A Semiotic Analysis Of Apple’s Classical Advertisements

Advertisements are mighty legend makers for modern people. Applying all kind of signs, advertisers attempt to stimulate the potential consumers’ desire for the commodity. Advertisements have a great influence upon consumers’ mind and action, by secretly but naturally attaching different meanings to various commodities. Saussure, Barthe and other semiotic theories are the foundation for the critical analysis of these advertisements. Saussre states that a sign is made up of a matched pair of signifier and signified. And there are three levels of meaning according to Barthe’s Mythology Theory:denotative meaning, connotative meaning and the myth. Advertisements make additional value skillfully bound to the commodities, enabling the audience to transform the denotative and the connotative meaning into the myth of the commodity, and making the audience unconsciously manipulated by the collaborative work. Apple’s classical advertisements,"1984" and "Think Different", fully reflecting advertisement’s function of persuasion and manipulation of consumers, are the object of this thesis.(cf. Twitchell,2003:144)This article attempts to unmask the Apple advertising, the two advertisements, in particular, from the perspective of semiotics to argue how it manipulated consumers by encoding the signifiers and the signified. As video signs and celebrity signs were appropriately employed in the advertisements, Apple became a famous and still more famous brand sign after the advertisements were broadcast, with an overwhelming effect on the audience, which symbolizes individualism, freedom, wisdom, modern life style… and by purchasing which you will get what you want and achieve the ideal self. The analysis made in this thesis of signs in Apple advertisements serves in the way that it reminds the mass of consumers to keep a critical eye on them and get away from being manipulated.