Ineffective Advertisements

In class this week we discussed different advertisements and how they are effective at communicating with their audience through techniques of Saussure, Pierce, and Barthes. However, I decided to look through a Cosmopolitan magazine and look at different ads that I found missed the mark and were simply ineffective at communicating with their audience.
The first advertisement that I found to be ineffective was for Nivea Gel Cream. The ad is a full-page advertisement of a beautiful blonde woman looking in the mirror while pulling up her jeans. In the back of the mirror you see a man on the bed staring at her intrigued. This image takes up probably over 80% of the advertisement. In the bottom left hand corner is a box of Nivea cream and a snippet of information describing how the cream can firm your skin so you can fit your jeans passed your hips. However, if you are flipping through the magazine quickly and pass through the advertisement you will most likely assume it is for jeans, and probably pass right through if you are not interested in the jeans without ever knowing what the ad is really for. The linguistics written on the bottom according to Saussure would be ineffective as a signifier because Nivea, which would be associated with cream, is written too small on the bottom and will go unnoticed. And the image, although Barthes would be pleased with the importance of the image in this advertisement, would also agree that it is a poor signifier for what it is trying to mean.
The other advertisement that I found to be ineffective was for Tampax tampons. It is a full-page ad that has a young girl sleeping in bed with a older woman shining a spotlight on her while she sleeps. This image takes up about 95% of the entire page and I at first had no clue what this was for. I then looked at the bottom and in extremely small font it says “Tampax. Outsmart Mother Nature. Don’t let Mother Nature interrupt your dreams.” I think the image according to Barthes does not signify tampons and will most likely make female audiences feel confused and will pass right through the page. Also, Saussure would most likely agree that the linguistics are also ineffective because they are too small to notice and although they advertise the name Tampax which people do signify with tampons, by the time audiences see that they have probably already lost interest in the advertisement or have flipped the page of the magazine already.