"Hello, girlfriend": an advertising narrative in the context of a visual turn (using the example of Wrigley's and Dirol brands)

Platitsyn Aleksandr Vladimirovich Master's degree; Department of Journalism, Media Communications and Advertising; Griboyedov Moscow University 66A Zeleny Prospekt str., office 311, Moscow, 111396, Russia alexanderplatitsyn@gmail.com Other publications by this author     Arepjev Andrei Valentinovich Senior Lecturer; Department of Translation, Translation Studies and Intercultural Communications; A.S. Griboyedov Moscow University 66A Zeleny Prospekt str., office 211, Moscow, 111396, Russia avarepev@yandex.ru

Golovanov Aleksandr Nikolaevich Senior Lecturer; Department of Translation, Translation Studies and Intercultural Communications; A.S. Griboyedov Moscow University 66A Zeleny Prospekt str., office 311, Moscow, 111396, Russia headmanjr@yandex.ru

The advertising narrative in the context of media convergence is influenced by many heterogeneous factors. The main one is considered to be the technical aspect, that is, the evolution of hardware that allows you to transmit and distribute information. However, nowadays the dominant position in humanitarian research is occupied by the practice of interdisciplinary work combining different methods, including culturological ones. A number of researchers (M. McLuhan ^[1], M. Castels ^[2], V. V. Savchuk ^[3], V. A. Evdokimov ^[4], M. Bednarek ^[5]) in one way or another, they turned to the cultural code of time in order to interpret the media discourse. The relationship between aesthetics and communication theory was developed in the lectures of F. Kittler ^[6].

Already in the mid-1970s, the American philosopher S. Sontag drew attention to a fundamental change in the structure of mass communication. According to Sontag, this change is based on an orientation towards intensive consumption of not so much meanings as forms of content. In particular, she writes that "the desire to confirm reality and expand the experience through photography is an aesthetic consumerism that everyone is infected with today" ^{[7, p. 18]}. It is important for us to pay attention not to the capitalization process itself, but to its aesthetic character. This kind of statement means that mass communication at the end of the century is tuned to the visual series and — in a narrower sense — to the visual perception of the audience, which is directly related to aestheticization. Philosopher V. Martynov also recorded the inertia of the visual turn in the semantic space of the late 2000s: "Slipping out from under the power of the word is not a temptation, but a given <...> the time in which we live coincided with the time when the verbally oriented paradigm of culture was replaced by a visually oriented paradigm" ^[8].

In 1994, German art historian G. Boehm was the first to formulate the concept of visual rotation (ikonische wende). Its essence lies in the transition from the classical verbal communication model to visual communication tools. The focus of Boehm's attention is on issues related to the structure of the image and its resource potential. He appeals to a new visual optics, according to which "what is given to the Logos must also be given to the image, albeit in its own way" ^{[9, p. 31]} (our translation is A.P., A.A., A.G.). It is important to note that the visual turn does not stand in opposition to previous interpretations of course, he only offers an alternative. Since the image can be interpreted both linguistically (R. Rorty) and through the prism of the philosophy of art, the iconic in itself constitutes a prerequisite for interdisciplinarity in matters of understanding aesthetic phenomena.

Modern researchers identify three basic types of academic reflection of visual turn: 1) total reaction (the iconic displaces the usual forms of interaction, thereby radically transforming the cultural code); 2) local reaction (the iconic enters into a dialogue with the usual forms of interaction, and then either constructs a synthetic community or separates from them); 3) instrumental reaction (an attempt to adapt subject—object relations to the emerging the trend in highly specialized industries) ^[10].

The case of total reaction is most representative in the social and political sciences, where the polarization of opinions has been gaining momentum in recent years. Other areas of humanitarian knowledge are characterized by a more conservative approach aimed at theoretical understanding through synthesis (local reaction). As for media research, an instrumental reaction is more relevant here than others, because, firstly, the information market is characterized as a highly specialized industry at the forefront of humanitarian discourse, and secondly, the dynamics of information flows determines the timely nature of resolving certain theoretical contradictions in favor of utilitarian efficiency.

At the present stage, the visual turn dictates the inertial dynamics of the transformation of the actual means of visual representation of images in information sources. This dynamic can be seen primarily in the forms of mass culture. The media text is experiencing the metamorphosis of artistic language. Thus, it is integrated into a horizontal impulse field that produces various aesthetic impressions. Let's define several main directions related to visual reality:

1.       Mass commercial cinema. At the stage of the 1970s, the active use of three-dimensional computer graphics began, primarily to recreate artificial physical objects. After the release of the film "Jaws" (1975, dir. Steven Spielberg) the concept of "blockbuster" is fixed in the language, which determines the commercial success of projects that focus the viewer's attention on the visual side of the picture, as opposed to the scenario ^[11].

2. Television. The crisis of information genres on television after the 1980s is resolved through the intensification of the entertainment spectrum of broadcasts. The percentage of American households with at least one television set at their disposal reaches a peak point in the 1996-97 season (98.4%) ^[12]. The binary term "infotainment" arises, reflecting the convergence of television formats ^[13].

3. Advertising. The domestic media market is facing the privatization of the press against the background of sharp economic changes. As A. Levinson wrote in this regard, "with a deficit economy, that is, under socialism, advertising is impossible. <...> Most of the advertising consumers in our country grew up with a deficit and without advertising. The appearance of the latter for them is an integral part of the shock they have not fully experienced" ^[14]. It is important to pay attention to the sociocultural nature of these reflections. Here, advertising is seen as just one of the links in the chain of psychological shocks. Such a statement of the issue at the dawn of the formation of the advertising industry actualizes the need to expand the methodological base in the field of promotion of private enterprises, creative objects and personal images.

Speaking about the aestheticization of an advertising product in a more substantive way, it is necessary to knowingly separate its key components in terms of their impact on the public. A classic advertising text consists of at least two equal dimensions: 1) narrative, which includes the content of the message, its compositional structure; 2) visual, mainly related to the stylistic aspects of the organization of the message. We proceed from the hypothesis that the narrative dimension should be considered as a constant value rooted in literary text, and further into mythology; while the visual dimension is subject to the dynamics of social demand, which determines its variable nature.

Choosing a particular example for analysis within the boundaries of the indicated topic can significantly complement the picture of the situation if we pay attention to several objective criteria, including the repeatability of the plot, the variability of visual means, the identity of advertising objects, and the presence of sufficient historical distance. These criteria allow us to detect a pattern and separate it from correlation, or the "false diagnosis" of the advertising narrative.

The subject of our attention is the materials of two large companies-manufacturers of chewing gums Wrigley's and Dirol. In the first case, we are dealing with an American advertising poster of the Doublemint brand. A distinctive feature of this brand was the articulation element of the "double power" of peppermint. The conductors of this concept were the first advertising campaigns of the presented brand, in which real twins took part ^[15]. In the 1930s, color flyers and advertising posters appeared, where the figures of twins were reduced to identical female images (see Fig. 1).

Fig. 1

Fig. 2

In the second case, we pay attention to the TV commercial of the Dirol brand "Sweet Mint" (2008). The heroines of the video are two girls dressed in almost identical snow—white outfits (see Fig. 2). They simulate the process of "whitening" teeth in a decorative space stylized as the oral cavity. It is characteristic that the slogan of the advertising campaign becomes the phrase: "Hello, girlfriend!". Thus, an explicit indication of the "duality" of the advertising narrative is found in the semantic space of the brand.

The motif of duality has extensive mythological and literary roots ^{[16, 17]}. Traditionally, duality is understood as a kind of projection of one or another part of the personality of one hero of a literary text onto the image of another. At the same time, it makes sense to call characters doppelgangers only if they have a set of similar qualities that clearly demonstrate the commonality of their origin. Turning to literary works, we notice that duality is variable and can be refracted in proportion to the author's handwriting. For example, researchers pay attention to the invariants of duality in Anna Akhmatova's poetics, which are also far from the conventional interpretation of this motif. As L. G. Kihney and O. R. Temirshina write, "the characters coming out of the mirror double, forming a corridor of mirror reflections. But this is not a simple duality, when there is a "real" character and his "unreal" reflection, this is an endless mirror doubling, in which the true prototype disappears into the depths of the mirrored corridors and leaves only an infinite number of semantic possibilities" ^[18]. 

The reality of the visual turn affects the canonical forms of representation of duality. If in the Christian tradition the motif reflects the structure of the human soul, the struggle of desires and thoughts, then modern optics shifts the emphasis in favor of "storyboarding" objects of tangible reality. The advertising narrative strives for clarity in the image of the desired effects, to eliminate imperfections, shortcomings of appearance. This observation, although it goes beyond the genre framework, nevertheless agrees with the idea of duality in terms of overestimating the properties of reality, the imperfection of its nature. As A. writes in this regard. Krylova, "the introduction of external duality into a work always marks the aesthetic attitude of the author towards the rejection of contemporary reality" ^[19].

In both examples of advertising works, we observe how visualization acts as a guide to the intensification of subconscious creativity. The Wrigley's Doublemint poster illustrates the "core" of the advertising narrative, determined by the desired properties of chewing gum, while the Dirol TV commercial develops this motif in the direction of a spectacular representation of the very process of consuming the product — the heroines of the video clip "clean" the dental surface, eliminating unwanted contamination. The consumer experience correlates with the heroic history of the product, where the latter is endowed with subjectivity on the screen. The iconic image is released from the external field, activating the internal resources of the personality for externalization. This syncretism is indicated in particular by the introductory remark of the first heroine of the video in question: "Hello, pillow!". The presence of this phrase in the context of the general laconism of the Dirol clip expresses the associative connection between the form of the product and the axiological attitude towards mutual understanding and friendship, characteristic exclusively of the thinking subject. Here, the deliberate emphasis on the assonant coincidence of the lexemes "pillow" and "girlfriend" is reinforced by the optical similarity of the two heroines, which again emphasizes the symphony of the viewer and the image. As I. Inishev notes, analyzing the views of Jeffrey Alexander, "the perceiver becomes to some extent and for some time a perceived thing", or an "icon" ^[20].

The motive of duality, considered by us on the example of two advertising campaigns, asserts the static nature of the narrative dimension. In turn, the plasticity and flexibility of the visual dimension reflect the dynamics of stylistic means, as well as the special methodology of modern advertising. The synthesis of these two dimensions on the screen surface provides a multidimensional interaction between the image, the product and the perceiving subject (viewer), where their empirical properties are mutually reversible, passing from one state to another. Thus, the conditions of the visual turn transform the ethos of the advertising narrative, offering the viewer a wide range of aesthetic impressions, mainly contained in the role models of the actual communicative formation.

To summarize, it should be noted that our conclusions represent nothing more than a special case of an instrumental reaction in a particular direction of visual reality. The cultural factor does not exhaust its influence by the boundaries of the subject area and can be further considered, including through other registers of academic reflection, in other scientific disciplines and perspectives. Of particular interest is the prospect of further research on the advertising narrative in the context of visual rotation, as well as other aesthetic research in the field of television and cinematography.