Every single day we are faced with media interactions. These interactions force our brain to make sense of and interpret images without even realising.
This image is from Nike’s 2012 ad campaign known as “Find your Greatness” which focused on everyday athletes. The image features an overweight young boy, running down a long empty road. He appears to be tired and struggling however still running. It is a refreshing image to see on a sportswear advertisement as they normally feature unrealistic defined bodies. The title suggests that everyone has their own greatness, which infers that you don’t have to look perfect or be the best, it is about your journey of success no matter how small it might be and that there is greatness in all of us. This commercial coincided with the London Olympic games which made it ever more relevant and popular.
However this image can be read in more than one way, differing opinions make the image subject to negative and positive depictions. As the Business Communication for Success textbook states “People perceive things differently. We choose to select different aspects of a message to focus our attention based on what interests us, what is familiar to us, or what we consider important”. (Saylor Academy, 2012) which adds to the idea of every image in the media may or may not be interpreted the way it intends to. The advertisement received backlash as commenters said that people need to be happy with themselves, no matter what number is on the scale. Although this negative connotation isn’t a very common interpretation of the image, it still exists. This is due to the way the receiver of the message decoded the message. It did not follow a transmission model which would “assume a non-problematic, linear transfer of knowledge” (Middlemost, 2020)
Furthermore, according to linguist Ferdinand de Saussure in this instance the advertisement image is the signifier, As it is the form the sign takes. The signified is the concept it represents. However this image may represent a number of concepts according to the person trying to understand the sign. “The sign is the whole that results from the association of the signifier with the signified” (Saussure 1983, ) meaning the association for every person may be completely different. This further explains why the image could have been interpreted in more than one way.
References
Saylor Academy, ‘Chpt 3.5 Listening and Reading for Understanding’ in Business Communication for Success, V. 1.0 (2012) viewed 19 April 2020
Chandler. S, ‘Signs’ in Semiotics for Beginners. (published date not specified) Viewed 19 April 2020
https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~chazelle/courses/BIB/semio2.htm
Kyras blog 