Here my aim is to provide information about the factors/methods that determine the effectiveness of the media in order to create meaningful content and to show how these theories/methods can be applied in content analysis.
First and foremost, The primary objective of creating content is to provide value for those who consume them.
As an academic reference, qualitative content analysis is a research method used to analyze the content of qualitative data, such as written or spoken language, images, or videos, in order to identify patterns, themes, and meanings. It is a systematic and interpretive approach that involves the creation of categories and codes that capture the content of the data, and the use of these categories and codes to analyze and interpret the data (Hsieh et. Al., 2005).
Below, I will be analyzing the video ads from famous brands with certain communication methods. The first piece of content belongs to Levi’s “I Shape My World” ad campaign which is a global marketing campaign launched by Levi Strauss & Co. aiming at promoting Levi’s brand and products, while also celebrating the creativity, individuality, and women empowerment around the world. #IShapeMyWorld is a creative campaign that was created by the late Meeta Bharvani, Levi’s® Marketing Director, in March 2017 in recognition of International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month. The goal of the campaign was to elevate women’s voices and promote the power of the female collective — when women tell their stories and claim their achievements, it inspires other women to do the same, which moves the collective forward (Samaniego, 2020).
The second piece of content to analyze is OLAY’s #STEMTheGap — It’s Time to Change the Equation ad campaign is a social impact campaign launched by Olay, a brand of skincare products owned by Procter & Gamble, in 2020. The campaign is aimed at addressing the gender gap in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, and promoting greater diversity and inclusion in these industries. The campaign features a series of short films that showcase women from diverse backgrounds who are working in STEM fields and making a positive impact in their communities. Each film highlights the women’s achievements, challenges, and aspirations, and emphasizes the importance of supporting and empowering women in STEM. The focal point of this episode in the series centers around young little girls and their aspirations and hopes for the future. The premise of the episode is that they are often deemed unqualified for STEM fields simply because of their gender, resulting in feelings of letdown and disappointment. The campaign is created in partnership with Publicis PG ONE Singapore.
Theoretical Framework
Semiotics
Semiotics, also known as semiotic studies or semiotic theory, is a multidisciplinary field of study that focuses on the interpretation and analysis of signs, symbols, and communication systems. It examines how meaning is created, conveyed, and interpreted through various forms of signification, including linguistic signs (words), visual signs (images, icons, and symbols), and non-verbal signs (gestures, sounds, and behaviors) (Chandler, 2007). This complicated exploration of signs and symbols finds its origins in the foundational work of Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure and American philosopher Charles S. Peirce, who introduced seminal concepts like the signifier, the signified, and the interpretant to unravel the complexities of language and communication. Building upon these foundations, semioticians further delve into the examination of signs in diverse cultural, social, and historical contexts, ultimately decoding the underlying meanings and ideologies within texts, images, and cultural phenomena (Eco, 1976).
In the context of advertising, semiotics plays a crucial role in understanding how advertisements communicate and persuade. Advertisers harness semiotic elements to construct messages that resonate with target audiences, evoke emotions, and convey brand identities. Semiotic analysis of advertising involves examining the use of signs, symbols, colors, visual composition, and cultural references within advertisements to decode the underlying meanings and ideologies. This approach helps uncover how advertisements shape cultural norms, consumer desires, and societal values, often by tapping into shared cultural codes and semiotic conventions (Floch, 2000).
On the other hand, denotation and connotation are two important concepts in semiotics and linguistics that help explain how words and symbols convey meaning. In Chandler’s words, “..in semiotics, denotation and connotation are terms describing the relationship between the signifier and its signified, and an analytic distinction is made between two types of signifieds: a denotative signified and a connotative signified. Meaning includes both denotation and connotation.” (p.137)
Denotation refers to the primary, literal, or dictionary meaning of a word or symbol. It represents the specific, objective, and universally understood meaning of a term. Denotative meanings are generally agreed upon by speakers of a language and are not subject to significant interpretation or ambiguity.
Besides, connotation refers to the secondary or associated meanings and emotional or cultural associations that are attached to a word, phrase, or symbol beyond its denotative meaning.
Connotations can vary among different individuals or communities, and they often carry subjective, emotional, or cultural nuances. Connotations can be positive, negative, or neutral and can influence how people perceive and interpret language (Chandler, 2007, 137–143).
Denotation represents the straightforward, objective meaning of a term, while connotation encompasses the additional layers of meaning, emotions, and cultural associations that a word or symbol can carry.
2. Freytag’s Pyramid Theory of Storytelling
Other method for the second piece of content to be analyzed is Freytag’s Pyramid, an enduring dramatic structure developed by Gustav Freytag in the mid-19th century, which remains relevant to this day. It proposes that effective stories can be divided into two halves: the play, climax, and counterplay (Bunting, n.d).
Specifically, Freytag’s Pyramid serves as a paradigm for dramatic structure, outlining seven essential steps in successful storytelling: exposition, inciting incident, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution, and denouement.
This framework provides a solid foundation for analyzing the structure of a story and understanding the development of tension and resolution throughout the narrative. Brands seeking to create compelling and cohesive narratives from start to finish can find value in Freytag’s Pyramid.
Exposition: The introduction of the story, where characters, setting, and background information are established.
Rising Action: The series of events that build suspense and tension, leading up to the climax. Conflicts and obstacles arise, and the plot develops further.
Climax: The turning point of the story, where the conflict reaches its highest point of intensity. It is the most crucial and impactful moment that determines the outcome of the narrative.
Falling Action: The events that occur after the climax, where tensions ease, and loose ends are tied up. The story begins to wind down, leading towards the resolution.
Resolution (Denouement): The final stage of the narrative, where the conflicts are resolved, and the story reaches its conclusion. Questions are answered, and the story comes to a satisfying or conclusive end.
The application of the Freytag Pyramid extends beyond traditional storytelling to encompass experiential marketing campaigns. This structure can be effectively utilized to both portray and analyze such campaigns, which often aim to engage audiences through immersive and unique experiences. By employing the Freytag pyramid as a framework for examining experiential marketing assets, valuable insights can be gleaned regarding audience engagement, the campaign’s progression and resolution, as well as its ability to effectively convey the brand message.
Analysis
Video Ad Content #1: Levi’s® — I Shape My World
The Levi’s® “I Shape My World” campaign features short videos spotlighting women from diverse backgrounds using their creativity, passion, and skills to bring about positive change. It aims to celebrate these women as inspirations for others, employing a narrative approach in its ads to showcase their professional roles and unique perspectives. Semiotics will be utilized in this analysis of one of the campaign’s videos.
LEVI’s #ishapemyworld campaign targets a diverse audience, including musicians, artists, entrepreneurs, and activists, aligning with the featured individuals in the content. Employing audience analysis can help identify significant themes and messages that resonate with distinct segments of the target audience. The video showcases women in diverse roles such as a skater, a music producer, a computer scientist, and a journalist.
Through the stories of these women, the campaign highlights their challenges, achievements, and the paths they took to shape their worlds.
Analyzing the video content through the semiotics approach will give us some signs and signifiers to go more deeply. At the beginning of the video, women characters introduce themselves and are presented with snippets of their lives doing what they are doing. Then, each of them expresses their profession, and when the characters describe their profession and who they are, they add the word female to the beginning of their profession, such as “female CEO” and “female producer” etc. and spell it out in a way that draws attention to it. This vocal tone suppression in articulation emphasizes the fact that those who do these professions as women are referred to with the prefix “female” in the society because they are few in number in society as females in the particular work field and/or because they are still considered interesting professions for women in the men hegemony. To rewrite by citing a scholarly source, women and men actively develop skills, society then accepts these skills as being normative and they are incorporated into fundamental gender roles, which are both descriptive and prescriptive in defining how women and men typically do and should behave (Tabassum & Nayak, 2021).
In this case, the signifiers are the words used in the video to describe the women’s professions, including terms like “female CEO” and “female producer.” These signifiers draw attention to the fact that women are performing these roles. As signified here is the concept or meaning associated with the signifiers, in this context, it signifies that these women are not just CEOs or producers; they are women in these roles, highlighting the gender aspect of their professions. Examining the video’s surface-level, objective meaning, the denotation involves the direct identification of these women based on their professions, as seen in the term “female CEO.” Connotation, on the other hand, extends beyond denotation and encompasses secondary or associated meanings, emotional nuances, and cultural connotations. In this case, the connotation involves the societal perceptions and stereotypes linked to women in specific professions. The use of the prefix “female” carries connotations that accentuate the gender aspect, potentially suggesting that these professions are not the norm for women but that these women are challenging stereotypes.
At the end of the video, each character repeats again their profession, and this time they do this by simply saying their title, without using the “female” prefix, and they underline that they are not the female version of a profession.
In some circumstances there are situations where the absence of speech speaks louder than the words spoken. For this case, the word “female” is intentionally left unsaid when women speak about their professions. This notable shift in narration corresponds with the underlying nature of the Levi’s brand, which challenges accepted norms and breaks old thought patterns in favor of attempting to create new ones. Meanwhile, there exists a storyline that includes culturally acknowledged stereotyped standards, which are conveyed not only through the spoken words of the characters, but also through their clothing and surrounding accessories.
In addition, women display a diverse range of physical characteristics, such as the wearing of nose rings, white cat eye brave glasses, and multicolored hair, which vary from conventional beauty standards. This non-conformity to societal expectations also extends to challenging existing visual norms. In the context of women’s jewelry and accessories, the nose ring holds significant connotations and denotations. Throughout various civilizations that go thousands of years, the nose ring has been closely linked to beliefs of fertility and feminine energy. In modern Western cultures, it has evolved into an unspoken symbol representing creativity and free spirit. In Western cultures, piercings, neon-colored hair, and eye decorations may be seen as more than simply conventional accessories; they can be viewed as meaningful forms of self-expression when examined through a connotational lens.
After analyzing the signs and their meanings, it’s crucial to reveal Levi’s® underlying message. This can be achieved by examining the brand’s core principles and motivations behind their video advertisement, enhancing our understanding of their intended communication through distinct signs.
Levi’s brand essence centers around authenticity and realness.
Their jeans are known for their durability and timeless style (Levi Strauss & Co., n.d.). In the campaign, the authentic stories of diverse women align with the brand’s core value of authenticity. The real-life narratives of these women resonate with Levi’s heritage of genuine self-expression. Regarding the concepts of individuality and self-expression, the ad emphasizes the idea that every woman shown has unique characteristics and has created her own path in life. Levi’s has a history of challenging societal norms, which is evident in the campaign’s message of women breaking stereotypes.
This is in line with Levi’s longstanding connection with people who challenge societal norms and display their uniqueness through their choice of dress. (Smith, J.,2021). The use of signs in the video ad, together with the several levels of meaning they have, effectively demonstrate the brand’s dedication to challenging and rejecting existing social norms and stereotypes. This attachment resonates with Levi’s rebellious spirit and dedication to breaking free from constraints.
Thus, these core brand essences take pride to reflect each women for their true calling regardless of how they look, what are they doing for living or what interest they have, they just shape their own world.
Video Ad Content #2: OLAY #STEMTheGap - It's Time to Change the Equation
Skincare brand OLAY has launched a multi-year campaign, which aims to help close the gender gap in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) careers in India. This ad-film, which seems high-end in terms of cinematography and production quality, is at the center of the campaign highlights how unconscious biases teach girls that STEM is not for them. The campaign’s objective is to address the increasing number of STEM-based jobs and to cultivate a collective responsibility to equip young girls for future employment. In line with this aim, the major brand, P&G, has committed to effecting change in this regard. The content seeks to elicit emotions that are both heartwarming and thought-provoking through the use of symbols such as coding books, experiments, and binoculars for space observation, particularly in areas traditionally associated with men. The goal is to bring about a change in thinking and behavior by stimulating an emotional response.
The narrative storytelling is also applied by presenting various everyday situations to highlight the pervasive gender bias that exists in Indian society, where female education rates are low. Given the level of education among young girls, the article Women’s Education: The Key to Empowering Women in India explores the role of education in empowering women in India. ”Despite the efforts to increase women’s enrollment in schools, they still lag behind men in education. According to the UNESCO Institute of Statistics, the literacy rate among women in India was 65.5% in 2016, compared to 82.14% for men.” (CollegeSearch.in, 2022).
The video ad can be analyzed through the Freytag Pyramid theory of storytelling, which consists of five stages: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. Let’s break down the story and apply the theory to the content:
In each scene of the video, the main character changes, but regardless of the different actors, our hero represents one important trait: a strong interest and talent in modern science, art, and technical subjects, or simply STEM. So, we can view all the actors as a single hero character and analyze them accordingly in this context.
Exposition: We are introduced to a girl and a boy observing the stars through a telescope, highlighting their shared interest in space exploration. The father’s dialogue reveals the biased attitude towards gender roles, as he encourages the boy to become an astronaut while disregarding the girl’s aspirations.
Rising action: The subsequent scenes present a series of incidents that build tension and reinforce the gender stereotypes depicted in the exposition. We witness a woman working on repairs, facing assumptions about her competence due to societal biases. Then, a little girl demonstrates her technical skills and knowledge during a science experiment, challenging preconceived notions. The librarian’s assumption about the interests of a boy and a girl is debunked when they switch books, highlighting the limitations of gender-based assumptions. Additionally, a young girl faces criticism for choosing a non-traditional costume, emphasizing societal pressures to conform.
Climax: The climax of the ad occurs in the final scene when a teenage girl seeks her father’s help with car repairs, displaying her knowledge and expertise. However, her father dismisses her based on gender stereotypes, leaving her feeling hopeless and discouraged. This moment represents the culmination of the tension and reinforces the negative impact of gender bias.
Falling action: Following the climax, there is a shift in the narrative as the tension subsides. The falling action includes the conclusion on the screen, stating the statistics about the underrepresentation of women in STEM professions. This information serves as a sobering reflection on the consequences of gender stereotypes and biases.
Resolution: The resolution occurs in the form of a call to action embedded in the ad's message. By highlighting the negative effects of stereotypes and biases, the ad urges viewers to challenge and overcome these limitations, advocating for greater inclusivity and opportunities for women in STEM fields.
The video ad follows the Freytag Pyramid structure, gradually building tension through various scenes that exemplify gender biases and stereotypes. The climax represents a critical moment where these biases are confronted and reinforced, leaving the audience with a heightened awareness of the issue. The falling action and resolution then provide a reflective and empowering conclusion, motivating viewers to take action against gender-based limitations in STEM professions.
Final words..
Levi’s® “I Shape My World” campaign effectively leverages the brand’s essence of authenticity, individuality, and self-expression. By celebrating the diverse stories of women who defy stereotypes and shape their own worlds, Levi’s reinforces its brand values and maintains its status as an iconic, culturally significant brand. This campaign embodies the spirit of Levi’s and its enduring appeal to those who value genuine self-expression and breaking free from societal constraints. In essence, Levi’s continues to evolve while staying true to its roots, ensuring its enduring relevance in the fashion industry and popular culture. In this piece of content, semiotic analysis helps uncover the layers of meaning and associations that advertisers use to convey messages and persuade audiences. It reveals how signs and visual symbols are carefully chosen to communicate beyond the literal level, tapping into emotions, values, and cultural references. In this context, it is important that the content and the message the brand wants to give coincide with the vision and mission of the brand.
And the OLAY #STEMTheGap campaign employing Freytag Pyramid structure of storytelling, addressing gender biases in STEM careers. Through a series of scenes, the campaign exposes the pervasive gender bias in society and emphasizes the importance of empowering young girls in STEM. The climax of the ad highlights the negative impact of gender stereotypes, leaving the audience with a heightened awareness of the issue. The falling action and resolution provide a reflective and empowering conclusion, urging viewers to challenge and overcome limitations and advocate for inclusivity in STEM fields. The use of symbolic elements, such as books, experiments, and tools, along with strategic framing and music choices, further enhance the emotional impact and create a particular mood among viewers.
Do you think, by presenting relatable narratives and evoking emotional responses, these campaigns have the potential to drive meaningful change and empower women to shape their own future & worlds while maintaining their brand mission as the brand strategy?
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Ps. I happened to learn on the same day that I finished writing this conclusion that a Turkish female athlete who shares my name, Tuğba Danışmaz, won the gold medal in the triple jump event at the European Championship. It was also a day when I wore an old Levi's denim shirt that my mother had given me, which I had worn before I started researching and writing this piece. It may seem coincidence, but perhaps it was not a mere coincidence; maybe there are just symbols, signs, and messages. I wanted to take note of this moment in history and share.
Overall, I enjoyed writing this essay as a female entrepreneur and marketing professional who manages teams of young talents and has the opportunity to let young female talents trust their own abilities. I hope reading was enjoyable for you too.
References
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Eco, U. (1976). A Theory of Semiotics. Indiana University Press.
Floch, J.-M. (2000). Semiotics and Marketing. De Gruyter Mouton.
Levi Strauss & Co. (n.d.). Levi’s History. https://www.levistrauss.com/levis-history/
Smith, J. (2021). Levi’s Legacy: Challenging Societal Norms Through Fashion. Fashion History Journal, 10(2), 123–145. https://www.fashionhistoryjournal.com/levi-challenge-societal-norms
Tabassum, N., & Nayak, B. S. (2021, February 10). Gender Stereotypes and Their Impact on Women’s Career Progressions from a Managerial Perspective. https://doi.org/10.1177/2277975220975513
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BuzzInContent. (2021, February 24). Levi’s Single’s unveils season 7 of #IShapeMyWorld campaign to highlight the power of women supporting women. Retrieved from https://www.buzzincontent.com/story/levi-single-s-unveils-season-7-of-ishapemyworld-campaign-to-highlight-the-power-of-women-supporting-women/
Hunzabazar.com (2023, September 11). What Does a Nose Ring Mean — Sexually, Symbolism and History. Hunza Bazar. https://www.hunzabazar.com/what-does-a-nose-ring-mean/
Chevy, D. (2022, March 2). Olay shows the painful reality Indian women face as it tackles gender disparity in STEM jobs. Retrieved from https://www.marketing-interactive.com/olay-shows-the-painful-reality-indian-women-face-as-it-tackles-gender-disparity-in-stem-jobs
Samaniego, D. (2020, March 26). Behind Levi’s “I Shape My World” initiative. Levi Strauss & Co. Retrieved from https://www.levistrauss.com/2020/03/26/behind-levis-i-shape-my-world-initiative/
Bunting, A. (n.d). “Freytag’s Pyramid.” Retrieved from https://thewritepractice.com/freytags-pyramid/
Arowolo, D. (2017). Framing Theory and the Media. In S. Zaid, & Y. Jaidi (Eds.), Handbook of Research on Media Literacy in the Digital Age (pp. 1–28). Hershey, PA: IGI Global. doi: 10.4018/978–1–5225–1639–5.ch001
CollegeSearch. (n.d.). (2022). Women’s Education: The Key to Empowering Women in India. Retrieved from https://www.collegesearch.in/articles/womens-education.
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