A Semiotic Analysis Of Nike Advertising

Advertising is an important means of communication between producers and consumers with the main aim of promoting a product. It uses various symbols to stir the consumers’ hidden desires and build a wonderful world of fantasies. Saussure’s semiotic theory and a variety of advertising semiotic critique theory provide a theoretical framework to explore and examine how advertising makes consumers unconsciously be manipulated. It becomes the research object of this thesis to analyze how Nike advertising manipulates consumers and influences their consumption behaviors.This thesis attempts to analyze Nike advertising from the perspective of Saussure’s semiotics. Nike advertiser encodes spiritual needs, lifestyles and values into advertising to make consumers gradually lose self-control and yield to the codes.This thesis consists of three parts. The first part reviews the history and actuality of the researches on advertising, semiotics, advertising semiotics and Nike advertising done by domestic and foreign researches, the significance of the research,and the layout of this thesis. The second part is the main part of this paper. Chapter one analyzes Nike advertising uses various visual symbols to make consumers consciously accept the visual symbol meanings; chapter two reveals that it encodes vivid aural symbols into advertising to heighten the atmosphere and stimulate the consumers’ desires to purchase; chapter three demonstrates Nike advertising makes the brand symbols be separated from its signified and become an independent brand spirit through various techniques and ways to enhance the consumers’ brand loyalty.The last part draws a conclusion: Nike advertising cleverly uses various symbols to make Nike products have sign value. Consumers are willing to be manipulated and enjoy symbolic meanings brought by consumption.