A Descriptive-Comparative Study of Communication and Brand Positioning

Abstract

In this paper, a descriptive-comparative study is presented on two graphic advertisements for Brazilian women's hair products. One was produced in the late 1950s, to advertise the product “Hené Alemão” from the company Erikon. The other, more recent, was produced in the early 2020s, being associated with the product line “My curl my life” from the company “Lola Cosmetics”. In describing the formats and contents of the ads studied, it is possible to observe and compare how the people issuing the brands and producing the ads used different narratives to position their communication with the public. In fact, these modes were governed by the sociocultural criteria and values of each era. Besides pointing out that commercial discourses replicate the values of their time, the goal of this study was also to highlight that, over the last decades, the priority focus of communication was shifted from the functional characteristics of products to the ideological-identity characteristics of the brands’ audiences. Mainly, this resulted from the necessary transfer of the performance of most brands from the mass market to the niche market.