The encoding and decoding of different advertisements under the media theory

Today, we will interpret the encoding and decoding of different advertisements under the media theory.

First of all, Stuart Hall, the representative of the school of cultural studies from the microscopic perspective, put forward this view in the critical school. His main point is that although the mass media are primarily an instrument of ideological control, the audience’s response to the content of the mass media is not entirely passive. The audience will decode the encoding of the “ruling discourse” in the mass media in its own way, that is, the diversity of decoding.

First: dominant-hegemonic position, that is, the intention of making the code is equal to the content of the audience decoding. Second: negotiated position, there is a contradiction between the audience and the dominant ideology. Third: oppositional position: Although the audience sees the coded meaning of the TV discourse, the audience deliberately interprets it into other meanings. 【1】

Then, I will point out two examples to specifically analyze the interpretation of different audiences under advertising communication, as well as the advantages and disadvantages for communicators.

In May 2022, marches on women’s abortion rights took place in several cities in the United States. Both supporters and opponents took to the streets, with supporters demanding a woman’s right to choose and opponents claiming to “uphold the right to life.”

This AD is about the abortion bill, setting up a post-bill world in the AD. It brings the audience a very deep reflection. In this advertisement, the audience decoded the dominant-hegemonic position and negotiated position. This is not difficult to see from the comments, many netizens have resonated with the AD. Because there may be some people who can not personally understand what kind of consequences will be caused when the bill is established, and the communicators have found this entry point very well, and coded it to the audience. So as an advertisement, it has good originality and good audience reaction, it is undoubtedly a good advertisement.

The other AD is about Procter & Gamble advertising. Procter & Gamble, or P&G, is headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. In 2008, P&G was the sixth largest company in the world by market capitalization and the 14th most profitable company in the world.

When it advertises its products in China, it tries to create appearance anxiety for women and deny them what they really look like, without doing any substantive research. The P&G brand official wechat public account “P&G Member Center” released an article entitled “Women’s feet smell 5 times as bad as men’s? The article. At the end of the article, I think it is “logical” to lead to their own products, and now the reason why women are fragrant is because they use Procter & Gamble products. For such improper advertising, oppositional position has a larger audience.

It can be seen that a successful advertising code should give a certain respect and understanding to the audience, although it is difficult for every audience to decode the advertisement. However, for a successful advertisement, it can be regarded as a good advertisement only if it has a reference for the future, strict review, and is worth thinking about by the audience.

Reference

【1】Hall, S., Segovia, A.I. and Dader, J.L. (2004) ‘Encoding-decoding in the television discourse’, Cuadernos de información y comunicación, 9, pp. 215–236.

【2】https://youtube.com/shorts/pNhKhDcyFzg?feature=shared