Female archetypes in car advertising: the case of Audi

Abstract

The representation of women in advertising is based on constructs that have become consolidated in Western culture, giving rise to different archetypes that express the values and ways of thinking of each age. As in other media discourses, advertising resorts to elements, such as archetypes and myths, which shape the collective imaginary and are very effective devices, for they are recognizable to viewers and help to engage them. Specifically, this article focuses on car advertising, whose significance lies in the fact that it has traditionally been a sphere of male domination. In recent years, there has been a positive evolution towards more independent and autonomous female characters. Accordingly, this article analyses two of Audi’s most recent campaigns from 2016 and 2017 in order to observe how women are represented in car ads according to three fundamental aspects: visual semiotics (Arnheim’s Arte y percepción visual. Psicología del ojo creador, 2008; Casetti and Di Chio’s Cómo analizar un film, 1994; Van Leeuwen’s ‘Semiotics and iconography’, 2001), iconography (Cassirer’s Filosofía de las formas simbólicas, 1998); Panofsky’s ‘Iconografía e iconología: introducción al estudio del arte del Renacimiento, 1987) and symbolism grounded in a myth analysis of advertising (León’s Mitoanálisis de la publicidad, 2001).