering the room through the wall the music hits a crescendo and becomes more empowering. It acts as a relief of tension or a release of energy. From this shot on, the music stays at this pace and slows down again in shot 25. Here the pace of the running has slowed down to walking pace and the music too slows to reflect this change in atmosphere. When placing the music with images it can be very effective. Guy Cook states that ‘music is greater in its combinatory power than language (cook, 2001, p50).

Language and music is a good point to discuss here. The commercial does not feature any spoken language, only written at the end. The commercial is carried by moving images and music, but instead of spoken language we rely on body language to reflect and portray emotion and feeling. Expressions can tell us a lot about how people feel; take shots 26-28 for example. These shots have a visual syntax, what these shots tell us is that there may be some kind of chemistry between the two characters. This is the first time that the two characters stop to see or acknowledge each other. We see her face first – shot 26, then his in shot 27A, but by shot 27B his expression has changed. This is returned to him in shot 28 when we see another change of expression in her face.

However, this could mean that an exchange of agreement has taken place about what they are about to do next. As we can see in shot 29B they crash through the external wall of the building.

Messaris also argues my point made above. He states that ‘there are two major areas of commercial advertising in which uses of visual syntax have become standard practice. These two areas correspond to two different types of images that… TV commercials commonly link to products: (a) images of social status; and (b) images of sex and romance… these are also the image categories most frequently encountered in the visual syntax of commercial advertising’ (Messaris, 1997, p225). Therefore maybe the old adage ‘sex sells’ could ring true. What we see in these shots is, for the first time (apart from shots 1-2A) a slow moving close-up of the characters. We are being shown their physical beauty.

Also I find it relevant at this stage to point out the differences in colour in the close-ups compared to the colour in the longer framed shots. The colour seems to be enhanced or added when looking closely at shots 25-28 and 13 and 31. These shots all feature either close-up shots of the characters or medium close-up shots. These shots may be an important signifier towards the importance of the characters.

Another aspect of the commercial is that of binary oppositions. There are many different binary oppositions taking place at different sequences. Take for example the clear male and female aspect. We begin the commercial with the male character (shot 1). We are possibly being led to believe that this commercial may be male oriented, in that we see a male crashing through walls, however, the male in this commercial is not as Denise Kervin  points out an ‘erotic spectacle’ (Kervin, 1990 p63, cited in Fowles 1996, p213), as he is not made to look sexual in anyway. We are then introduced to the female character. She is introduced to us in shot 3B, but only after the male character has run through the shot. We may be thinking at this point that this could be a race of some kind and the male, typically is winning.

Goffman argues that ‘women in ads are shown “drifting away” mentally while under the physical “protection” of a male’ (Goffman, 1979, cited in Leiss, Kline and Jhally 1990, p216). This does not seem to be the case in this commercial. There does seem to be some kind of strength in the female character. After we see her for the first time we stay with her up until shots 4-7, we are closely running with her. The shots also seem to be equal in number throughout from shot 3B. However, if this is to be considered as a race or some kind of competition, the editing techniques lead us to believe that the female character has won. From shots 41-43 the shots are only of her. She is also the first to be shown leaping from the treetop. The male character is shown after the female, and as though he joins her in the mid-air.

Another binary opposition is the movement of right and left. The dominant movement is from left to right. We are moving along with the characters towards the right of the frame. However, this is changed when we are walking with the characters in shots 26-28. When we are walking with the male character in shots 26 and 28 we are walking from right to left. Therefore we could look at this to a point that when the frame is shared the female is dominant. This also links to the male and female binary oppositions stated above.

Another interesting aspect is shot 38. Here we have the phallic aspects of the trees. Both characters are running up the trees but if we look carefully at this shot we can see that the female character appears to be ahead. Looking at the phallic aspect, surely this may mean that male dominance may not ‘win’ this time and that women may get freedom first.

Moving on from the analysis, how does the positioning of the viewer and the product play a role in this commercial? Myers argues that ‘brands come with what marketers call ‘heritage’ and what semioticians might call associative or connotative meanings’ (Myers, 1999, online extract, p3). Therefore what may be going on in this commercial, looking at the facts, and they quite simply state this in shots 45C-45E, is that Levi's Jeans allow you to be free. A viewer may think that this may have some truth in it. And therefore go out and want to buy a pair of Levi's Engineered Jeans.

The other aspect that I have searched for throughout is the aspect of youth in the commercial. The commercial is very youth oriented, we have young characters. The commercial could have a connotative meaning of the fact that freedom to move through the jeans gives you the want/need to have freedom. The youths in the commercial could be seen as being rebellious and wanting to reach the top and beyond – which is what they quite literally do at the end. Levi's is associated with youth and a part of youth culture is rebellion and breaking the boundaries or in this case by breaking down walls they are trying to free themselves.

‘An ad is an interaction of elements’ (Cook, 2001, p5) and there are many elements at work here. There is youth represented in both male and female kind, pace and rhythm which is set in the language of the text, in this case the music. However we cannot take away on of the key areas of the Levi brand and its connection with the youth market. Brand positioning is crucial and therefore a viewer can easily decode what a brand has to say in a commercial. As Goldman and Papson state ‘we view advertising as a vehicle for circulating a brand’s sign value’ (Goldman and Papson, 1998, p2).

References

Bignell, Jonathan (2002): Media Semiotics: an Introduction, Second Edition. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Cook, Guy (2001): The Discourse of Advertising, Second Edition. London, Routledge.

Fowles, Jib (1996): Advertising and Popular Culture. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Goldman, Robert and Stephen Papson (1998): Nike Culture: the Sign of the Swoosh. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Leiss, William, Stephen Kline and Sut Jhally (1990): Social Communication in Advertising. London, Routledge.

Messaris, Paul (1997): Visual Persuasion: the Role of Images in Advertising. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Myers, Greg (1999): Ad Worlds. London, Arnold, (online extract).

November 2002

Appendix – Shot-by-Shot Analysis

Karl Josef Necke