| Abstract |
| As technology rapidly advances, the era of buying products based on their functionality and quality is over. These changes in product buying patterns caused a significant change in advertising style as well. This change may be characterized as “emotion-ads"， which explains why the most frequent pattern of advertisements these days stimulates consumers` emotions. The goal of an emotion-ad is not to promote the quality or functionalities of a product itself, but to establish a product image and trigger consumers` desire to purchase by building a feel or an ambience of the product. Therefore, an emotion-ad must deliver the intended message in such a way that the audience can grasp the intended feel in just one encounter. The symbols in advertising communication may be classified into verbal and non-verbal communication symbols, where the body language is a form of non-verbal communication symbols. The insertion of body motions in an ad that bestows symbolic value to a product achieves the goal of the ad by stimulating buying desires of the consumers who are the recipients of these symbols. The body language symbols that this study intends to define include; perception, cognition, movements of bodily actions lines of sight, facial expressions, and bodily contacts. In particular, bodily actions include the positions of arms, hands, legs, feet, heads, etc. Bodily actions are found to be not just individual acts of expression, but to have close relationships to facial expressions. As a result, human expressions that may be defined as body language symbols should be capable of accommodating the form, content and interpretation. In particular, magazine ad that must contain all messages in a single page should deliver the intended message accurately by correctly utilizing the bodily symbols that are represented by the models. Therefore, the meanings of the bodily expressions of the models as represented in advertisements are significant, and an in-depth study of body languages in advertisements is also necessary. This paper classifies the poses of models in the ads that are found in magazines currently published, reviews and analyzes the most widely used body languages and the patterns of communication that these body languages signify. The result shows that the body languages featured in the current magazine ads mostly use the symbols that deliver positive meanings. Accordingly, the poses (including facial expressions) of the models in current magazine ads could only found to be extremely limited in patterns. In conclusion, in order to accurately deliver the message intended in an advertisement to consumers, a further in-depth understanding and study of body language symbols represented by various facial expressions, hand movements or body movements are necessary, along with an interest in verbal communication symbols and visual symbols that are non-verbal communication symbols. |
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| Key Words |
| advertising, non-verbal, body language, semiotics, consumer |
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