GHD trailer analysis

GHD trailer analysis

Codes and conventions: the GHD advert uses various techniques to persuade the audience to buy the product. A technique they use is the women’s hair, because the advert is about hair they firstly show a woman coming down the stairs with nice, neat hair. It then cuts to a woman with messy hair and a voice over of ‘thou shalt not be jealous of what others can do with theirs’, referring to the other persons hair. This persuades them to buy the product because it shows that their hair can look nice, and others will envy them. It could help them make feel better about themselves and so this appeals to them.  GHD also show the different hairstyles that the consumer can get with the product, for example they could have curled hair and straight hair. This could help attract and persuade the audience because they will be able to do a lot with one product.

Another technique they use is the biblical reference “thou shalt not”, this is a phrase from most of the Ten Commandments, which is a set of rules and “thou shalt not” is the main part of the rule. As this refers to a biblical term it makes the audience think that they cannot go without these GHD hair straighteners or rather they shouldn’t go without them.

There is music also which helps persuade the audience to buy the product, for example for each situation the music changes.

·         The woman walking down the stairs with curly hair, there seems to be 2 sharp pangs when each woman appears on the screen. Both of these moments help enforce the contrast between the look of hair when GHD straighteners are used and when they are not used.

·         It then changes to a different situation and the music changes again, this time it sounds quite like rivalry music, but also quite animalistic, this connects with the rivalry of the women as they are fighting over the product. This makes the audience want to buy it even more because it shows how good it is and that others will be jealous over their hair, it is worth fighting over.

This pattern repeats with the different situations, over all the music is quite old fashioned and classic and ties in with the black and white theme.

Overall the advert tells the audience what they shouldn’t do but it may look slightly better than it should because they have the nice looking hair because they have used the GHD hair straighteners.

Representation of gender: In this advert women are shown as very powerful and dominant, they are a lot more influential and very central in the advert. They are also shown as more seductive than men, for example in the third situation, the woman is shown seducing the male. However women are also represented as quite sexual and seductive, because they are always shown like this on the advert. For example when the woman falls down the stairs, although it is quite brutal, she manages to land in a sexual position, with her legs slightly parted. Also they wear very revealing clothes, enforcing the fact that they can be very seductive and powerful, using their assets to shows this. Overall the women are very powerful and very much in control with their situations, this attracts and hooks the audience in even more because it could show for them that they will also get this power by using the product.

Media institution: This advert could raise offensive issues such as it could be offensive to Christians and people who follow the Ten Commandments, because they are using the context of them for materialistic reasons and not for the reason as to why they were created in the first place. It Is also offensive for them because the women are quite sexual whilst there are references to the Ten Commandments.  This could tell us that the channels that broadcast this advert aren’t a very serious channel, as we know this advert was shown on e4 and e4+1. This channel as we know shows quite comical shows for example friends, scrubs and the inbetweeners, this shows that they aren’t very concerned about value or moral because it is a humorous channel.

Audience: The GHD brand overall appeals to females because there are mainly females within the advert, it could be for a high audience socio-economic class B maybe because the women seem to be in quite high-class homes and seem very superior, also taking in consideration that the product can be quite expensive compared to other brand straighteners.