OMO Advert CSP Blog Tasks

 

1) 1955

2) As housewives who were always cleaning, cooking, and if they had kids, they were taking care of them/raising them aswell. Men were seen as the "superior" gender in this time period.

3) The heading connotates that this product will make clothing brighter and more appealing, as the heading says "makes white bright", which suggests that this product can even make white cloth even brighter than it is.

4) The costume the woman is wearing seems to be a green dress (since there is a white piece of fabric on the neck area); she is wearing make-up, most notably bright red lipstick. She is placed presumably outside, hanging the clothes on a clothes line, while looking surprised. The costume and make-up reinforces the idea that she is a formal housewife, as wives in the 1950's were meant to look "pretty" or "professional".

5) There is a picture of the OMO box on the bottom left presumably to show the consumer what it looks like in-store.

6) Red (used mostly on the text in this advert) connotates surprise/shock or importance. White and blue connotate sanitation/cleaning, even more so as the advert is promoting a cleaning product.

7) The anchorage text persuades the reader to buy this product as it describes it as if it's better than any other product on the market, talking about how great it is; the anchorage text reinforces the heading/slogan of "OMO makes white bright", in an effort to make the reader buy the product being advertised.

8) Women are being represented as housewives who stay at home taking care of the kids and doing chores. The advert heavily talks about washing, and the advert features a picture of a woman doing said washing. The stereotype for women back in the 1950's was that they were not as smart as men or the "inferior"/weak gender, and were commonly housewives who looked "elegant" and/or "beautiful".

9) The preferred reading the advertisers wanted is to reinforce the old stereotype of women being the "housewives" who were weaker than men. At this time, women were starting to work more jobs instead of staying at home, much to the dismay of men who didn't want/like change. They started working mostly during WW2, to help their respected countries.

10) The oppositional reading of this text is that the reader might feel quite offended at something like this; in the modern era, we've accepted the fact that women aren't "dumb" or "inferior", so something like this is pretty insensitive and provocative.