A Semiotics Analysis Of Marlboro Cigarette Advertising

Advertising is a huge machine for making dreams. As a form of mass communication in contemporary society, it has a strong influence on the audience: applying a variety of perceptual symbols to weave dreams, creating demands, stimulating people's desires for consumption and influencing consumers'attitudes and behaviors. Saussure's theories about semiotics and other critical theories about advertising semiotics provide theoretical foundations to examine how advertising works to make the audience unconsciously being manipulated. Marlboro cigarette advertising, fully reflecting the persuasive function to consumptions and manipulation to consumers, becomes the object of this thesis.This article attempts to unmask the Marlboro cigarette advertising from the perspective of semiotics to argue its manipulation of consumers by encoding the signifiers and signified. As more and more constructed needs are brought into the realm of sign consumption, Marlboro cigarette consumers lose autonomous control and surrender to the codes.This thesis consists of three parts. The first part is an introduction, giving a brief review on advertising, Marlboro and studies on semiotics and advertising semiotics. The second part has three chapters. Chapter one reveals the Marlboro advertising make consumers consciously accept the visual symbol meanings by creating spiritual needs; chapter two discusses the emphasis on the superiority of Marlboro by making vivid audio symbols meaningful; chapter three argues that Marlboro cigarette advertising induces consumers to be loyalty for Marlboro by separating brand symbols from its signified, becoming an independent brand spirit. The last part is conclusion: through the clever application of the various signs, advertising casts a veil of sense to Marlboro cigarette, so that consumers are willing to accept its manipulation.