Tuesday 27 October 2015

Relationship between media images and the external reality





The product of Tabasco is a brand of hot sauce, which is a popular almost everywhere. There is an exaggerated advertisement from US, 2007. From my point of view, the selling point is about the taste of spicy as well as “Tabasco will make you breathe fire”. Also, the slogan specifically states that “Don’t think, just drink!” which is considerate the drink culture. Because of Tabasco sauce is popular use as cocktail ingredients in mixed drink recipes. Therefore, the meaning is about drink with Tabasco sauce and it is the only acceptable sauce for this shot.

According to the theory of Jean Baudrillard’s the four phases of the image, the Tabasco advertisement is considered as the third phases, which means it masks the absence of a basic reality. We understand that Tabasco sauces won’t make people breathe fire in reality, it might probably make people feeling sick or taste super spicy when they choose to drink it. There is video example in Youtube, which is about a man who took a challenge of drinking a gallon of Tabasco sauce and he vomited at the end without breathe fire. Therefore, its show some of media image such as advertisement used to adopt exaggerated way as marketing strategy to present their product to draw customer’s attention, it cause some of advertisement might detached from the external reality . (226 words)

Reference:

Student Name : Chan Chau Ling

1 comment:

  1. Dear Chau Ling, The example can illustrate the power of image with reference to what we learnt in class. The absence of basic reality is appropriately applied. Nice work.

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