Title: Decoding Adidas Beijing 2008 Olympics Games advertisement

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

1.1. Background

Nowadays, there are many advertisements that can be found anywhere and
everywhere. It can be found on television, internet, radios, newspapers, and magazine. It can
also be seen in many strategic places such as billboards and banners. Arens (2004:1),
advertising is the structured and composed non-personal communication, usually paid for and
usually persuade in nature about products (goods, services, and ideas) by identifying sponsors
through various media. In the simplest words, Dyer (1995:2) says advertisement means drawing
attention to something or notifying or informing something to somebody.

There are many ways to advertise products and services. People can advertise products
by telling it directly to their friends, neighbours, and everybody, by mailing, sending short
message service, from mouth to mouth and also many other ways. Most of advertisements are
intended to be persuasive to win converts to product, service or idea. It can be concluded that
advertisement is a media of communication, and it has an important role in introducing and
promoting a product to society (White, 1988:7). Because of that many advertisers make their
advertisement as interesting as possible. To be interesting, the language of the advertisement
should be simple, well arranged, effective, and communicative, so that the advertisements are
easy to understand (White, 1988:76).

Dyer (1995:139), it is a big mistake to say language of advertisement is not important

because in fact, the language of the advertisement is more important that the visual aspect
because language can communicate the ideas of products that advertised and also deliver the
advertisers’ messages to the potential buyer. It will be hard or even impossible to promoting
buyers in order to make them try and buy the products if the advertisements do not use
language as the tool of communication.

There are kinds of language that are used in advertisement; they are written, visual or
audiovisual languages. The written language that is used in advertisement is called slogan.
Goddard (1998:25) argues that slogan is a phrase designed to be memorable, attaching to a
product or service during a particular advertising campaign. According to Arens (2004:3), slogan
also can be considered as a standard company statement (also called a tagline or a theme line)
for advertisement, sales people, and company employees.

Talking about slogan in company we may refer to one of the biggest sportswear
manufacturer in Europe. Adidas that always use slogan ‘IMPOSSIBLE IS NOTHING’ in each
advertisement will be the focus in this research. However, the research does not discuss about
slogan only, even more the whole aspects in advertisement. Here, it is to analyze seven Adidas
advertisements released for Beijing Olympics in 2008. As we know those two years ago adidas
was one of 11 Beijing 2008 Olympics official partners. While a covoted spot now held by the
biggest rival of adidas, nike which is only sponsoring 22 of 28 Chinese sports federations. As an
official sponsor adidas has the right to use the Olympics rings and the official 2008 Beijing logo
in its advertisement. There are actually 13 advertisements released for this event. But the
writer only chose seven advertisements because they have many similarities such as; the same
colours, athletes as a centre of attention, many supporters, which is overall represent the
spirit of victory in the same way. Each advertisements use the Olympics rings and the official
2008 Beijing logo in it. That is why the writer wants to know more about what the advertiser
deliver in his advertisements.
 Advertisement may interpret in different meaning. Hall (1973) stresses that there may
be a discrepancy between the intended meaning and the interpreted meaning of the message
in question: the codes of encoding and decoding may not be perfectly symmetrical. The
degrees of symmetry are, the degrees of 'understanding' and 'misunderstanding' in the
communicative exchange - depend on the degrees of symmetry/asymmetry (relations of
equivalence) established between the positions of the 'personifications', encoder-producer and
decoder-receiver. But this in turn depends on the degrees of identity/non-identity between the
codes which perfectly or imperfectly transmit, interrupt, or systematically distort what has
been transmitted. The “lack of fit between the codes” has much to do with the “structural
differences of relation and position between broadcasters and audiences” as well as the
“asymmetry between the codes of 'source' and 'receiver' at the moment of transformation into
and out of the discursive form”. Then Hall (1980) suggested three hypothetical interpretative
codes or positions for the reader of a text: dominant (or 'hegemonic') reading, negotiated
reading, and oppositional ('counter-hegemonic') reading.

In order to get the meaning of the message, however, advertisement is the study of
signs or symbols. It includes the study of how meaning is constructed and understood behind
signs and symbols. So, Barthes theory of semiotics is used to analyze those advertisements that
show something implicit, one called connotative meaning, and explicit image called denotative
meaning. Moreover, Barthes envisages three possible reading positions from which the image
can be read in an advertisement. The first is the advertiser who produces such myth. The
second is the mythologist and the last is the reader of myth.

1.2. Problem Statement

The problem statement of this study is the intended meaning on Adidas advertisement
released for Beijing Olympics in 2008. The writer uses the following research questions in order
to answer the problem:

1. How is meaning produce through this printed advertisement?

2. What are the differences and similarities between the intended meaning and
interpreted meaning on Adidas advertisement in Beijing Olympics versions?

1.3. Purpose of the Study

The purpose of this study are to know the intended meaning grabbed by the readers’,
to find what frames that build the readers’ interpreted meaning, and to get the similarities or
the differences between the intended meaning and the interpreted meaning on Adidas
advertisement.

1.4. Scope and Limitation

The study focuses on seven Adidas 2008 Beijing Olympics advertisements.

1.5. Significance of the Study

Through this research, the writer expect that the readers will understand more about
advertisement, especially that advertisement cannot be simple interpreted. Furthermore, it is
hoped that the study can be valuable input for academic purposes since it deals with meaning
on advertisement.
 CHAPTER II

LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Adidas Beijing 2008 Olympics Games Advertisement

The Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG) announced
that adidas-Salomon AG had been selected as the Official Sportswear Partner of the Beijing
2008 Olympic Games in January 24th 2005.

Witnessed by more than 250 media and guests, Liu Jingmin, Vice Mayor of Beijing and
Executive Vice-President of BOCOG, Wang Wei, BOCOG Executive Vice-President, Christophe
Bezu, Senior Vice President of adidas Region Asia Pacific, and Sandrine Zerbib, Head of adidas
Greater China, signed the agreement at the National Olympic Sports Center.

Under the agreement, adidas supplied sportswear for all the staff, volunteers and
technical officials of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games and the Beijing 2008 Paralympic Games.
The sportswear manufacturer also outfitted the Chinese Olympic teams to compete in the 2006
Olympic Winter Games and the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.

As an official partner of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games adidas has released several
advertisements to supplement their highly popular “Impossible is Nothing” campaign, included
printed advertisements and television commercials. It has spent three years developing the
concept behind its Olympics television commercials. But most viewers cannot see the spots on
the tube. That is because the company focused nearly its entire Olympics TV ad budget on
China and likely would not be airing the spots in top Adidas markets like the U.S. and Europe.

The German company used the Games to try to overtake rival NIke in market share in
China. Its Olympics campaign did not only air primarily in China but also feature Chinese
athletes such as diver Hu Jia and basketball player Sui Feifei and has as its driving theme
Chinese pride in hosting and winning the Games.

Adidas's Olympics ad campaign, which included TV, outdoor, retail, mobile and online
marketing, was one of the company's biggest ever in a single country. The China-only strategy for
its TV spots was a change for the company, which typically blasts an array of TV commercials
around the world for global sporting events like the Olympics or FIFA's World Cup, which Adidas
also sponsors.

Adidas promoted Chinese nationalism at a time when other Olympics marketers were
steering clear of specifically mentioning China, as activists continue to protest the host
country's human-rights record and environmental practices. For instance, Visa's TV spots in the
U.S. focus on the ability of the Games to bring disparate countries together. The ads feature
athletes and fans from around the world, with very little mention of China.

In one ad, computer-animated Chinese fans help Chinese athletes, either in blocking a
volleyball shot, flicking a pass to a basketball player or helping launch a diver into the air. In
another spot, the Chinese women's volleyball team talks about overcoming heavy expectations
from its countrymen to win a medal in the 2004 Olympic Games. The campaign's outdoor ads
won an award for the Shanghai-based ad agency TBWA/Shanghai, a unit of Omnicom Group, at
the Cannes International Advertising Festival. Adidas also launched the final TV spot, which
features the Adidas-made outfit that will be worn by the Chinese delegation on the medal
stand.
2.2 Stuart Hall Theory

Mass media codes offer their readers social identities which some may adopt as their own. But
readers do not necessarily accept such codes. Where those involved in communicating do not
share common codes and social positions, decodings are likely to be different from the
encoder's intended meaning. Hall (1980:136) ends by identifying three hypothetical positions
from which decodings of a televisual discourse may be constructed. The first hypothetical
position is that of the “dominant-hegemonic position” : when the viewer takes the connoted
meaning from, say, a television newscast or current affairs program full and straight, and
decodes the message in terms of the reference code in which it has been encoded, we might
say that the viewer is operating inside the dominant code. This is the ideal-typical case of
perfectly transparent communication' or as close as we are likely to come to it 'for all practical
purposes. He continues, majority audiences probably understand quite adequately what has
been dominantly defined and professionally signified. The dominant definitions, however, are
hegemonic precisely because they represent definitions of situations and events which are 'in
dominance' (global).

The second position is what Hall terms the “negotiated code or position”: Decoding
within the negotiated version contains a mixture of adaptive and oppositional elements: it
acknowledges the legitimacy of the hegemonic definitions to make the grand significations
(abstract), while, at a more restricted, situational (situated) level, it makes its own ground
rules – it operates with exceptions to the rule. It accords the privileged position to the
dominant definitions of events while reserving the right to make a more negotiated application
to 'local conditions', to its own more corporate positions. This negotiated version of the
dominant ideology is thus shot through with contradictions, though these are only on certain
occasions brought to full visibility. Negotiated codes operate through what we might call
particular or situated logics: and these logics are sustained by their differential and unequal
relation to the discourses and logics of power. Last but not least, hall argues, it is possible for
a viewer perfectly to understand both the literal and the connotative inflection given by a
discourse but to decode the message in a globally contrary way: he/she detotalizes the
message in the preferred code in order to retotalize the message within some alternative
framework of reference. This is the case of the viewer who listens to a debate on the need to
limit wages but 'reads' every mention of the 'national interest' as 'class interest'.

He/she is operating with what we must call an oppositional code. One of the most
significant political moments (they also coincide with crisis points within the broadcasting
organizations themselves, for obvious reasons) is the point when events which are normally
signified and decoded in a negotiated way begin to be given an oppositional reading. Here the
'politics of signification' - the struggle in discourse - is joined.

2.3 Roland Barthes Theory

Semiotics is the study of signs or symbols. It includes the study the study of how meaning is
constructed and understood behind signs and symbols.

Roland Barthes is a semiologist who concerned with the process of signification, the
means by which meanings are produced and circulated. Barthes has been developed Saussure’s
ideas about semiotics. He takes Saussure’s schema of signifier/signified = sign and adds to it a
second level of signification.
 The schema of primary and secondary signification:

Primary signification
1. signifier 2. signified
Denotation
3.sign

Secondary signification I.SIGNIFIER II.SIGNIFIED

Connotation III.SIGN

From this schema above, we can see that Barthes develops the main meaing or the
primary signification that recognized as sign. The sign itself become the first elemeny that
construct as the signifier in the secondary signification. It reaches the connotative level. And
then, the signifier in the secondary signification will produce more signified and finally
construct the sign in the connotative level.
In easy way, we can say that Barthes substitutes the more familiar terms denotation
(primary signification) and connotation (secondary signification): ‘the first system [denotation]
becomes the plane expression or signifier of the second system [connotation]. The signifiers of
connotation are made up of signs (signifiers and signifieds united) of denoted system. Barthes
not only constructing a meaning only by the real meaning that appear, but also tracking the
meaning that lies behind the actual image that portrayed. Barthes claims that there is a myth
at the secondary signification that are consumed and produced. Myth is an ideology that lies
behind the connotative meaning of something. (As cited in John Storey)
As we notice in the advertisement analysis, the first level of signification (denotation),
the signifier will produce a signified by only joining the exact meaning from over the
advertisement discourse that appear. It made up from the pictures, texts, colors, etc. that
conduct only in the surface meaning or PRIMARY SIGNIFICATION.
However, in the secondary signification, based on Barthes theory, the analyser tries to
look inside and tracking the message that the advertiser wants to convey. So, one signifier will
produce more signified if there is more meaning implicit. The signifier(s) and the signified(s)
will produce an ideology or myth behind the advertisement about what the advertiser wants to
deliver exactly to their consumers through their advertisement here.

Barthes envisages three possible reading positions from which the image can be read in
an advertisement. The first is the advertiser who produces such myth. The second is the
mythologist and the last is the reader of myth.