Dior Chérie Perfume
Many advertisements utilize bright colors to catch our attention. However, often times these advertisements have deeper meanings to them. The Dior ad for the Chérie campaign shows a young woman holding a bouquet of balloons floating over Paris. Dior implicitly shows us the coming of age transition from teenage girls to young adulthood. In the campaign for this product, they attempt to make their brand appear universal. One message they are conveying is that if you spray this product, you will lift off. In this Dior ad for the Chérie campaign, the company attempts to emulate the transition from girlhood to adulthood in order to appeal to a young audience.
The Dior Chérie ad has a very clear intended audience: young women and girls. The model appears to be young, has bangs, and wears a prom-like, bright pink dress. This better appeals to high school girls and young adults because of the character’s picture. This helps to sell the perfume because a mother could see this ad and picture her teenage daughter, just like the girl in the ad, which would make the product more enticing. Chérie means “sweetheart,” in French, and this name helps connect the product to younger girls or women. Sweetheart is a common term used by elders or loved ones to refer to a young girl. The girl’s shape is similar to that of the Eiffel Tower behind her, relating her to Paris, which make her more appealing because the Eiffel Tower is often associated with romance, just like perfume. The ad’s purpose is very prevalent to the viewer as it attempts to sell its product to its young audience.
This ad is all about the maturation of a little girl to a young adult. The mute pastel colors of the balloons make the ad appear more sophisticated, in contrast to bold and bright colors one may see in children’s commercials. Marketing teams do not do this by mistake as, “(bright) colors can be used to generate good feelings and increase the persuasiveness of advertising” (Gorn 1388). The advertisement utilized this science by making the center of the photograph bright to draw one’s focus and evoke feelings of joy and happiness. The combination of color tones helps convey the transition because a lot of the time balloons appeal more striking to children, but in this ad, the muted colors are more elegant showing that while girls may mature, they continue to have fun and never lose their childlike wonder.
The Dior ad clearly attempts to show the transitional period from a girl’s teenage years to her young adult life. The brand name is repetitive and appears twice on the ad. It is in the top right corner in a more mature font and the other location is next to the girl in big ribbon letters. The difference in the appearance of the brand name connects to the transition between adolescence and young adult. One appears more sophisticated and the other not so much. The bright dress contrasts with a light background to draws attention to the girl and her product. This dress makes the young girl look lively and stand out against her surroundings. The pastel balloon bouquet also draws attention to the girl and product. The appeal to stand out when transitioning from a girl to a woman draws in the audience as they can relate to this desire to be different, elegant, and pretty. In the article “Semiotics of Advertising and the Discourse of Consumption,” the author states, “In the print advertisement, the scenario presented in the text and the image constitute and objective correlative for the quality and value of the emotional satisfaction or a need or desire” (Ketterman 55). The ad shows a gorgeous girl who appears classy and a bit spontaneous which creates a desire for the consumer to be like the girl. This further draws the consumer in and helps to sell the product.
The ad’s central focus is on femininity and maturity. They are also conveying the idea that using this perfume will make one stand out. The background, Paris, ties together sophistication and romance. In the article “Place in Advertising,” The authors first words are, “Place, is used as setting or symbol, can be a vital component in the graphics and text of modern advertisements. We use the term place in its common-vernacular meaning to examine how advertisers invoke real or imagined sites to create an appealing context for marketing a product or a service” (Fleming 1). The author is stating how the choice of “place” used as the background in an advertisement, plays a part in eliciting feelings towards the audience.However, the bright dress draws the focus to the girl and mutes the glamorous background of Paris. Paris is an appealing background for many pictures and usually draws the eye of the onlooker, but this ad directly draws the audience’s attention away from the city to the girl and the perfume.
One of the main messages from the ad is that when you spray this perfume you will figuratively be lifted off of the ground. Attention is drawn to the brand name which directs the audience to the product they are selling. Because the model appears so light and thin and is floating in the sky, it makes the perfume also come off as light and airy. She is holding the large bottle of perfume implying that when she sprays the perfume she is lifted into the sky, bringing her up to the more sophisticated Dior logo, which could signify that she is lifting off into young adulthood or maturity.
The Dior ad for the Cherie perfume targets young girls and women and signifies the transition of becoming a woman. The brand is trying to appear more universal in order to appeal to a wider audience and sell more products. By placing the model in foreground and Paris in background, they call attention to the girl’s development. The main message is that with a spray of this product, you will get a lift off.
Works Cited
Kettemann, Bernhard. “Semiotics of Advertising and the Discourse of Consumption.” AAA: Arbeiten Aus Anglistik Und Amerikanistik, vol. 38, no. 1, 2013, pp. 53–67. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43025841.
Gorn, Gerald J., et al. “Effects of Color As an Executional Cue in Advertising: They’re in the Shade.” Management Science, vol. 43, no. 10, 1997, pp. 1387–1400. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2634413.
Fleming, Douglas K., and Richard Roth. “Place in Advertising.” Geographical Review, vol. 81, no. 3, 1991, pp. 281–291. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/215632.
