Visual Media Analysis Free Essay

Coca-Cola Super Bowl 2018 TV Commercial

Visual media have a considerable impact on the audience because they can influence the perception of the surrounding world and different people as well as contribute to the enrooting of different stereotypes or their rejection. At the same time, visual media often have obvious messages that are clear and easy to trace from images, characters, captions or conversations of characters or audio messages conveyed on the background. On the other hand, there are also subsurface features which may be unnoticed by the audience at first glance, but which still convey important messages and can shape views and beliefs of the audience. At this point, it is possible to refer to the Coca-Cola’s Super Bowl TV Commercial The Wonder of Us which has surface and subsurface features and convey important cultural messages which reveal the key trends in the contemporary culture.

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The Coca-Cola’s ad The Wonder of Us is the commercial that contains several key cultural codes, including race, gender, and age. In this regard, the main message of the ad is the idea of diversity and the emphasis on the advertised product as the unifying factor. In this regard, it is possible to distinguish the key cultural message of the ad which are the messages of diversity and multiculturalism coupled with the message of high individualism and uniqueness of each individual. These are distinct features of the contemporary culture which the ad includes and conveys to the audience. The idea of the cultural diversity and multiculturalism is conveyed with the help of visual tools and the inclusion of characters with diverse cultural and racial background. At the same time, the audio message on the background of the ad always emphasizes the uniqueness of each individual by focusing on Me and I, but Me and I are combined with Us which is an important message that shows the unity of people depicted in the ad.

The surface features of the ad promote diversity of gender and race, as well as culture and religion, while, on the other hand, the ad is age discriminating because it focuses on the youth mainly. What lies on the surface of the ad are clear messages to the target customer group and the emphasis of its diversity in different aspects like race, culture, or religion, but unanimity in the consumption of the advertised product. To put it more precisely, the ad depicts representatives of different racial groups that give clear implications to the racial diversity promoted by the ad. There are also representatives of different religious groups, like the Muslim woman wearing traditional Muslim clothes. There are also both male and female characters basically equally presented in the ad. In such a way, there is a clear message of the gender equality and diversity conveyed by the ad.

On the other hand, there are young people mainly depicted that means that the youth is apparently the target customer group of the ad, but it is discriminating for the elderly population since they are virtually excluded from the ad. The key audio message is that there are different people but there is always the advertised product that unites them and which they share with each other to be really united and stay together. The elderly people are not in the focus of the ad and they are left aside.

The major subsurface feature is the exclusion of elderly people from the ad. They are not present in the ad that creates the impression that there are only young people and they are capable to share such ideas as diversity, unity, and so on. Instead, elderly people turn out to be excluded as if they are either outcasts or incapable to share the same cultural values as those promoted by the ad for the youth.

The subsurface feature that excludes the elderly people reveals one of the major cultural messages which willingly or not the ad conveys to the audience, the message of the repulsion of aging. The ideal image of a person is a young, active, happy and successful person. Aging is a sort of burden of the contemporary culture. The contemporary culture does not view aging as a natural process but rather as a decay, exclusion and dropping out of the mainstream culture. This is why the ad depicts young people only that sends the message to the audience that only young people are happy, progressive in their views, tolerant and open-minded, whereas elderly people excluded from such a context are left aside that means that they probably do not have the features attributed to the young characters depicted in the ad. Therefore, being oriented on the promotion of diversity and tolerance, the ad still excludes a large group of people, because of their age.

Thus, the ad The Wonder of Us conveys important cultural messages and reveals the major trends and issues in the contemporary culture. The ad clearly manifests the respect to diversity of race and gender, multiculturalism, tolerance and unity of people. However, the ad virtually ignores and leaves aside elderly people that reveals not only certain discrimination of elderly but, more important, uncovers deeper cultural biases and stereotypes which depict aging as the process of decay, degradation, and exclusion of individuals from the mainstream culture and active social life.

Works Cited:

The Wonder of Us. (2018). Coca-Cola Super Bowl 2018 TV Commercial. Web. Accessed on https://www.ispot.tv/ad/waZL/coca-cola-super-bowl-2018-the-wonder-of-us