Advertisements Vary...

Advertisements differ with the way they attract the consumer. However, all advertisements share one thing in common, the use of "semiotics". Many businesses and services may produce successful advertisements with the use of signs.

The use of signs are intended to act as a link between a concept and a sound. Signs have 2 factors which associate with them; known as, the signifier and the signified. The signifier is the form which the sign takes (touch, see, realistic). The signified is the concept which it represents.

Signs help advertisements in several ways:

• Symbols/Symbolic- signifier does not resemble the signified (languages, numbers, traffic lights, flags)
• Icons/Iconic- signifier perceived as resembling signified/portrait, cartoons, scale model, metaphors, and sound effects
• Index/Indexical- signifier is not arbitrary but is directly connected to signified footprints, smells, medicinal symptoms, recordings, photographs, and film
• Denotation- Literal, obvious, common sense
• Connotation- Socio cultural and personal association
• Myth- Extended metaphor, Dominant ideology of time
• Denotation+Connotation= ideology 

In ADV 91, a few different ads were shown as examples:
One, the SAAB SUV advertisement. The commercial does an exceptional job on applying semiotics by transferring qualities of an aircraft to a four wheeled vehicle. 

Two, the advertisement for Land Rovers latest SUV. In this commercial semiotics is applied by focusing on the signifier. As a couple walks into a local city dry cleaning mat, they drop soaking wet, dirty clothes on the counter with san and bugs falling out. Semiotics is applied by forcing the viewer to decode these signs in order to associate the vehicle with "extreme environments" such as a dessert.