engleski

The cultural model of sports in commercials

When we watch TV commercials for various types of sports equipment, we notice that people wearing or using sports equipment of a particular brand seem to do things more easily and almost without effort than in everyday life. Here is a short description of one such advertisement: A well-known actress is sitting on the ground tending to her bonsai tree. She hears somebody coming and tree attackers storm in dressed in black. She jumps over the table, rolls on the ground and starts to fight them. During the fight she flies through the room, jumps on walls with no consideration of the laws of gravity, kicks and defeats all her attackers. The main question that imposes itself is: why do we believe this and similar commercials? We believe that this is so because all the elements that make up the commercial “hang together”: they are put together to construct a believable cultural model of sports which functions in the commercial. The aim of this paper is to examine the cultural model of sports created in commercials. More specifically we looked into the ways in which the cultural model of sport is manipulated through marketing propaganda. We claim that with the application of marketing strategies the cultural model of sport presented in commercials starts to differ considerably from the “reality” of sport and also influences the expectations of the viewer/consumer. This is done through exploiting the metaphorical aspects of the ideal model of sport and employing visual and other elements as evidentials. Our analysis of seven TV and seven newspaper advertisements confirms these results. The analysis consisted of defining the overall ideas presented to the viewer which we systematized into seven larger thematic elements - individuality and team work, excelling at a particular thing, overall physical characteristics, overall mental characteristics, paying less, doing things effortlessly, providing inside knowledge. Secondly we organized the commercials into six groups and each group had its own code, a particular message that it conveys (the groups WIRED, COOLNESS, INFORMATIONAL, TEAM EFFORT and POWER). We discovered that in the model of sport, created in commercials with the aid of persuasion strategies, every instance important in sports competition is enhanced - the mental and physical ability of the individual (who is strong, successful, powerful, focused and dominant) the nobleness of competition, the knowledge necessary in order to be a good athlete. The analyzed commercials use these elements as evidentials and in order to elicit an emotional or rational response in the viewer by explicit or implicit presentation of information. Thus, our analysis shows that the constructed cultural model of sports is believable for a number of reasons: it is constructed as internally coherent, it consists of evidential elements, and it elicits a particular response in the viewer.

cultural model; sports; advertising; metaphor

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