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| BK Super Seven Incher Ad |
Assignment 1 – Semiotic Analysis by The Se7en
The ad is about promoting the world famous fast food franchise Burger King, BK Super Seven Incher that is created by an ad agency in Singapore. Burger King runs a special promotion in Singapore for a limited edition of burgers: the Super Seven Inchers. This ad creates a lot of controversial because it leaves a little to the imagination. The ad pictures a woman of a typical blonde hair, her eyes and mouth are wide open and there is a Burger King beef patty that was about to float right into her mouth and carries the following headline: "IT'LL BLOW YOUR MIND AWAY”. The intended audience for this ad is targeted to young adult males. By the text, some people can make assumptions what the ad is trying to show other than promoting the burger while others might think it is just a normal and harmless fast food ad. Clearly the intended message is reinforcing the sexual connotation with the top and bottom visuals of the ad. The subtext is “Super Seven Incher” which directly gives people the idea to a man private part and for this whole ad, males’ element clearly dominating it without even being shown in the ad. While the tagline is “It just tastes better,” basically saying the bigger the better.
Our sense of organs can recognize an image even though it didn’t tell in direct way but with general knowledge that we have, we can read connotation from the images. With a little information in our knowledge, we can separate the code out from the message. Codes provide framework within sign since meaning of sign depends on the code. Codes are procedural system of related convention. Codes organize sign into meaningful system that can be correlate signifiers and signified. The conventions of codes represent a social dimension of semiotic. In this advertisement, it says “It’ll blow your mind” and a picture of a women and a burger. If we read the text alone, we assume something that will make our mind explodes but if we read it together with the images we will get a complete different meaning. The images become a text as a whole so we can identify the code within the text. The whole advertisement is a sign but the text “It’ll blow your mind” signifies what are the image is. The concept of the image would be the signified for the advertisement and the images represent how the sign work by itself. By looking at the images, we will be tempted with the burger and starting to drool.
Apparently this ad has its own double meaning. Burger King has totally lost its subtlety in creating ads as it is associating the ad with sexual acts. The headline and the body text “Fill your desire for something long, juicy and flame-grilled with the NEW BK SUPER SEVEN INCHER really says it all. In reality, the headline is grabbing a lot of people’s attention which makes Burger King successful in making the ad to be read by its target audiences. It is obvious that the copywriter trying to make a selling point with the words related to its visual that gives more proof of the double meaning they associates with. This can be considered as explicit ad because it is not being masked by the “subtlety” in words and visuals which allows the ad to be a controversial ad amongst people. The ad can easily be manipulated with dominant cultural values. It really depends on how people accept it when they see it for the first time or depart from it. Of course not all people are satisfied with the ad as it creates unnecessary attention that are not suitable especially to young children that might not understand what the ad is trying to connect with. As we know, dominant cultural values refer to language, religion, behaviour, values, rituals, and social customs. These values are often the norm for the society as a whole. Therefore, not every culture will be pleased by the ad because it touches on sensitive issues regarding sexual element that is not supposed to be publicly displayed to everyone. Denotation carries the actual meaning they are trying to convey whereas connotation has its own strength of carrying different meanings. The association of images and words from this ad can bring a lot of assumptions by people. It's a unique, creative way for Burger King to draw their target audiences’ attention with a relevant connotation they connect through the ad. From this ad, we can see that the texts used are connotations as they can be manipulated in different types of understandings for viewers. For example, the headline can easily be accepted as a denotation but when we associate it along with the visuals, it widens our perspective of views and gives a lot of interpretations based on each observation.
Besides that, the body copy of the ad lead people to sexual thinking. The purpose of the ad is only to tell people about the inexpensiveness and the worthiness of buying the product but at the same time it holds double meaning and this attract attention not only to the intended audience but also to the unintended ones while provoking them to buy the product. In order to promote something through a print ad, we have to inject a humour but with a reason, so that when people look at it, they can understand what we want to express. Other than that, colours also play an important role in order to grab attention. As mentioned, the target audience for this ad is to young males, in age of twenty years old to twenty-five years old. Everyone has different approach when they see this ad. It might be positive or negative or even both. In positive perception, for innocent people like kids especially, when they look at the ad, they only look as it is a long big juicy tempting product from Burger King and they might want to get that as soon as possible considering the reasonable price.
The ‘seven incher’ subtext has influenced the ‘BLOW’ text to emphasize that they purposely intended to lead the audience thought to a specific sexual act. An adult especially will eventually think that way straight away. And the ‘BLOW’ word has been influenced strongly by the body text which says ‘Fill your desire for something LONG, juicy and flame-grilled….’ The ‘LONG’ and ‘seven incher’ words really make sense that people will automatically believe that the ad have the intention to symbolize the ad to that specific sexual element. The meaning of the ad will never be different because the visual and text are coherent to each other obviously and anyone would have the same approach to its meaning unless you are a very innocent girl or boy or a baby. Hence, the meaning will bring the same intention forever unless this specific sexual act becomes a norm to people in future which they will see this as nothing to be ashamed of and they might just pass away this ad after a glance without even take time to read the whole copy. People might get an innocent meaning if only they did not provide that kind of visual because people have nothing to relate of except for the yummy seven incher long burger. Apparently, people will ignore the exact meaning and take only the different perspective instead and the product or service that they provide is nothing other than just a visual, solely, without being able to sell it to people.
The reality influence from this ad can be the product is the best food that one must have and try although there are meanings in one ad. In reality, the headline is purposely to show that it is the hottest burger that can make one tummy full and forget to eat other foods. In terms of humanity, as clearly mentioned above few times, the ad secretly brings a sexual element with symbols. People rarely take the text as it is because we as an adult, will compute the text into another meaning while this is the Although the ad is quite funny for some of us but after gazing at this poster it makes us realize how women are being taken advantage of in today’s society. Stereotype of women being exploited and treated as a sex symbol has been used widely in advertising.
In conclusion, all different kinds of people from different cultures, age groups and ethnicities have their own understanding for this advertisement. People all over the world enjoy Burger King’s product but with this kind of ad, it doesn’t play a good role in educating children plus the product doesn’t sell and it doesn’t seem hygienic to include a sex element in a food advertisement. A good advertisement doesn’t promise a good sale and a successful product doesn’t need to have a good advertisement but a good advertisement somehow can help to contribute on its sale.
