Den övertygande reklamen? : En analys av Pripps Blå och Norrlands Gulds reklambilder

Sammanfattning: Modern societies are generally becoming increasingly capitalist in nature and economies of these societies are thus likely to become more focused on consumer consumption. Advertising plays a vital role in contemporary society where we, as consumers and citizens, are surrounded by it everywhere we look and everywhere we go. This puts pressure on advertisers to become more creative and to explore new ways of marketing their products and services in an already saturated environment. We believe that the added pressure and the already established role of marketing in society make advertisements an interesting and telling object for analysis. This is particularly the case with regards to the concept of selling and marketing products that have qualities that are known to be less than beneficial for our health. This paper analyzes four commercial advertisements marketing beer; a product that we argue has qualities that can be seen as potentially bad for the health of individuals and for societies. The brands advertising the products, which are subject to our analysis, are Pripps Blå and Norrlands Guld. The aim was to use rhetorical and semiotic analyses to find which strategies had been employed in the advertisements to sell the above-mentioned brands, thus allowing us to study rhetorical techniques drawing on cultural conventions. Our analysis showed that each of the four advertisements in our study contained rhetorical arguments; of which a recurring argument in all of the advertisements was pathos. This was strengthened by the semiotic analysis which showed that the majority of connotations found were of an emotional character. Our conclusion is therefore that Pripps Blå and Norrlands Gulds strategy for selling their beer is to appeal to our senses and emotions rather than our logic and rationality. This strategy we believe to be founded in the cultural conventions and ideological beliefs currently existing in Swedish society.