John Berger and Judith Williamson.

   John Berger in ‘Ways of Seeing’ analyses adverts and talks about how and why we as consumers become so attracted to them and end up buying products we may not normally purchase. Berger says:

‘It proposes to each of us that we transform ourselves, or our lives, by buying something more. This more, it proposes, will make us in some way richer- even though we will be poorer by having spent our money.’ 

   What Berger is talking about here is how adverts make us believe that their product will better our lives, and if we do not buy it we will be worse off for it. The people used in adverts are always attractive and seem well off, this adds to the idea that if you buy this product you will definitely have a better life. One example within today’s society is the lynx advert, they use usually geeky looking guys who once put on their deodorant are surrounded by attractive women, this connotes to the audience that by using lynx you are guaranteed to get with an attractive woman. This will obviously appeal to the young male audience who will be more likely now to go out and buy the product, this technique is used within all kinds of adverts, they will choose very carefully what sort of people and scenarios are used in order to make you envious of the people within the adverts and thus attract you to go out and buy the product.

‘The publicity image steals her love for herself as she is, and offers it back to her at the price of the product’ 

   Williamson says that adverts communicate to us through a level of meaning, with both denotation and connotation. The advert starts with the ‘truth’; this is integral to our understanding due to constant reproduction of ideas known in our society. The ‘Referent system’ meaning entities forming an integrated whole, is the system in which we perceive and understand the method of an advert which Williamson sees as a circular process. The advert in context denotes the product in which it intends to sell, by connoting the idea of the product through our already existing knowledge due to our culture and how we are brought up within our society. What is then connoted to us is what is made to denote the product. This is the relationship that the advert undertakes in order to communicate its message.