Don Harold

Advertising

6/6

What exactly do three blondes wearing low-cut bottoms have in common? Only the visual center of the eye-catching, two-page ads of Levi, Ralph Lauren and Express in the eye-catching first ten pages of Allure (August 2001). Each ad is centered on having more control over your curves, sex appeal, and looking great in all your outfits. Color and eye contact play a big role in these ads, where a wearer must obtain the eyes of a reader at only a glance. Guided by the principles of advertising in the article The Language of Advertising Claims by Jeffery Shrank, even these ads, who have less text than many and still more than some, the truth is between the lines. Though more are similar, all feature different belts; two have jackets on, while another only has an Indian to supplement her long lost sleeves.

Each ad for jeans is a two-page ad and all of them are about jeans. Ralph Lauren is an ad who sports a black backdrop and a blonde-haired girl sitting in denim, her head nodding slightly to the right, or at least her hair is in one eye, so it gives the audience the illusion of looking to her right. To her immediate right is the page-break, then the red strip in the bottom, which has the white text of Polo Jeans Co. and the black text of Ralph Lauren. Still beneath this is the white of express ad is an ad with a white background, of a woman who is copied into the picture four times, three times, to the readers’ left, without a jacket, and once to the right, wearing a jacket With the exception of the jacket, this girl, a dramatic shade lighter than Ralph Laurens’ Denim-Girl, is always wearing the same clothes, a dark tank-top, and faded jeans with brown boots Next to the jacket-clad girl, stand the letterings of Express Jeans, where Jeans is colored in red.

With Levi, where the woman is hugging what is apparently an Indian, the backdrop isn’t a neutral shade like white or black, it is the scene where a party is taking place, though no others appear in the ad, to her back and the audiences right, there is the white strip that dominates one-third of the second page, where the Levi tag is printed in semblance with the tags that they attach to the back pockets.

Sex has nothing to do with jeans. No amount of denim fabric could really increase ones libido or sexual appeal. Jeans are just clothes and some clothes are made to make people look better rather than just to be clothes. The ads don’t have to be provocative, or even really so risqué, just pretty enough to barely suggest something will suffice to remind readers that jeans are all about how you look in them and how you attract others while wearing them. None of the women in the ads are wearing any less clothing than they might in public, nor are they making any suggestive gestures in any way. Sex seems to be just a soft push into that direction among the ads,

It even seems as though there is almost no scrutiny over the cut of jeans in any case. In the exchange for the soft shades of suggested sex-appeal, each new ad features a new kind of jeans; Boot-cut jeans, Hip-hugger jeans, and many others will show a new style to the same type of clothing, whether or not their manufacturer have truly improved anything at all. Jeans to some are just pants, while still others in the world seek out ads like the three of these, only to scrutinize how these jeans will improve or deteriorate ones’ sense of style.

Almost indefinitely, a lot of the advertising power remains in the eyes. When some people make eye contact accidentally, their eyes shy away and they look to something else, like the logo, tag line, or other poses, in Express. Sometimes, when we’ve established that the ad is about Jeans, our eyes stray to the jeans themselves and evaluate the model and how well her jeans fit her. In Ralph Lauren our eyes trace her then the move to the direction her head is nodding; towards the long red line of the Ralph Lauren brand name. With eye contact, faces are either pointed directly, yet tilted, or the main attraction has her face angled directly to or away from the label, where our eyes are bound to go. In the Express ad, Subjects’ body is always turned away from the label, which is what offsets the right-hand page of the ad, taking instead of three bodies, only one is shown, wearing a jacket, arms down. In Levi, both the Pink-Shirted Woman and the Costumed man are looking over or around the girl to the reader, and it appears as though she is looking back at the reader. Only the long-forgotten horse points toward the off-setting white strip, wherein hangs a tag that pronounces the word Levi.

In graphic design, warm colors advance, and cool colors recede from the eyes. It’s not just a theory; it can be proven through simple examples. Recall the logos of several stores, as quick as you can. Giant Eagle, Radio Shack, Dole, Dell and Shell. Could you see them all? Or did you just think that you could? Most people won’t remember a thing about the Dell brand if they can’t see the logo, when in comparison to the reds of Giant Eagle and Radio Shack, the Dell logo gets pushed aside. Most people don’t realize that even a child can tell that bright colors get attention in a way darker colors do not. It’s not a new idea to call attention using the color red, color is a basic language that even animals can understand.

In Levi there’s the red tag and a pink shirt, both warm colors which extrude from the ad towards readers, and in Express, the word jeans is also made red. Ralph Lauren uses the same technique of approaching the reader through colors by printing their label on a red stripe, where the denim-girl seems to be nodding. Since jeans are commonly blue, not red, it’s harder for jean ads to have the jeans so featured, so they use models with a dirty-blonde or blonde hair, not as powerful as red, but it helps the reader focus more on the ads with these women, and not the ones who feature those with dark brown hair, which doesn’t project as far. Using blue for a jeans color is practical, so the jeans in the image recede and move away, while other things start to stand out. The Indian Headdress and a pink shirt bring attention to the bodies and with association bring the jeans into view. With each of the backdrops being either black or white, neither colors but shades, so they remain neutral, the only ad that features a true background with alternating distance is the Levi ads of a party. Notably, the Levi ad is the least attractive of the three,

Four pairs of jeans are more persuasive than one. With more than one pose, a woman in the Express ad has four times the chance to catch the eyes, though she remains on a white backdrop, the color extremes are deepened by the neutrality of white. With the brown coat on, the readers are called to the right, where the brown coat summons the eyes, there next to the logo, forcing the reader to then either move to the red, or off to the three other poses, sans jacket. Invariably, our eyes make it to the word Jeans and then we can see what kind of jeans they are. Express. Express doesn’t just stop with having more than one pose to convey a message, but they also go a step farther in offering three on one side, the left, facing left, and only one on the right facing that same way. Cleverly, looking away has the same effect as looking to, and it will draw our eyes the same way. Without a doubt, the alternating directions of turning right to get away right after having turned left three times attracts the eyes as well as a direct look at the white strip in the Levi ads here in Express. Even in Ralph Lauren a simple nod calls our eyes not a cross one page, but further to the next, where the label sits.

With an undying need to find that perfect cut of jeans to satisfy our need to be wearing the latest fashions and the best of those, jean ads find craftier and craftier ways to call our attention to the ads without arousing our psyche enough to inform us of what our eyes are seeking out. With tricks as simple as bright and dark colors, jeans are stuck in our minds, using even the most primitive of body language, like eye-contact.