The Photographic Message: Common people Images in Contemporary Ads
The use of common people and objects as persuasive tools is an advertising strategy focuses on the assumption that common man can easily be identified with the masses i.e. target group for an advertiser. The ads feature people who appear to be average and typical ant thus lead the reader to believe that the product is for everyone (Howe and Edelstein 2000: 24). As Goddard (2005: 81-82) points out, ‘symbolic representation can be a powerful source of meaning in texts of all kinds. Symbols are much more about associations of ideas than about any literal or straightforward equation, and much more about group convention than about individual personalized meaning’. Accordingly, the semiotic analysis in this paper contains what Barthes (1977: 33) explained as follows: ‘…if the image contains signs, we can be sure that in advertising these signs are full, formed with a view to the optimum reading: the advertising image is frank or at least emphatic’. Keywords: semiotics, images, ads, common people, denotation, connotation.