Paranoia vs. Semiotics

I have met my fair share of paranoid folk, and most of them look too deeply into everyday items and activities for secret meanings or messages directed at them from some power on high. It's a sad state of affairs, and for the most part we can look at them and wave it off, but there is something that they've got right, and that's hidden messages in advertisements.

Now, I'm not talking about those ads from the 1950s that flashed messages at you in a split second like "eat our popcorn" or "soda makes you a babe magnet" or whatever. Those were banned, and you can't really blame the paranoid folks in that time for being paranoid about that, but I'm talking about semiotics. A fancy word, I know, but it's essentially the legal art form of subliminal messaging. Advertisers want to take a product and present imagery and symbols that won't necessarily do the thinking for you, but make you as a consumer interpret in the desired fashion.

Take the "I'm a Mac" ads from 2007-08 as an example. The only imagery we're provided with is two guys standing against a white background, and yet the commercials were a huge hit.

The set is simple, and the dialogue is straight forward. It's 1000% "what you see is what you get", and you would actually have to try to not understand the message here. From first glance, we can tell that PC is an older gentleman wearing an outdated brown suit (it's all about the grey, PC, get it together) and, because the internet is no place for coddling, is something of a dumpy loser. Mac is a young, casual, hip, and handsome guy. Already we see what the ad is getting at, and we didn't even need the dialogue to get it. But add it into the equation, and you get one flawless ad campaign.

Short, funny, and to the point. PC bumbles about and can't get his act together while Mac is cool, collected, and humble- everything we want in a perfect human, and therefore everything we want in a perfect computer. These ads don't need frills to get the semiotics out there- Macs are for young, cool people and PCs are a thing of the past. Cruel to be kind, PC.