The importance of semantics in promoting the advertising message

Abstract

Symbolic indications come from society’s culture and values. Care must be taken when choosing symbolic indications appropriate to the idea of advertising, reconsidering more than once. The designer must study the target group and its relationships with symbolic indications, because if the symbolic indications were chosen in a wrong way, it’ll lead to the campaign’s failure and affecting the recipient negatively. For example, black is considered the color of mourning in the West and white is the color of happiness. It is the opposite in India. So, therefore, it becomes necessary to understand the words, colors, and signs used in the advertising campaign, and it’s crucial to know with whom we are talking. An ad was made for a bike years ago and wanted to express the comfort the bike gives its riders. The ad showed a man on a bike and a young boy who was polishing his shoe. The advertisement received a lot of criticism from NGOs on the issue of child labor and the way the ad presented it. Therefore, we must consider all elements of the semantic meaning (pictorial or verbal) before implementing an advertising plan. Advertising as a persuasive communication aims to achieve distinction by transmitting information, ideas, and perspectives from a person or a group to other people or groups using standard symbols. That’s why the advertising campaign involves a group of words, pictures and graphics to encode the advertising message in a convincing way, and this is done by using pictures and symbols with a unified indication between the sender and the receiver, so that the persuasive advertising message is raised to meet the human needs of the recipients in accordance with the prevailing social values. This research aims to study the essential elements of semantics because they can work for or against advertising. All features must be aesthetic combined with the category of recipients and general culture and not disturb viewers and cause misperception.

Keywords

• semantics; culture; and perception