Session 4a: Erotics In Advertising
5th Global Conference
Friday 6th November – Sunday 8th November 2009
Salzburg, Austria
Eroticism in Advertising
Anil Dal
Communication Sciences Faculty, Public Relations and Advertising Department, Anadolu University, Turkey
This present paper is concerned with semiologic analysis of erotic ads that, in order to find out the hidden meanings and intention of using eroticism in advertisements. To achieve this goal, this study aims to decode what kind of connotations, myths used in these advertisements.
Semiology, applied to advertising, is an attempt to construct the meaning from both verbal and non-verbal signs through understanding and interpretation. The semiology of advertising offers interdisciplinary perspectives on the study of sign exchange and research in commodity exchange. So in this interdisciplinary field, semiology contributes to advertising research with respect both to methodology and to the object of investigation. The semiotic approach suggests that the meaning of an ad does not float on the surface just waiting to be internalized by the viewer, but is built up out of the ways that different signs are organized and related to each other, both within the ad and through external references to wider belief systems. In advertisements, the meaning is created by transferring meaning from one system of signification with which is familiar (that calls the referent system), to that of the product with which is unfamiliar. The products initially take on meaning as the signified from one system of meaning (the referent system) is correlated with the signified of the product. Once this transfer has taken place the product itself comes to mean. More specifically, for advertising to create meaning the reader or the viewer has to do some work because the meaning is not lying there on the page; one has to make an effort to grasp it.
In this study five printed advertisements that have sexual association and eroticism which were chosen by purposive sampling analyzed by semiologic terms that constituted and developed by different semioticians as Floch, Barthes, and Williamson.
Turkish University Youth Responses to the Erotic Advertisements: A Survey in Anadolu University
Çağlar Genç and Anil Dal
Communication Sciences Faculty, Communication Department, Anadolu University, Turkey and Communication Sciences Faculty, Public Relations and Advertising Department, Anadolu University, Turkey
This study focused on the attitudes of the Turkish youth to the advertisements that have erotic representatives. Because the eroticism is a taboo in Turkey the responses to the erotic advertisements is an unknown field for both advertisers and academicians.
Eroticism and sex are used in today’s advertising everywhere so the use of erotic stimuli in print advertising has become almost commonplace in current advertising practices. It is not unusual to find provocatively posed and attired (or unattired) models promoting any number of items in general-interest consumer magazines. This routine use of erotic stimuli in print advertising has resulted in mixed consumer responses. Because the whole issue of sex, sexual innuendo, and what is considered decent, moral, and/or acceptable in a culture or society is in constant evolution advertisers are finding it increasingly difficult to determine whether their viewers will perceive ads containing a relatively high level of female nudity as “sexy” or sexist”. So the impact of the use of such advertising on society should be examined.
To get information about thoughts, feelings and attitudes about the erotic advertisements a survey conducted with the university students.
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