Advertisement Reading

Here is the advertisement I chose to examine: Mr. Clean

1. The audience this advertisement is targeting is lonely, heterosexual housewives. I can tell because they have a woman as the main actress and they are using Mr. Clean to add human sexuality to the advertisement. The advertisers are assuming that the women they are targeting are stay at home moms/wives.

2. This is a populist advertisement because everyone can buy soap and almost everyone uses soap and cleaning products on a daily basis. The traditions this advertisement relies on is home life and the idea of women not working during the day, therefore being lonely while her husband and kids are at school and work.

3. My prior knowledge of these cleaning products is that they come in many different forms including sprays, sponges, and mops. I also know that these products do well with heavy dirt and grime. My prior knowledge of the advertisement is knowing that Mr. Clean is the face of those cleaning materials. I also know that Mr. Clean is a bald man who always dresses in white to really show how clean he is. Knowing that Mr. Clean is the face of this product makes it a whole lot easier to understand that this isn't just some random man in the lady's kitchen. The clean and plain look of Mr. Clean also helps you understand that they are advertising a cleaning product.

4. This advertisement is designed to use human sexuality to seduce housewives into buying the product. It plays on the lonely emotions of a housewife and the desire for her husband to clean the house. It also commodifies the desire for her husband to take initiative and not have to be told what to do.

5. The unstated message that this ad is conveying is "If you buy this cleaning product, not only will your husband start cleaning, he will also look sexy doing it." It employs the themes of human sexuality, loneliness, and cleanliness. This ad is telling us that in American culture human sexuality can be used to sell anything, even cleaning products.