Page 133 - Introduction to Electronic Commerce and Social Commerce

122 • Sport, Media and Society

and connect Tiger Woods, the watch and themselves. ‘What are you made of?’ could
refer to your character, your physicality or your class. The consumer is asked to fi nish
the advertisement, providing its meaning. The consumer imbues the object with the
qualities of the person and thinks of the person in terms of the object.

The Object and the Sport Sign

Colour in advertisements can connect objects with other objects, objects with a life-
style or a social world, or an object with a person. These sets of relationships can be

seen in the advertising arising from the electronics firm Samsung’s sponsorship of the
English Premier League football club Chelsea. The blue of the Chelsea kit is mirrored
in the blue of Samsung’s logo so that it becomes unclear whether Samsung is advertis-
ing Chelsea or Chelsea is advertising Samsung. Advertisements for Samsung digital
cameras featuring the Chelsea footballer Joe Cole assume an association between a
sporting body and an electronic product despite their lack of inherent connection.
Joe Cole is well known for his adaptability on the soccer pitch. Within various
soccer formations, he is able to play left or right in a midfield four, left or right in an

attacking front three, or he can take on the playmaker role behind the front two strik-
ers. A Samsung advertisement, split into three horizontal sections, depicts the foot-
baller’s different skills. The top panel features three images of Joe Cole controlling
the ball, making an overhead kick and heading the ball. The middle panel features
Cole taking a shot on goal (the goalkeeper’s black leather glove is just visible to the
right of the scene). In the bottom panel, Cole is featured dribbling the ball, leaving
exasperated defenders in his wake. The explicit connections to the Samsung product
are minimal. There is no image of the product (Samsung’s NV camera series) within
the advertisement. The only reference to the camera series is made in small text
beneath each set of images: ‘Like Joe Cole, the NV3 is a multitalented performer’,
‘Like Joe Cole, the NV10 takes a great shot’ and ‘Like Joe Cole, the NV7 is always
in control’. Yet, clearly, a camera and a footballer are not very like each other at all.
The connections that the advertisement seeks to make belong to another sign sys-
tem in which Joe Cole is a celebrity footballer, epitomising the glamour and success
of Chelsea. As a result, the more subtle connections to the product are made visually,
predominately through colour. The background is a dark blue landscape, featuring
sea and a turbulent, cloudy sky. The ball is a dark, silver-grey sphere, surrounded by
a bright blue glow, with a transparent blue tail like that of a comet, lending the scene
as a whole, and the ball in particular, a mystical, almost religious quality. The colours
of the ball are those of the product. The connections are made with an absent product
by colour association.
The advertisement uses an existing sign system, the aura of Chelsea footballer Joe
Cole’s ‘body language’, and translates it into another system: the world of electronic
consumer goods. As Williamson (1978: 25) said, ‘advertisements are constantly