Cultural Analysis

Every time a company is ready to launch a new product they also have to think about the way in which they would appeal to the public and pursuade the people to buy their products. There are many ways in which an ad can influence the public and get the desired goal - selling the product. Emotions, gender issues, class, sex - all of these can have the effect of buying a certain product. For this assignment I decided to compare two ad campaignes from two worldwide known brands: Chanel and Dior. These two ads have two things in common: they are both ads for perfumes and both parfumes are advertised by a celebrity.

Chanel, a French fashion house founded by Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel who herself said: "simplicity is the key of all true elegance" had Nicole Kidman for this campaign as a spokesperson and simplicity is what defines this ad campaign. Only Nicole Kidman is in the ad and she wears a black dress and LBD or little black dress is basically a trade mark of this fashion house. The ad itself is actually quite modest as Nicole turned her back and is not even watching us. The dress has a low cut on the back and we can see a necklace which has a Chanel pendant. The ad, of course, includes the famous inscription for Chanel No. 5 and a picture of the bottle.

On the other hand, Dior, another French high-fashion company has a completely different approach for their ad campaign. Dior tries to appeal to the public through sex and by doing this the saying "sex sells" really does make sense. In this ad, Chalize Theron, who was named sexiest woman alive by Esquire Magazine in 2007, is looking at us seductively and while doing that she is showing a lot of skin. In fact, with one hand, she is taking of an earing while with the other she is about to strip down her dress. We can also see the memorable "j'adore Dior" inscription and there is, just as in the Chanel ad, a picture of the perfume bottle.

Even though these ads have a different approach they both send the same message: "buy our parfume because Nicole Kidman/Charlize Theron uses it". Many companies use this approach, they use a celebrity to advertise their products and it seems that this is the best approach because, hey, everybody wants to either be Charlize or be with her and apparently, you can to it by buying the perfume she uses.