SE2

Keane Lim

WRIT 1133

Professor Eric Leake

4 April 2013

Food Culture and Values From a Producer's Perspective

            Companies create advertisements in order to draw people to buy their products; however, the people they target, the audience, and how they do so is what makes the difference when analyzing food advertising. There is a fallacy in how companies morph their material towards their demographic because the producer bases it off of how they perceive the audience will react. Thus, with every advertisement, there will be a broad generalization -- a blanket statement made off the assumptions of the market on what they think matters to us consumers in terms of food culture and values. Take, for example, these three food advertisements:

	http://tinyurl.com/se2image1 http://blackgirlsguidetoweightloss.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/aunt-jemima-racist-ads.jpg http://blackgirlsguidetoweightloss.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/aunt-jemima-501-296x300.jpg

              The endorser of the first advertisement is McDonald's, a prominent fast food joint even today. The design craftily uses a black background in order to make the McDonald's more appealing to the eye while also drawing attention to the focal point of the advertisement, the picture. From the picture, it can be assumed that the audience are for families or family-oriented people since there is a happy family enjoying a meal at McDonald's. Implicitly, this also pegs the emotion of "being happy" to going to McDonald's, which is why all the actors in the picture are caught smiling. McDonald's also puts the youngest child in the very middle of the picture to appeal to parents who have youngsters and to project that even small kids will be pleased by their meal, later reaffirmed by the line "the kids love it." Below, there is supplementary advertising, secondary to the brightly colored picture above. The font is smaller but the bold letters draw the reader in.

            Analysis of the rhetorical function begins with the use of the imperative "Do your dinnertimin' at McDonald's." The phrase is suggestive and literally commands the reader to the act of "doing" and in bold letters to increase a sense of urgency and importance. The next line talks about a "different place to have dinner" which imploys the same strategies read in Freedman and Jurafsky about wanting to appear unique and not as generic as other places for dinner. The advertisement ends with "We do it all for you" making the customer believe that McDonald's is doing them a favor, giving them an idea that they should feel special and that since McDonald's is doing something for them, they should reciprocate with by fulfilling a favor of their own (i.e. buy their food).

            In the second advertisement, the use of iconic Aunt Jemima brings customers in by history. Other products with Aunt Jemima's face have set the stage of familiarity for the customer so that will feel more inclined to buy a product that they have had a previous connection with before. Like in the previous advertisement, the models with their smiling faces, tie the idea of happiness to the product, which makes the person more inclined to buy the product because "Happy days is here!" This is seen again in the third advertisement with Aunt Jemima where there is repetitive use of happy associated adjectives like cheer, fluffy, and energizing. Based on the design, the audience appears to be African-American and Caucasian demographics. I would assume that there was more emphasis on the white population due to using a white boy as a model for the satisfied customer eating his pancakes. The dialogue in the advertisements also appeals to southerners with their archetypal way of speaking used to make the customers feel more connected to the product. The Aunt Jemima ad also cleverly underlines "secret recipe," appealing to human's natural instinct of curiosity in knowing what that secret is - by buying it - or in another argument, the secret is being shared to you so you feel special about knowing it. Lastly, the rhetorical function of the Jemima ad is when it talks about "Folks sho' cheer.." creating a standard in the customer's mind that other "folks" approve of the pancake mix, so why shouldn't they too?

            Based upon the persuasion techniques used in advertisements, McDonald's sees food culture in terms of family and casual dining. McDonald's tries to frame their place as a casual environment that kids would enjoy. Their reference to no tips and no getting dressed up say a lot about food culture and the uptight and expensive stigma that other restaurants get. The particular use of words like "relax" and "get down" reflect this value that McDonald's is targetting. It also talks about the value of convenience and appeals to people who do not want to wait for their food. The Aunt Jemima advertisement also seems to draw that food culture revolves around the family aspect. The name Aunt Jemima alone creates a sort of pseudo-family between the consumer and producer, where people should feel inclined to buy products because of her being the proclaimed "aunt" in this relationship. The marketing campaign in both share the thinking that customers are more lazy such as with the Jemima ad about the product being readily mixed and McDonald's promising "food that won't keep you waitin'."

            An important omission when discussing the food culture and values that the companies assume about society is context. Both advertisements are outdated and so, it is important to understand that food culture and values can only be gleaned accurately when taking into consideration the context that they came from. These observations do not reflect what food culture and values are assumed to be in modern day. This brings up the additional point that food culture and values in society are dynamically changing all the time. For these three advertisements, the most noticeable rhetorical function was the vernacular. In the McDonald's ad, words like Dinnertimin' and other words where the "g" was dropped, appealed to the working class and perhaps less educated people where colloquialisms were favored over proper speech. Since the models in the picture were all black, this use of vernacular similarly seen in books like To Kill a Mockingbird or Their Eyes Were Watching God all appealed to the African-American population as their audience by trying to connect with them on a more personal level by incorporating the idiosyncracies of how they talk in their advertisements. This was already touched upon in the Aunt Jemima ads, where the vernacular is nostalgic of the South but moreso ethnocentric on African-American southerners given Aunt Jemima as the African-American figure head. The most important aspect of food culture and values in advertising is how relatable the companies can make themselves appear to the common layman, which was seen in these advertisements.

            Food culture and values are a very interesting topic to investigate because of the approaches marketing campaigns use in targetting them. For the value of family, there will be pictures of happy families or focus on what little kids would like in order to influence the parents who usually make the call on where to eat. Another aspect of food culture seen in the advertisements is how markets realize that it is more about appealing to the audience as opposed to creating a more superior product. They find distinguishing characteristics about that demographic (which are often stereotypical) and incorporate it in their ads to increase relatability between consumer and producer. This is because markets know that customers are more likely to buy from people that are "like them," so food cultures and values from a producer's perspective is determining what these defining traits are.

            I choose race for this analysis along with more vintage advertisements because societal expectations were relatively defined for the black population. Had it been a white audience, the subtext and design of the advertisements would be vastly different to conform to what markets believe a white person is like and values. In modern day, the difference has shifted to the different expectations for gender with regard to food. What men are perceived to see in food is different than what women want and that leads to the diversity in advertising. It is important to exercise critical analysis that these projections on advertisements are only approximations of what a market believes of an audience rather than evident truths.