The Soda Pop Board of America Advertisement - Essay Example

? Anthropology of Food HERE INFO HERE HERE Anthropology of Food The advertisement attached is for the Soda Pop Board of America, an organization that once existed to ensure consumer demand was increased on cola products. At the time period, the 1950s, young adults were inundated with advertising information that spelled out the importance of family values, in all varieties of mass media. The typical household consisted of a breadwinning father figure, a stay-at-home mother with multiple family-rearing responsibilities, and also finding personal contentment in mediocrity while the national leaders were flourishing and corporations finding considerable wealth. Advertising that continues to sell this message, even today, understands the elements of human psychology that motivate their personal needs and ambitions. It is often referred to as psychographic segmentation, appealing to lifestyle needs in order to get customers familiar with and loyal to their products on the market. Many marketers still utilize nostalgia such as this as a means to sell cake mixes, powdered sauces, and other products “just like mother used to make” (Bugge 2006:22). This particular advertisement selected also understands that individuals who are attracted to notions of family experience a variety of sociological rituals inside the home. The rituals are “the cultural values of a community, that offer predictability, and provide important avenues for expression of identity and culture” (Leeds-Hurwitz 2002:34). This advertisement depicts a mother that is abundantly satisfied with her child, who is pictured to her right with a glowing smile. By using the bottle of soda within the ad along with the notion that cola helps lead to a better life, the advertisers recognize the ritual of dining together with family-oriented buyers and play on these lifestyle elements. Serving food and family time together, as only two examples, are rituals that hailed from this particular time period, such as timing family dinner for service the moment the breadwinner father figure returns. By utilizing the mother in this advertisement, it clearly illustrates the role of the woman as caretaker and links baby health and well-being with cola consumption. Determining what type of beverage or foodstuff to serve the child is a ritualistic aspect of life and duty in this particular time period where the advertisement was launched. Culturally, this advertisement also appeals to elements of this culture in which uncertainty is not tolerated when it relates to family roles, gender roles, and the familial structures that guide lifestyle principles. Uncertainty avoidance occurs when individuals will not accept high uncertainty, ambiguity or lack of structure at home or in the professional environment. People in “uncertainty accepting cultures” are more tolerant of conflicting opinion and have fewer rules” (Donnison 2008:17). During this period, the household roles were clearly identified and social backlash occurred when a mother stepped out of the caretaker role to explore personal desires or a career. The advertisers understand the cultural need for structure and use cola as a psychological motivator to ensure that the primary concern of a mother, her child’s needs and happiness, receive considerable attention and certainty. At this period, as already identified, there was much social inequality that still exists today. “Social inequality is a fundamental predictor of virtually all social processes and a person’s position in this system is the most consistent predictor of his or her behaviour, attitudes, and life choices” (sociologyindex.com 2011: 1). In this advertisement, the child is depicted as healthy and attractive in measurement to other children. By illustrating an individual that clearly hails from a very modest home environment and impressing the notion of a more affluent child, the cola manufacturer also maintains the ability to somewhat deceive the reader who is looking for someone to give her life structure. By asking the question, on the advertisement, how soon is too soon in relation to cola consumption and youths, it forces the mother to consider the long-term health benefits of her child and consider cola as a potential option for improvement. She does not have to step outside of her family-driven value systems nor is there any uncertainty about the message and quality of cola drinks as it has been provided to buyers fitting this psychographic profile. The advertisement also goes further into describing scientific-based data that further merits the rationale for why parents should consider cola for youths at an early age. This, again, plays on the elements of uncertainty avoidance that existed during this period as a means to provide the predictability that home-life rituals provide to many parents that put baby first. Such advertisements reinforce, using pictures of individuals that would be most likely to consume large quantities of cola product, that the product can be a trusted member of the family. This adds further structure to the lifestyle demands of the individual mother, something vital to this particular demographic at the time this ad was launched. Food is not just for nutritional consumption, it can be used as a system of communication and also express attitude if the appropriate messages and images are in place on the advertisement. In this case, the symbolic expression of family values is ever-clear and also tends to illustrate that the cola manufacturers and its supporters, such as the Soda Pop Board, stand by these laurels in virtually every detail. By taking the time to publish this information about studies linked with health and cola products, it shows corporate social responsibility and removes buyer ambiguity about the values and ethics of the organization attempting to sell its products. This advertisement also gives the potential buyer very clear choices about how to secure the health of the child. This is also necessary for this demographic as it provides clear choices when such information was not always readily available in mass media sources. The social inequality of the time and lack of sophisticated mass media technologies made advertisers trusted source of health and lifestyle information. Thus, this maker is able to campaign for family merits without really saying a word. References Bugge, A.B. 2006 Sociology of food: cooking as identity work: 22. Accessed October 12, 2011 at http://www.um.es/esa/papers/st3_22.pdf Donnison, Phil 2008 Executive coaching across cultural boundaries: an interesting challenge facing coaches today, Development and Learning in Organizations 22(4): 17. Leeds-Hurwitz, W. 2002 Wedding as text: Communicating cultural identities through ritual, Mahwah: NJ Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Sociologyindex.com 2011 Social Stratification. Accessed October 12, 2011 at http://sociologyindex.com/stratification.htm Read More