Semiotic Analysis

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Semiotic analysis of persuasive strategies in advertising Targeted for children Advertising is a form of mass informational communication intended to persuade consumers so as to maximize the results of marketing. To persuade a consumer to buy a product, an advertiser must produce persuasive messages, which requires the advertiser to analyze information such as the consumer’s value, attitude, class, culture, and so on. In many cases, people tend to buy products not because they need them but because they are attracted by the advertising messages. The messages of advertising are not simple but complicated and strategic. For consumers, it is very difficult to reject the advertising “attraction” because the advertiser has already analyzed the reader as a target audience in terms of psychological, cultural, and social environment in order to produce “powerful messages.” And, when it becomes advertising to “children,” the concerns over “the persuasive power of advertising” are paid more attentions. As a result, a variety of debates and academic works on “children and advertising” has been developed in the last decade. The diversity of academic approach to “children and advertising” includes sociologists, psychologists, behavioral scientists, market researchers, lawyers, advertisers, children and parent’s organizations, national government, etc. Yet, this diversity and a great deal of debates have neither settled much concerns over “advertising to children” nor gotten rid of “the advertising targeted for children” from media. The structure of advertising messages will be analyzed in the fields of persuasion and media studies. Vestergaard and Schroder (1985) point out that the ultimate aim of all advertising is “to sell the product.” Thus, in creating an advertising message, the task of the advertiser is to produce an advertising message that
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