Interpretative Methodology from Art and Literary Criticism: A Humanistic Approach to Advertising Imagery

Departs from traditional positivist approaches to marketing research by adopting interpretative methods to analyse the visual/ verbal elements in print advertisements. Borrows from the humanistic disciplines of art and literary critical theory to show how verbal and visual elements work together as an interpretative Gestalt. Describes the methods briefly,and then illustrates them in detail by means of an exemplar – a Paco Rabanne pour Homme advertisement known as the “man‐in‐bed”. First analyses the exemplar as a verbal text and then as a visual one to demonstrate the way that congruence between the words and pictures reiterates the association between the brand benefit and the images used to convey it. Ends with a call for increased visual literacy in order to further research on advertising from a humanistic perspective.