Global Journal of Management and Business Research, E: Marketing, Volume 21 Issue 4

which is characterized by critics as merely a cosmetic change for a product that promotes harmful beauty standards. The research can reveal that Unilever uses ‘Glow and Lovely’ instead of ‘Fair and Lovely’ in its advertisements whose other contents highlighting fair skin as beauty are the same as those of ‘Fair and Lovely. ’ IV. T he R ationale of the R esearch Like other general people in the Indian subcontinent, the general people of Bangladesh also have this perception that to be beautiful, one has to be white- skinned first. Broadcasting this idea through advertising of products reinforces the mentioned perception about beauty, which has huge impact on equality among people in society. Cosmetic companies like Unilever, through their advertising, are selling the perception about beauty on which colonial white- skinned British have the deepest impression in the Indian subcontinent (Nadeem, 2014). People whose skins are dark buy these products so that they think they can be beautiful that gives them confidence on the way to success. Though on the face of protest and movement, Unilever has changed the name of the product ‘Fair & Lovely’ to ‘Glow & Lovely,’ critics say, its advertisement just feels like the giant is selling its old wine in a new bottle (Sharma, 2020). Many times these kinds of comments are made without any basis of systematic research. It is necessary to employ a systematic analysis of the advertisement of ‘Glow & Lovely.’ This study has applied the semiotic analysis to identify Signifiers and Signified as ‘signs’ and find out denotative and connotative meanings of them. Then, the relationship between the meanings of the ‘signs ’ and the perceptions of general people about beauty has been foundout. a) Research Questions 1. What are the denotative and connotative meanings of the ‘signs’ used in the sampled advertisements? b) Research Purposes V. M ethod of the R esearch In this study, the researcher has preferred to employ qualitative approaches to analyzing data. The researcher employs Roland Barthe ’ s semiotic analysis method to analyze the sampled two advertisements. Semiotics deals with everything that can be seen as a sign. Signs constitute any audio-visuals like words, images, sounds, gestures, and objects (Eco, 1976). The sign is formed by the combination of the signifier and the signified. Signs are divided into three categories based on their meanings or characteristics namely: Icon, Index, and Symbol. Although divided into three, in a broader sense they are interrelated. Each of these three traits or characters is present in each ‘sign’, although one may predominate (Nirob, 2018). In the signs the original meanings that they contain, we have encoded through our cultural environment, our pre- accumulated experience, knowledge, etc. So, how a topic will be highlighted and what it will mean is fully cultural. An image, video or poster has denotative meaning. When we can individually identify cultural meanings or codes hidden in external meanings through the decode method, it is also possible for us to extract the connotative meaning of that image (Haq, 2008). This study has applied the semiotic analysis method of Roland Barthe and ‘signifiers’ and ‘signified ’ have been identified together as ‘signs’. Then the denotative and connotative meanings of them have been found out. Then, the relationship between the meanings of the ‘signs’ and perceptions of general people about beauty has been found out. a) Sampling © 2021 Global Journals Global Journal of Management and Business Research Volume XXI Issue IV Version I Year 2021 ( ) E 6 Glow and Lovely: ‘Old Wine in a New Bottle’ 2. What is the relationship between the meanings of the ‘signs ’ and perceptions of general people about beauty? 1. Identifying the ‘signifiers’ and ‘signified’ which make ‘signs’ in sampled advertisements 2. Finding out the denotative and connotative meanings of ‘ signs’ used in the sampled advertisements 3. Looking for the relationship between perception of general people about beauty and the connotative meanings of the ‘signs’ used in the sampled advertisements In this research purposive sampling has been adopted, as elements, taken to analyze in this research, have specific characteristics or qualities (Wimmer & Dominick, 1983, p. 94). Since the researcher employs the semiotic analysis method to analyze the advertisements of the newly named product ‘Glow & Lovely,’ the researcher has purposively taken two TVCs broadcast on Bangladeshi TV channels as samples. The advertisements are two TVCs of the same cream named ‘Glow & Lovely Advanced Multivitamin.’ The advertisements are broadcast in different channels like Channel I, GTV, Jamuna TV, and so on. The videos of the sampled TVCs have been taken from Channel I and Jamuna TV. Then screenshots have been taken to analyze the visuals used in the Television Commercials. Audios have also been considered in analyzing visuals. The 1 st TVC of ‘GLOW & Lovely Advanced Multivitamin’ cream is of a total of 25 seconds. The 2 nd TVC of ‘GLOW & Lovely Advanced Multivitamin’ cream is of a total of 29 seconds and the total scenes are 23. For the convenience of the research taking 6 scenes from each advertisement, total 12 scenes have been selected to analyze.