Semiotic Analysis Essay: Travelodge Ad in Jetstar Magazine, June 2018

This essay presents a semiotic analysis of a Travelodge print advertisement featured in the June 2018 issue of Jetstar Magazine. The analysis focuses on how the advertisement's visual elements, codes, conventions, connotations, and ideologies connect with the target market and reflect Australian culture. The advertisement depicts an older woman enjoying breakfast at a Travelodge hotel, and the essay explores how this imagery, combined with the advertisement's text and color scheme, effectively communicates the hotel's value proposition and appeals to its target audience. The essay concludes that the advertisement successfully uses semiotic principles to create a compelling and culturally relevant message.

Running head: SEMIOTIC ANALYSIS ESSAY
Semiotic Analysis Essay
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1SEMIOTIC ANALYSIS ESSAY
The modern world is dominated by advertisements nowadays. It controls the consumer
mindsets with the pictorial depiction of their products and services. Every day the consumer gets
to notice innumerable advertisements all around them in any every form. A print advertisement
focuses on establishing the selling factor of the commodity or service of a given organization in
the most concise way possible (Wagner, 2015). Print Advertisements, or commonly known as
Print Ads portray many aspects of a product or service in just one shot. Therefore, it needs to be
analyzed thoroughly on what makes a Print Ad effectively reach the targeted customers. The
following essay would have this aspect of a Print Ad by Travelodge as published in the monthly
issue of June 2018 for Jetstar magazine. This will be further fulfilled by the analysis of the visual
representation of the advertisement by focusing on its target market the link it has with the
Australian culture.
Semiotic Analysis is a concept that analyzes and studies the signs and symbols that
contain a particular meaning or depiction. It can be either a synthetically created depiction or a
set of naturally used words. It can both be a study of symbols or the nature of the symbols as
represented (O'Halloran, Tan & E, 2017). The objective of the Semiotic Analysis is to develop a
structured analysis on the special symbols, pictures or text on their representation and how an
individual can relate these to the things happening around him. Generally, these special pictures,
symbols or texts embody the cultural depiction of an area or even a country. In this case, the
printed advertisement in Jetstar Magazine depicts an older woman holding onto a croissant in the
breakfast area of a hotel, wearing what seems like workout clothes (Fei et al., 2015). She has her
table full with mouth-watering dishes for breakfast and the expression on her face clearly shows
how happily surprised she is about the entire situation. The advertisement also has a text at the
bottom end of the page, describing the amenities that the hotel serves the customer; the ones

2SEMIOTIC ANALYSIS ESSAY
which seemingly make the hotels appear different than the others. The proper semiotic analysis
of the entire printed advertisement would be carried out in the following way:
 Codes: Codes in a Semiotic Analysis are a set of procedural systems that provides a
framework of the entire symbolical structures, through which a pictorial form becomes
coherent to an onlooker (Sun & Luo, 2016). Just like in this case, the total pictorial form
of the woman holding the croissant to her mouth and having other breakfast items at her
table makes it easier for an onlooker to understand many aspects of the picture. Firstly, it
is not difficult to understand that the picture represents a scenario of a restaurant inside a
hotel. At the background, a couple can be seen having breakfast as well (Percy & Elliott,
2016). Secondly, the woman seems to be working out before the meal; therefore,
depicting that the product offered to the target audience focuses on getting more services
than usual. Lastly, the text under the advertisement clearly signifies what the services the
Travelodge hotels provide the customers in their new areas of services ("Jetstar June
2018 Magazine", 2018). Therefore, the picture codes are absolutely coherent for an
onlooker.
 Conventions: The cultural implication of a sign, symbol or any other form of picture
format for analysis is primarily held upon the way in which an onlooker responds to the
advertisement. Since, this is part of a renowned monthly tabloid that gets featured once in
a month in flights departing from Australia, it focuses on targeting the upper class people
of the society who can afford to travel in flights (Lamba, 2016). The entire scenario of the
advertisement is set up in such a way that it would attract the upper class people. Eateries
inside hotels are quite expensive and they require huge amount of sum; therefore, any
person from the cream of the society would easily be attracted to the mode of conduct by

3SEMIOTIC ANALYSIS ESSAY
the advertisement (Neuendorf, 2016). On the other hand, the breakfast items that are
displayed in the picture form the staple breakfast items for both Australia and New
Zealand, which clearly stated from which culture the advertisement is derived. It
symbolizes the organization’s skill to endorse brand value and also the cultural symbol
for breakfast in Australia and New Zealand. The company’s text under the picture clearly
says “More of what you want”. This statement conveys the idea that the hotel offers more
services with the usual cost as compared to the other residential hotels in Australia.
 Connotations: In a semiotic analysis, connotations arise when a symbolical meaning
fails to convey any literal definition through the pictorial form of the depiction. This
defines the connotative nature of a pictorial form (Al-Attar, 2017). Every day the
consumer gets to notice innumerable advertisements all around them in any every form.
A print advertisement focuses on establishing the selling factor of the commodity or
service of a given organization in the most concise way possible. The semiotic analysis
about the print advertisement in discussion is about the residential hotel chains in
Australia called the Travelodge Hotels. The printed advertisement featured in Jetstar
Magazine depicts an older woman holding onto a croissant in the breakfast area of a
hotel, wearing what seems like workout clothes. She has her table full with mouth-
watering dishes for breakfast and the expression on her face clearly shows how happily
surprised she is about the entire situation (Sunderland, & Denny, 2016). The
advertisement also has a text at the bottom end of the page, describing the amenities that
the hotel serves the customer; the ones which seemingly make the hotels appear different
than the others. This entire scenario do not hold any symbolical evidence in it, rather
displays the entire scenario in a much more simple way. This also falls true to the tagline

4SEMIOTIC ANALYSIS ESSAY
of the hospitality-based organization, which read “Refreshingly Simple”. The target
audience that the organization is trying to reach out to through the advertisement, can
easily be reached out to given the simplicity of the advertisement placement and picture
in display. Therefore, no complicated connotations are used in this case.
 Ideologies: If the visual elements of the picture are considered, it can be seen that the
photo has several layers. The woman at the front is clearly seen but there is also a couple
present at the background that are mostly out of focus, but it can be clearly seen that they
are engaged in a warm and happy breakfast meal themselves. They are not in focus like
the woman in the picture, but they are also adding to the idea of the selling point that the
picture suggests. In addition to that, the colour scheme of the advertisement is also adding
to the attraction of the eye (Turner, Fiske & Hodge, 2016). The entire tabloid has a catchy
red tinge with mostly white covering the entire picture. Since, red is the colour with the
highest frequency, it immediately catches the eye of an individual. Another thing that is
to be kept in mind about the entire assignment is the target audience. Travelodge Hotels
are specifically dealing with the customers from the upper tier of the society; hence it is
strategically placed in the magazine Jetstart, a magazine distributed amongst the people
opting for a flight from Australia. The strategic action quite naturally catches the eye of
the people looking for a luxurious experience at a comparatively low cost (Danesi, 2017).
Thus, it can be said that the print advertisement has been created through semiotic
terminology is developed with various effects from a particular ideology, which relate to
the photo and context of an article. The article focuses on the age variation of the people
featuring in the advertisement, but fails to clear out the racial differences. This can also
be a major factor since the culture is Australia has somewhat been hostile to the racial

5SEMIOTIC ANALYSIS ESSAY
differences in the country. Thus, it follows the ideologies and culture of Australia in full
swing.
Thus, it can be concluded that the semiotic analysis for the Print Ad for Travelodge Hotels
have proven that the advertisement has been successful as a pictorial depiction. It has been
analyzed thoroughly on what makes a Print Ad effectively reach the targeted customers. The
essay has focused on this aspect of a Print Ad by Travelodge as published in the monthly issue of
June 2018 for Jetstar magazine. Further fulfilment of the advertisement has proven that analysis
of the visual representation of the advertisement has been in accordance with the sole focus on its
target market the link it has with the Australian culture. The strategic action quite naturally
catches the eye of the people looking for a luxurious experience at a comparatively low cost. The
advertisement is found to be absolutely successful in reaching the target audience as well as the
Australian culture is clearly visualized in the pictorial depiction.

6SEMIOTIC ANALYSIS ESSAY
References
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the UK (Doctoral dissertation, Department of English).
Danesi, M. (2017). Understanding media semiotics. Bloomsbury Publishing.
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Jetstar June 2018 Magazine. (2018). Retrieved from https://issuu.com/hgm1/docs/js_june18/176
Lamba, A. D. (2016). Packaging Desire a Socio Semiotic Study of Advertisements.
Neuendorf, K. A. (2016). The content analysis guidebook. Sage.
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In Doing Anthropology in Consumer Research (pp. 111-138). Routledge.
Turner, G., Fiske, J., & Hodge, B. (2016). Myths of Oz: reading Australian popular culture.
Routledge.

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Wagner, K. (2015). Reading packages: social semiotics on the shelf. Visual
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