Tide

Tide

1. Product context

   • Procter and Gamble launched Tide in 1946 and quickly became a brand leader in America
   • DMB&B (The D'Arcy Masius Benton and Bowles) handles Procter and Gambles accounts throughout the 1950s
   • DMB&B used print and radio advertising campaigns in order to build audience familiarity with the brand
   • Both media forms used the "housewife" character and the ideology that its customers loved and adored Tide

2. Media language

   • Historic context
     • The post-WW2 consumer boom of the 1950s included the rapid development of new technologies for the home
     • Vacuum cleaners, fridge freezers, microwave ovens and washing machines all became desirable products in the 1950s
   • Cultural context
     • Print adverts from the 1950s conventionally used more copy than we're used to seeing today
   • Theorists
     • Roland Barthes - semiotics
       • The use of hearts above the main image and the woman's gesture codes have connotations of love and relationship
       • Hyperbole and superlatives, "miracle", "worlds cleanest wash", "worlds whitest wash" are used to oppose the connoted superior cleaning power of Tide to its competitors
     • Claude-Levi Strauss - Structuralism
       • "Tide gets clothes cleaner than any other washday product you can buy!" reinforces the binary opposition between Tide and its commercial rivals
     • Stuart Hall - representations theory
       • The images of the two women hanging the laundry represents audiences lives and lifestyles at the time
     • David Gauntlett - Theories of identity
       • Women represented in the in the advert act as role models of domestic perfection that the audience may want to compare themselves against

3. Representation

   • The dress code of the adverts main female characters include a stereotypical 1950s hairstyle
   • The fashion for women having shorter hair had a practical catalyst as long hair was dangerous for women working with machinery on farms
   • The headband or scarf worn by the woman also links to the practicality of the dress code for women
   • Having her hair held back connotes she's focused on her work, though this is perhaps binary opposed to the full make-up she is wearing