Advert Analysis: A Reflection

For this activity, my group and I analyzed a Marlboro brand cigarette advertisement from the 1950s. In our analysis, we discovered that Marlboro encompassed three main ideas/themes that they used to sell the cigarettes. These main ideas were exoticness, affluence and wealth, and they form the core of what this advertisement is about.

Marlboro's specific selection of these themes is a reflection of what was happening in society at the time. Around the early 1950s, air travel first began to be commercialized, but it was probably still quite expensive and reserved for the more affluent (upper-class) - hence our society was at a time when the rich were able to travel; and subsequently "exoticness" began being tied to money. This explains why so much of the advertisement is based on travelling and being rich, as these things were now linked. It was probably trendy for the rich to travel - this demonstrates the bandwagon effect, where people are told that they should want to travel since many wealthy people are also doing so.
 

The choice of these themes to sell Marlboro cigarettes also reflects what people valued at that time. It is logical that knowing what ideals society prized, Marlboro would play on those ideals to make us believe buying Marlboro cigarettes is the equivalent of achieving them. We thus see that our culture values the attributes of being different, having money, and having a good relationship. These traditional values are the things we believed to be important, and that could create a 'perfect life'. More interestingly, however, is what our society thought these values looked like. For instance, a good relationship was depicted as being between a man and a woman (this is discussed later), and being different can be accomplished just by travelling abroad. It reflects the narrow mindedness of society then.
 

Something to note in this advert is that both the man and the woman are white. This is worrisome, since they are supposed to embody the 'perfect people' (since they are happily married, on holiday, rich etc.). This advert was published in 1952 - still 3 years before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on that bus. Our society was thus at a time when segregation was still common, and the 'ideal' figures were white. Additionally, they were also very wealthy - since they could afford suits, pearls, and holidays etc. This advert therefore blatantly served the wealthy and the white, and ignored people of colour as well as the poor. This is because their stories did not fit in with the 'perfect' idea Marlboro was trying to attach to it's cigarettes.

 

Another marginalized group is homosexuals. The idea of love and of a perfect relationship is shown using a man and a woman, and this again reflects the traditional ideas that this ad employs. Again,  1952 is a long time before 1989, when Denmark became the first country to legalize same-sex marriages. In other words, any one that is not rich or white is ignored in this advertisement - all because they did not fit in with the 'perfect' idea.

 

Another concept the advert is (unintentionally?) perpetuating is that of conformism. This contradicts the first central theme of 'being different' (very strongly)but if we all want to be different, does that not make us all the same? Marlboro is selling safe ideas, they are traditional, things we are taught to aspire towards from a young age. Things like having money, finding a partner and settling down, but still being a little different - we have always been told to work for these things. Marlboro made an especially clever marketing choice by focusing on affluence, especially since it has always been (and continues to be) marketed to the public as the pinnacle of success. In this way we see Marlboro employing a combination of the bandwagon and problem/benefit technique. They use the problem/solution method slightly differently, however, fixating more on the solution as opposed to them problem. They sell the perfect life that Marlboro brings as a resolution to our problem of being commonplace, and this rubs of very well since the idea of the perfect life that they are selling is something their audience can identify with.

 

Finally, I would like to discuss the intended audience. First, we can assume they would be white - this allows them to relate to the rich couple on at least one level. More specifically, the audience could be said to be the middle/working class people. This is due to the excessive luxurious and affluent imagery used, which would appeal to people who can't have it and are working towards it more than the rich, who already have these things. Looking at this ad from an average, middle class point of view, the themes it purports suits them very well. Being a part of the 'working class' label, it is no surprise that they would want to be different, while their lack of hoards of cash would make them desire affluence, and their idea of love may be more traditional, subscribing to long-held beliefs and values.

All in all, this advertisement has been influence by real world events going on at the time, and reflects our state of mind collectively as a society, the norms of the time, and the ideals that we prized

 

 

 

 

Shampoo: Setting the Record Straight

     Have you ever questioned the origin of soap? One would think something that plays such a quotidian role in our lives, like soap does, would have more thought given to where it comes from. And yet as a history professor, I find the lack of information on this topic very abysmal.

 

     Indeed, it may be the extreme erroneousness of the historical fact shrouding it, as opposed to a lack thereof, that really irks me. Despite my teaching Paleoanthropological Studies at the University of California, Berkeley for three decades now, it still never ceases to amaze me how many undergraduates do not know the true origin of soap. Many of them subscribe to the typical layman's belief - that soap making started with the Babylonians in 2800 B.C., and that these Akkadian-speaking people were the first to master this art. While it is not incorrect that the Babylonians were very skilled at the creation of castile, they were in no way the first to utilize soap.

 

     Back all those years ago, when I was a young woman working on my thesis (The Sanitation Regimens of Neanderthals - Jane Pollack, 1986), I found some very interesting journals reporting cave drawings that depicted Neanderthal men and women washing themselves in rivers. What's more, they showed the Neanderthals rubbing a special substance, encased in pockets they fashioned out of leaves, on their bodies before entering the river to bathe. Now, this rather puzzled me at the time, as the majority of the American historical community held the origin of soap to be Babylonian. And while I did have some doubts then, the next find I made both shocked me and confirmed my suspicions.

     Africa, the home of our Neanderthal ancestors, was also home to a host of other animal species that have now become extinct. To this day, the scientific community is still not entirely certain of all the animals that existed then - since we only glean what we know through examining fossils. New animals are being discovered regularly - and one such animal is what Neanderthals used to call the sheam (pronunciation: /ʃæɱ/). Belonging to the Sphenisciformes order and the Camalidae family, the sheam was an amphibious, herbivorous bird that grew up to 1.7m (male) tall and weighed approximately 150 kg (male). The sheam was flightless, and apart from this had all other characteristics of birds, except that females had scales on their underbellies. It is likely that they were covered in bright yellow and orange plumage. What really sets the sheam apart, however, is that it defecated not just feces, but excess fat as well. This fact is backed by virtually all historical animal scientists, and has good standing in the historical community albeit being fairly recent.

     After extensive research and carefully sifting through hundreds of scholarly journals, I have come to the conclusion that this substance - the excess fat excrement of the sheam, was used by Neanderthals to cleanse their bodies. Modern soap is, after all, simply a processed concoction of animal/vegetable fat, and the excrement of the sheam was essentially a severely abstracted version of this. While we will never know who exactly it was that discovered this fantastic use of sheam lipids, the Neanderthals did leave us with a word very widely recognized today - sheam-poo. At a time when language was at its most coarse, the word 'poo' referred to excrement, or feces. Etymologically, it arose from the sound most Neanderthals made when coming across normal defecation - the classic 'pooh!' of disgust. Fortunately, one amongst them recognized the cleansing properties of the sheam's feces, resulting in ancient humans using 'shampoo' for the first time ever. Indeed the word 'soap' is a contraction of 'shampoo' - as it gradually became 'shamp', 'shaomp', and finally 'shaop' or 'soap' as we know it today.

     So the next time you take a shower, please bear the correct history of soap in mind. The Neanderthals do not receive enough recognition for the path they paved for future human growth, and we can start giving credit where it is due by acknowledging the progressive steps, such as this one, that our ancestors made.

Dr. Jane Pollack is a professor of Paleoanthropological Science at the University of California, Berkeley. The extensive research she has conducted in this field places her as one of the leading paleoanthropologists of our time. She lives in California with her husband and two dogs.


SOURCES:
-http://www.cleaninginstitute.org/clean_living/soaps__detergent_history.aspx
-http://www.soaphistory.net/
-http://canadianarchaeology.com/caa/publications/canadian-journal-archaeology/37/1
-http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/humans/humankind/n.html
-http://www.livescience.com/7380-chatty-cave-men-neanderthal-talk-good.html
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Llama
-http://birding.about.com/od/Bird-Trivia/a/What-Is-A-Bird.htm
-http://www.millersoap.com/soapanimal.html