A study on pictorial advertisements on Kompas

ABSTRACT

Advertisement is non-personal communication that usually is paid for and usually persuasive in nature, about product. There are various kinds of advertisement like: Television advertisement, radio advertisement, and printed advertisement such as: pictorial advertisement.

In sending their message, pictorial advertisement uses picture and sentence io convey their idea to persuade the consumer. Pictures and sentences are very important to support the ideas and to send the messages of advertisement. The pictures and sentences here present as a sign and symbol and need to be interpreted. Sometimes to analyze them need to think deeply in understanding the meaning of picture on pictorial advertisement. In this case, we need a specific way to analyze this phenomenon of advertisement. To analyze pictorial advertisement as a sign and symbol to be interpreted, it needs to analyze based on semiotics perspective.

The focus of this study is to find out the way how the pictorial advertisements on Kompas are presented based on theory of significations. In conducting this study, the researcher uses descriptive qualitative method. The data source of this study is Kompas newspaper taken from 1st until the end of April 2004 and the researcher collects the data from Kompas about 10 pictorial advertisements. The main instrument of this study is human instrument that is the researcher himself. In analyzing the data the researcher does some steps such as: categorizing and classifies the data by using the theory of signification of semiotics and discussing the data from each category based on theory above. The last step is triangulation and the researcher uses finding triangulation.

It is found that is in pictorial advertisement on Kompas, the advertisement contains two aspects, both visual and verbal. Every aspect gives messages to support each other. One signified becomes a representative of other signifier. The signifiers found and performed by the advertisement become the signified that related to the context to make every message of advertisement. There are obvious relationships between signifier and signified categorized as: Icon, index, and symbol. In theory of signification, we analyzed the denotation as the first process. Then the second process is connotation. In advertisement the word enjoy X. change your choice, or X give you special thing means that buy X or buy Y. For example: the sentence “masih nonton TV cembung? Beralihlah ke Samsung flat TV” with some illustration, it means that you don’t have to watch a curve screen TV anymore, you just watch Samsung flat TV. The main point is ،،buy Samsung Flat TV”.

It is recommended to future researchers who are interested to conduct research in analyzing advertisement on semiotics theory. It is suggested the other researchers to take other sides of advertisements and analyze the data then based on semiotics theory.