Semiotics of Febreze Advertisement
What makes a good sign ? Signifier and the signified in modern ad
This Febreze advertisement is designed by 4129Grey Advertising Agency, based in Turkey. Published in October 2019, this design titled ‘Odour Chart’ visualised the impact of Febreze AIR freshener spray in eliminating bad odours.
Signifier and Signified
A clear signifier in this advertisement is the mouldy cheese. The cheese (signifier) signifies bad odour coming from expired food (signified). The connotation of unpleasant smell further triggers nausea in some of us and might associate us with past experiences with bad odour such as instances when we forget to throw away expired food in the kitchen.
The mouldy cheese is designed as a pie chart in which if we pay attention to, the percentage of area covered by the cheese is approximately 80%. Interestingly, the text next to it — “Bad odour makes it 84% harder to remember our memories” corresponds to the pie chart’s percentage. As such, the combination of statistics (thats is 84%) and the pie chart shape are another more subtle signifier of this design. Putting into the Febreze brand’s context, the signified mental construct is the strong odour elimination ability of Febreze AIR product, so powerful that it fights off our fear of forgetting almost all of our memories.
The study of semiotics is further branched out into semantics, syntactics and pragmatics. We will analyse this Febreze ad using the three levels of semiotics.
Semantics
We know that the brand name ‘Febreze’ is derived from the words ‘fabric’ and ‘breeze’. In literal meaning, ‘Febreze’ means refreshing fabrics is a breeze — getting rid of unpleasant smell has never been easier ! In the design, there is an expired cheese covered in mould, which contains a literal meaning of inedible food. Although the semantics of a sign is independent of context, there are other conditions that can influence its meaning. For example, in the French culture, the (in)famous blue cheese is made with a type of mould called Penicillium. Therefore, the French might not interpret the mouldy cheese in the advertisement as an expired food that is unsafe to consume. However, as blue cheese does give off a pungent aroma (comparable to sweaty sock smell), this Febreze ad that features a huge mouldy cheese successfully achieved the same message of bad odour in all cultural contexts.
Syntactics
The shape of the wheel cheese in the ad corresponds to a 84% solid filled pie chart. As cheese is universally known to be yellow and mould to be in green or black colour, the ad uses these colours to design a real-world expired cheese. Inspecting the design more carefully, we can see a beam of light shined in 45 degrees down from the top left of the design canvas, creating shadows at the sliced area and bottom right of the cheese. This further emphasises the 3D realistic object feeling of the cheese. The big cheese wheel is also positioned in the center of the ad, converging the viewer’s attention to it. As the ad is designed in a very minimalistic manner with a few yet unambiguous elements, the receivers take very little time to interpret the required message that it effectively conveys.
Pragmatics
In a normal world, most of us cannot tolerate the strong puking smell of expired milk product such as cheese; and we also enjoy nice scents rather than pungent smell lingering in our living space. Keeping the context in mind, we can start analysing the pragmatics of this design.
The intention of purpose of this advertisement appears to be heavily imperative. With the indicative text — “Bad odour makes it 84% harder to remember our memories” — that unpleasant smell can lead to forgetfulness, Febreze is asking users to take action to fight off the bad odour. The ad influences the behaviour of its receivers to use a Febreze air freshener spray to spray off the odour. Febreze understands that design appeals to not only what we see, but also our emotions and feelings. The brand leverages the combination of signifiers (mouldy cheese and the 84% text) to subconsciously make the receivers feel insecure of having their precious memories forgotten. This creates a sense of urgency for users to act immediately to kill bad odour using the Febreze AIR freshener spray product.
Febreze explores the semiotic relationship between signifiers and the signified through this advertisement. The brand did not explicitly instructs the users to use its product to fight off bad odour. However, through associating signs with our visceral feelings, we as users or receivers understand the implicit message — “bad odour has to be eliminated not later but now and the Febreze air freshener is the most powerful product” — at first glance.
This article is a reflection journal for an in-lecture exercise (C) of NM3217 Principles of Visual Communication Design course at National University of Singapore.
Recommended by Li Hui
The semester has just started and I have never been busier ! Juggling between full-time internship, responsibility of Residential Assistant and taking two courses in NUS, I tend to feel overwhelmed. When I am stressed, I turn towards playing the Roland FP-30X digital piano I have in my room. Sometimes, I prop my door open, letting the music flows in the corridor !
