Ad Analysis

While flipping through my housemates Glamour magazine I came upon an ad for Dolce and Gabbana’s fragrance line “Light Blue”. The fragrance line comes in variations for both men and women and is a very popular scent. This ad immediately caught my eye because it’s set on a boat in what looks like water on the side of a cliff.

As a water bug, the woman in a bathing suit and the fact that they were in the water drew me in. The ad doesn’t have much in it other than the man and woman, both of which look like they have just recently gotten out of the water. The background of the boat, water and cliff is blurred, with the man and woman as the centermost focus of the layout. The blonde woman is in a small white bathing suit and is straddling the side of the boat. Her head of upturned and mouth slightly parted. The man is behind her, with his arm wrapped completely around her waist. He has a very serious straight on gaze and is placed appearing a few inches taller than the woman. The perfume bottles are placed in the lower right third of the page.

At first glance this ad is just a sexy man and woman together on a boat. The symbol of water usually means cleanliness and freshness, with white (bathing suit) representing cleanliness and purity. At first glance a reader may read this ad with an intended message of “Light Blue has a sexy clean fresh scent”. But when read a little more in depth, the meaning to the reader, and most likely the intended emotion meant by the encoder, is somewhat different.

To start, the woman is wearing a white bathing suit, which should in common American culture represent purity. However, this woman is in a full frontal straddle the boat and if her bathing suit had moved about a millimeter the reader would be getting a free show. Her expression is also very sexual as her head is tilted back and her mouth is parted. This completely contradicts what the color of white in her bathing suit should represent. This image is meant to sexualize the perfume, subliminally telling the reader that if you wear this, you will be desired and protected by a strong man. You’ll have more opportunity to see the world and find yourself in sexy exotic destinations with hunky men.

The man represents power. His strong gaze, body placement (directly behind her) and arm wrapped firmly against the woman’s midriff shows that he is in control of her. The mid-drift is the area of he body that can be swayed and pulled to be manipulated by someone so his grasp of her here shows his protection/control over her in the situation.

One thing the class and myself felt was odd is that the two bottles of fragrance come in two different shapes. The rigid, taller one was actually the perfume while the shorter curved bottle was the cologne. This was strange and unexpected because women or “female” things are usually displayed as shorter and more curvaceous while men are tall and with hard edges. This was especially bizarre being that the ad itself displayed very stereotypical “male and female” roles.