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Abstract: This article analyzes a Brazilian Coca-Cola advertisement that was part of a
campaign whose slogan was “Com você, por um país melhor”. The theme of this
campaign was social responsibility and the focus in the advertisement studied here is
on the opposition between the categories of “workers” and “people”. My purpose in
this text is to discuss how The Coca-Cola Company makes use of various verbal and
non-verbal strategies for creating an agreeable ethos, in order to weaken its well-
known capitalist image and strengthen its proximity to the consumer.
Keywords: discourse analysis, advertising, ethos, social responsibility, Coca-Cola.
*
Undergraduated student at the University of São Paulo. E-mail: gikecoan@yahoo.com.br
1
“(...) o ethos é a imagem que o enunciador pretende atribuir a si pelo seu discurso, sendo construído pelo
co-enunciador no processo discursivo” (Greco, 2004:410).
2
In another advertisement from this campaign, found in the magazine Superinteressante from November,
2006, the heading was “Nossas garrafas também vêm com uma mensagem dentro.” and the text at the top
of the page clearly expressed this ethos of social responsibility, for it started by stating that: “Quando
você abre um produto da Coca-Cola Brasil, também está nos ajudando a colocar pra fora a idéia de um
futuro melhor. Isso porque a responsabilidade social da Coca-Cola Brasil não está presente apenas em
seus projetos sociais, culturais e ambientais, mas principalmente, em seus produtos. (...)”.
Existem empresas que têm empregados. Nós temos pessoas.
A Coca-Cola Brasil sabe: pessoas fazem toda a diferença. Pessoas são estimulantes,
criativas e fazem melhores ambientes de trabalho. Temos mais de 300 mil pessoas
trabalhando conosco, direta e indiretamente. Os investimentos para o bem-estar delas
e de suas famílias chegaram a R$ 110 milhões em 2004. Pessoas felizes e valorizadas
estão mais bem preparadas para exercer seus papéis. Esta é a cultura de uma empresa
que não cansa de dizer o quanto gosta das pessoas. E, talvez por isto, as pessoas
gostem tanto da gente.
This text begins with a referent4, i.e., the noun phrase A Coca-Cola
Brasil. This construction is similar to what Brandão (1994:47) observes in the analysis
of an advertisement of Petrobrás:
3
This is reinforced by the indirect order of the sentence, with the verb “existir” in the first position.
4
“A referência designa a propriedade do signo lingüístico ou de uma expressão de remeter a uma
realidade. O referente é a realidade apontada pela referência.” (Charadeau & Maingueneau, 2004:418).
Then, in order to establish a familiar contact with the reader, the voice of
the text is transferred into a collective first person (we), as it is possible to notice in
expressions such as “Temos mais de 300 mil pessoas trabalhando conosco” and “as
pessoas gostem tanto da gente”, which reminds us of the second sentence of the
heading (“Nós temos pessoas.”). Coca-Cola is well-known for being a huge and
successful transnational company – a position that certainly implies a relation of
distance with the consumers –, and it also has the image of one of the most
representative symbols of capitalism – an image that is part of our discursive memory
(or interdiscourse), i.e., of the discursive knowledge that makes any statement possible
and determines what we say through the formulations that have already been forgotten5.
It is through the use of a discourse that intends to shorten the distance
between company and consumer – by making use of the first person and an informal
and intimate tenor6, similar to everyday speech7 – that the company tries to construct its
ethos of social responsibility.
As Fairclough (1992:110) points out,
If the voices of powerful people and groups in politics, industry, etc. are represented in
a version of everyday speech (even a simulated and partially unreal one), then social
identities, relationships and distances are collapsed.
8
In relation to the pragmatic value of a slogan, Maingueneau (2005:171) presents that “o slogan está
associado sobretudo à sugestão e se destina, acima de tudo, a fixar na memória dos consumidores
potenciais a associação entre uma marca e um argumento persuasivo para a compra”.
9
As Gobé (2002:172) points out, “o script tipográfico particular da Coca-Cola e a forte cor vermelha são
inconfundíveis e memoráveis”.
10
“(…) the universality of the commodity form is responsible both objectively and subjectively for the
abstraction of the human labour incorporated in commodities” (Lukács, 1976:87).
11
According to Gobé (2002:242), “As marcas não são estáticas; possuem muitas facetas em suas
personalidades. Para crescer e manter-se como preferida na mente do consumidor, uma marca deve
evoluir para permanecer conectada a seu público-alvo, em sua existência diária.”.
In order to change the image of The Coca-Cola Company as having the
sole intention of earning money by selling their products, the advertisement tries to
conceal the product itself and, when it refers to money, this is related to the amount they
invest in “people” (“Os investimentos para o bem-estar delas e de suas famílias
chegaram a R$ 110 milhões em 2004.”). But before stating that, the company justifies
such investments by saying that “pessoas fazem toda a diferença. Pessoas são
estimulantes, criativas e fazem melhores ambientes de trabalho”; and right after
showing the numbers, it discusses the results of such investments (“Pessoas felizes e
valorizadas estão mais bem preparadas para exercer seus papéis”). All of those
statements make a repetitive use of the term pessoas, reinforcing the importance they
have for the company (as emphasized in the heading); moreover, this use is significant
in the sense that the reader/consumer is also (and identifies him/herself as) a “pessoa”.
The identification between the consumer and the people depicted in the
advertisement is achieved through non-verbal strategies, with the participants in the
picture looking directly at the viewer – acknowledging his/her existence and addressing
them with a visual “you” (Kress & van Leeuwen, 1999) – therefore establishing a
contact and demanding some action from the viewer:
(…) the participant’s gaze (…) demands something from the viewer, demands that the
viewer enter into some kind of imaginary relation with him or her. (1999:381).
However, this demand is not authoritarian in the sense that there is the
tentative creation of a relation of social affinity with the viewer, for the participants are
smiling in the picture. This picture is a medium shot (i.e., it shows the head and
shoulders of the participants), which corresponds to a “far personal distance” in which
“subjects of personal interests and involvements are discussed”12. The angle is frontal,
showing that what the viewer sees is part of his/her world, something he/she is involved
with. As the men are not depicted from a lower or higher angle, but from the same
height as the viewer, it transmits the idea that participants and viewer are in the same
position in respect to power relations (cf. Kress & van Leeuwen, 1999).
As it was previously said, the advertisement intends to portray those men
not as workers, but as people. Yet this purpose seems to be contradictory when they are
depicted as two employees who are working (and wearing a uniform with Coca-Cola’s
12
Edward Hall, apud Kress & van Leeuwen, 1999.
logo) – although they smile and seem to like their job –, and when it shows the badge of
one of the workers, reinforcing the idea that his identity (and consequently that of his
companion) is constructed only through his relation with the company, despite of any of
the other identities these people might have (as husbands, friends, students etc).
Nevertheless, the advertisement at least shows a photo on the badge that
is different from the usual pattern: here the worker is smiling; thus the relation of social
affinity is reinforced. It also tries to present the uniqueness of the workers by displaying
their full names (Arlindo Cunha and Cristiano Garcia), which, according to Brandão
(2004), gives more individuality and significance to the named being 13. In spite of that,
again, the fact that they are portrayed working – i.e., in their social role – is translated
into words when they are classified as “funcionários do sistema Coca-Cola”.
A question we can raise is whether the word empregado in the heading
sentence “Existem empresas que têm empregados” has a more negative sense than the
term funcionário, used by the company to describe their workers. The dictionary
definitions present both terms as synonyms14, but maybe their use in ordinary
conversation confirms the difference. However, it is interesting to notice that
trabalhador is seen as a synonym for empregado, but not for funcionários15.
Returning to the argument exposed at the beginning of this article (that,
although the advertisement emphasizes the ethos of the company, its ultimate purpose is
commercial), we could say that Coca-Cola highlights social responsibility discourse in
the form of an advertisement by creating a hybrid “information-and-publicity” (or
‘telling-and-selling’) discourse (Fairclough, 1992:115). According to this author, this
form of “interdiscursivity” or “constitutive intertextuality” is common in contemporary
society and such hybrid texts
13
“O nome é o primeiro passo de um processo simbólico de construção da identidade: o nome distingue,
singulariza, individualiza, confere estatuto de existência ao ser designado.” (Brandão, 2004:697)
14
In Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa (2001:1403), it is given that the synonyms and variant
forms of “funcionário” are the same as the ones for “empregado”, which include even items of negative
connotation such as “lacaio” and “serviçal”.
15
According to the electronic version of Novo Dicionário Aurélio (2005): “trabalhador”: 2. Aquele que
trabalha; lidador, pelejador. 3. Jornaleiro, empregado, operário.
In the Coca-Cola advertisement we may interpret that there is actually a
“colonizing movement” of an argumentative text – which expresses through verbal and
non-verbal elements how this company is worried about its workers – from the domain
of informative discourse types to the domain of advertising, i.e., the domain of
commodity marketing. Thus, the strategy of using the discourse of social responsibility
intensifies the persuasive power of the company over the consumers of its products.
Therefore, in the analyzed advertisement, The Coca-Cola Company
makes use of various strategies to create an agreeable ethos, such as the movement from
a more objective to a more intimate and colloquial language and the mix of advertising
and social responsibility discourses, in order to weaken their well-known capitalist
image and finally strengthen the proximity between the company and the consumer
through a visual text that evokes affinity.
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