SEMIOTIC ANALYSIS OF A HEINEKEN PRINTED ADVERTISEMENT
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SEMIOTIC ANALYSIS OF A HEINEKEN PRINTED ADVERTISEMENT
By
A.A. GEDE SILA ARI PRASTYA
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
FACULTY OF LETTERS UDAYANA UNIVERSITY
Abstrak
Heineken merupakan salah satu produk bir yang terkenal di dunia. Untuk menarik minat para konsumennya, dibuatlah iklan komersial yang menarik. Setiap iklan dari Heineken mengandung unsur visual dan verbal dimana dalam unsur-unsur tersebut terkandung pesan, makna dan fungsi. Penelitian ini menggunakan beberapa iklan dari bir Heineken sebagai data yang menyampaikan pesan kepada orang-orang tentang rasa nikmat dan menyegarkan yang dapat diperoleh ketika meminum bir ini. Pesan-pesan disampaikan dalam bentuk tampilan visual yang menarik serta kata-kata yang singkat dan atraktif. Sebagian besar menggunakan makna konotatif yang membuat orang lebih tertarik untuk tahu lebih banyak tentang iklan tersebut karena fungsi dari iklan tersebut adalah memberikan informasi.
Kata kunci: Heineken, visual, verbal
Advertising is a form of communication for marketing and is used to encourage, persuade, or manipulate an audience (viewers, readers or listeners; sometimes a specific group) to continue or take some new action. In the current era of globalization advertising has become a very important thing. As well as news, advertisements are also used separately to convey a message or purpose. The message can be either moral or commercial messages. But unlike the news, advertising is more attractive because it is attractively packaged and also uses persuasive language. Commercial advertisers often seek to generate increased consumption of their products or services through "branding, " which involves associating a product name or image with certain qualities in the minds of consumers. Non-commercial advertisers who spend
money on advertising items other than a consumer product or service include political parties, interest groups, religious organizations and governmental agencies. Non-profit organizations may rely on free modes of persuasion, such as a public service announcement (PSA). Heineken beer as one of famous beer products in the world requires advertising to publicize its products to consumers. Heineken then make some creative commercial ads to attract the consumer’s attention. This beer advertisements made all that interesting and contains a hidden message. Therefore, Heineken printed advertisements were chosen for analysis because it is very interesting and creative.
What messages, meaning and function Heineken beer advertisements contain?
Based the problem formulated above, this study was intended to find and analyse the message, meaning and function the Heineken beer commercial advertisements contain.
Every scientific writing and research contains methodology. To get the goals of the research, the reserach method used in this study is as follows:
The data were taken from Heineken beer commercial advertisements. Based on the official site, Heineken Brewery (Heineken Brouwerijen) is a Dutch brewing company, founded in 1864 by Gerard Adriaan Heineken in Amsterdam. From the sources, two examples taken as data source of this study. The first advertisement was taken from http://www.coloribus.com and the second one was taken from http://www.toxel.com.
In composing this study, the data were collected by library research. These are some steps used for collecting the data, first the advertisements were downloaded from the internet in order to get the printed ads. Second the structure were observed, visual and verbal message from the images such as colour, shape, etc. Third the sample data were carefully read in order to get the conclusion and major understanding about the structure and message of the advertisements.
The collected data were analyzed qualitatively based on the theories proposed by:
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1. Leech (1977) who classifies meaning into seven types and declares five most important communicative functions of language.
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2. Dyer (1993) who introduces the visual communication in verbal and visual aspects.
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5. Analysis Messages, Meaning and Function in Heineken Beer Advertisement
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5.1 The Analysis of First Advertisement
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Advertisement 1
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5.1.1 Analysis of Message
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5.1.1.1 Verbal Sign
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The verbal aspect in the first advertisement is “for a Fresher World Heineken”. This phrase is the only verbal sign found in this advertisement.
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5.1.1.2 Visual Sign
The visual aspect in this first advertisement consists of colour, shape, sign and background.
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a. The colour in the first picture is dominated with green colour, used as colour of the bottle of beer and the wall. Beside that main colour there is colours that exist in the picture, there are yellow, white, brown, and red. Yellow is the colour of the candle’s fire. White is the colour of the candle. Brown is the colour of the table and candle’s pot. Red is the colour of the back chamber.
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b. The shape of the bottle of beer in particular, is a glass with green colour. Beside the bottle of beer, there is white candle. The candle melts and surrounds the bottle of beer.
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c. The position of the bottle of beer is on the brown table. Beside the bottle, there is white candle with yellow fire.
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d. The background of the first picture in the chamber is dominated with green colour.
In the first picture, the designer wants to deliver the message to the consumers. Based on the text and images contained in the beer, the philosophy it contains is that. This beer can be the best friend for the people who need serenity, calmness, and relaxing time. As clearly illustrated in the first ad that has the
atmosphere of a dark green background, but the background light beer like a candle light that illuminates when dark.
The atmosphere has a message that when consumers are in a chaotic condition that makes the mind becomes dark, this drink can be a loyal friend and creating a piece of the spirit to overcome the conditions experienced by the consumer and give freshness to his world.
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5.1.2 Analysis of Meaning
The verbal message in this ad is good enough and clearly understandable “For a Fresher World (star symbol) Heineken”. The phrase “For a Fresher World” has connotative meaning because the designer uses a word which has meaning beyond its original meaning. This explains that if consumers need something to fresh their mind like forgetting their problems because of the effect from this beer, it can be the best choice.
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5.1.3 Analysis of Function
Based on the picture and headline text illustrated in the advertisement, the function of this advertisement was informational function that is to inform something to the readers / consumers, which is in this advertisement the designer wants to inform about the special quality from this beer. The designer give information to people or consumers, whit a hope they want to try the Heineken beer and feel the fresh sensation of it.
In this fourth advertisement the designer did not use any kind of verbal. In this ad there was no headline text or body copy. The designer was trying to deliver his idea only visually.
Advertisement 2
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5.2.1.2 Visual Sign
Some visual aspects that can be seen in this advertisement, are as follows:
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a. Background colour in this advertisement is dominated by white colour.
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b. There is a Heineken beer bottle with green colour. The bottle was posing as if it was sleeping. The bottle has a looped hands behind his back. It looks like a man who was lying which is trying to find inspiration.
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c. The bottles of beer are surrounded with the water droplets. It can be assumed that this beer is very fresh and suitable to enjoy in leisure time.
The message conveyed in the advertisement above was that the designer wanted to convey that he offered a refreshing cold drink, where drinks can be a friend of the consumer at the time of relaxing and certainly gives freshness upon consumption. Bottle shape is imagined to have a pair of hands folded position behind the head like a man who was relaxing. This contains message that it can deliver freshness to every customer. There were no verbal aspects in this ad. But the message is delivered to consumers is
very clear. This beer can be a best friend when spending spare time or want to find inspirations.
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5.2.2 Analysis of Meaning
This advertisement has connotative meaning because the designer used other communicative system (visual) to create a message and deliver it to the consumers. The designer only used visual without verbal but the message can be delivered clearly.
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5.2.3 Analysis of Function
The advertisement has no verbal signs. However, it contains message delivered to consumer by the verbal signs. It is about the freshness that can be obtained from this beer. So this advertisement has informational function, because it gives information to consumers about freshness of Heineken beer.
The two Heineken beer advertisements that were analysed contain visual and verbal aspects. However, the more dominant was the visual aspect rather than verbal aspects to deliver a message to the readers or customers. Both signs have meaning and function in their presentation. Connotative meaning, and conceptual meaning were used in this type of advertisement, because the signs conveyed about information, facts, instruction and persuasion. They were conveyed through message or content of the advertisement. The informational function of the ad was used by the advertiser.
Dyer, G. 1993. Advertising as Communication. London: Methuen & Co.Ltd.
Leech, Geoffrey. 1974. Semantic: the Study of Meaning First Edition. Middlesex: Penguin Bool Ltd.
Leech, Geoffrey. 1966. English in Advertising: A Linguistic Study of Advertising in Great Britain. London: Longman.
http://www.coloribus.com/adsarchive/prints/heineken-candle-14568355/
http://www.toxel.com/inspiration/2009/12/24/creative-heineken-beer-ads/
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