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Nivea Advertisement Blog Post

Nivea India celebrates a 100 years with Anushka Sharma as the face of their advertisement campaign. Despite the core purpose of this advertisement being to sell Nivea’s body lotion, the appeals chosen, in conjunction with the visual language and persuasive devices, reveals the cultural context of the product whereby the Indian beauty standards have been exposed. It is evident through Nivea’s choice of celebrity endorsement that fairness of skin is something that is valued. Despite the abundance of darker skinned Bollywood actresses, Nivea chose Sharma due to the fact that her physical appearance attains to the ideal Indian beauty standards.  

The appeals chosen create the foundation and the basis of development for the persuasive techniques. The appeals chosen are: the need for intimacy, the need to achieve, the need for aesthetic sensations and the need for prominence. The need for intimacy is evident in between the two models of the advertisement; Nivea wants you to believe that this product can help you get a life partner or an intimate relationship. This can be linked to the cultural context whereby, marriage is important for young women in Indian culture, it is something they aspire to achieve. Women are raised and taught to always maintain a socially acceptable physical appearance that would not hinder their chances of finding a suitable husband. The need to achieve is another appeal used. This is easily seen in the text of the advertisement “for visibly smooth and touchable soft skin”. The audience would find that they need to achieve and attain to the Indian beauty standards, and this product is the simple solution to their struggles. The need for aesthetic sensations is the third and final appeal used whereby the viewer will want to be as physically/ aesthetically appealing as Anushka Sharma, and with this product they will begin that they can.

The visual language of this advertisement is used in order to enhance the cultural context of the advertisement.  The advertisement is not rife of text in order to avoid having the audience spend their time reading and have them focused on the celebrity endorsement, thus it is safe to deduce that this advertisement is focused towards ethos more than it is logos.  The visual techniques, such as: layout, the subject, the interaction with the viewer, and the function of the image have been used in order to portray the cultural context of the image. The models are both beautiful and so the audience associates the Nivea body cream with beauty. The lighting is artificial in order to eliminate anything that could possibly mitigate the beauty of Sharma’s skin. The models are intimate; this is expressed through the body language and the hand positioning. This relates to the need for intimacy appeal. The focus and the perspective are quite close to the models, again this also relates to the intimacy appeal. In order to enhance the intimacy appeal, Sharma maintains interaction with the audience through eye contact. The visual language in this advertisement is mostly based around the intimacy appeal, as is in most advertisements because sex sells in all cultures and all areas of the world.

The persuasive devices have been strategically chosen in order to enhance the portrayal of the cultural context of the advertisement. The persuasive techniques chosen fall under the basic and the intermediate techniques category. The basic persuasive techniques are: product association, use of beautiful people, use of celebrities, testimonial and the ‘warm and fuzzy’. As for the intermediate persuasion techniques, they are: using ‘New!’ as a means of persuasion, and the simple solution. The association technique has been used whereby Nivea have associated their body cream with the Bollywood actress Anushka  Sharma whom is considered to be the pinnacle of beauty. Nivea inexplicably claims that through the use of this product you will be just as beautiful and just as desired as this Bollywood actress. Beautiful models are rarely not used in advertisements because the association of beauty with a product makes it more desirable and thus makes the advertisement more effective.  The beautiful Bollywood actress is associated with the skin care product to attract the attention of the audience. Nivea implies that if you use this product you will be beautiful too. Celebrity testimonials are another frequent and effective use of persuasive devices in advertisements. Sharma’s testimonial is important to the audience (Indian society). The celebrity's presence attracts the audience’s attention. The Sharma’s testimony (indirect) can be inferred from her presence in the advertisement. The warm and fuzzy technique was used: this persuasion technique is somewhat relevant to this advertisement due to the intimacy of the two models. The intimacy of the models stimulates feelings of comfort and delight in the audience’s perspective.  You may associate the words “cozy” and “cuddly” with this advertisement, which clarifies the use of the warm and fuzzy technique in this advertisement. An incredibly frequent worldwide persuasion technique consists of three letters yet it is incredibly effective; it is ‘NEW!’ Consumers have appreciation for new products and they tend to believe new are better than old products. Consumers often find that owning new products can give them a sense of worth and self-confidence. New products make them feel as though we are better than others and they can get that sense of dominance by purchasing these new products. Finally, the simple solution persuasion technique. Nivea convinces the audience that through purchasing their product, they will get soft skin, they will be more desirable, they will be beautiful and thus they will find their significant other just as Anushka Sharma did! Nivea crafts this train of thought in the audience’s mind through the use of appeals, persuasion techniques and persuasive devices.

Slender Indian women with fair skin are empowered in this advertisement. Anushka’s presence and dominance of the majority of the positive space in the advertisement leads me to think so. However, curvy darker skinned women have been marginalized due to their inept physical appearance that does not attain to the ideal Indian beauty standards. The product being advertised is a beauty product, thus the physical representation of this product have been strategically chosen in order to avoid any hindrance to the audience’s perception of the product. Nivea wanted their audience to view this exclusive product as  the simple solution that will help them achieve beauty and intimacy, not as a mass produced product used by regular people.