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.