strategic cultural content in heineken's Master Chef campaign

In the age of visual storytelling, strategic color content matters, especially when it is strategically embedded in the message to enforce the leverage-point in advertising and social marketing creative deliveries. This is the daily bread now in advertising and content creation, and to illustrate my point, I have chosen a TV advertising campaign by Heineken as it relates to the importance of multi-cultural visual content-messaging.

The effectiveness of this creative asset is found in the quality of cultural details from artifacts in the environment to clothing items used by the talents and color usage denoting an effective African American cultural experience. How did they do it? Let’s see!

A memorable moment with friends.

Cultural Context

The TV ad uses a variety of signifiers in three areas to create a cultural context in which the plot of the ad takes place, including environmental elements, social behavior, talent’s aesthetics to signify a cultural moment around an affluent African American couple.

Environmental Elements (Physical Context)

The ad meticulously selected physical elements as part of the visual storytelling including soft blue wall as well as white kitchen cabinets, stainless steel appliances, modern kitchen furniture, laptop on the table, organized books in the bookshelf and urban arts on the wall. The selection and juxtaposition of these signifiers has been carefully organized to form in the mind of the viewer the idea of an upper-middle class apartment occupied by a young and professional African American couple.

Not a chef!

Aesthetics Coding

African American Man

A variety of physical signifiers are carefully conglomerated to support the image of a sure joyful African American man.

The talent is an iconic sign representing a young African American man in the role of a chef at home.

The clothing that he wears, and his gestures are signs indexically used and intertwined with each other to build a sophisticated and professional image of an African American man.

Clothing

Based on western color connotation, the connotative meaning of his light blue shirt and dark blue jeans portrait a man of trust, professional, of a business background and masculine.

The connotative meaning of the apron on the character plays two roles. First, the brown color signifies earthiness in the African culture, secondly, it represents a reverse of gender role as he is cooking instead of his girlfriend. This action is indexically juxtaposing African with Western culture customs, respectively.

African American Woman

Oops, the food is not great!

The ad emphasizes a well-defined image of an African American woman through distinctive signifiers that are carefully organized to build cultural synergy between the American and African culture.

This is achieved by interlacing cultural artifacts with connotative African meaning including an afro-hair style, no face make-up, big earrings, and a dress based on floral patterns emulating the African earthiness landscape.

More importantly, the color scheme chosen for each artifact that the talent wears are deep with African and Western cultural signification and serves as a group of signifiers enforcing the identity of the talent, African and American.

The talent’s black hair, eyebrows and eyes are juxtaposed with the black on the earrings and dress to accomplish two cultural objectives. From the Western perspective is a sign of elegance and sophistication, and from the African standpoint, it alludes to wisdom and maturity.

The brown tone color of her skin juxtaposed with the brown color of her dress projects both in the Western and African culture a sense of earthiness and comfort. The former connected to the environmental attitude of the Millennials and the latter linked to her humorous expressions when she realizes that the food is not good at all.

The usage of yellow on her dress is seamlessly interlacing connotative meaning between American and African cultures as in America yellow alludes to happiness, joy, hope, and optimism and in Africa it evokes wealth, high rank, and visibility. When these signifying meanings are juxtaposed with each other, they create an African American woman that is optimistic, presumably financially successful and visible. 

From the western standpoint, the connotative meaning of red in her earrings is a notion of excitement and is in line with the situation created by the master chef but in conflict with its African signification as it evokes death or mourning.

White Couple

Enjoying a moment with friends and a beer!

The inclusion of the white couple serves two signifying purposes in the ad. If we address the activity of getting together over dinner as a signifier, we can deduct that the moment itself evokes joy and sharing signified by laughing, eating, and drinking.

From the western standpoint, the green color of her blouse signifies nature, new birth, regeneration, and environmental awareness, while his red shirt alludes to excitement and energy.

Once the signification of getting together is intertwined with the connotative meaning of colors, the moment itself is connected to the values of the characters irrespective of ethnic groups.

Target Audience

Affluent African American Millennial consumers.

Product

Heineken beer.

Message

The affective message strategy attempts to enhance the likeability of the beer and recall the humorous appeal by eliciting friendship, trust, and a moment of happiness among friends.

Executional Framework

The slice-of-life commercial depicts the common experience of sharing among friends, and especially the problem that the couples encounter during dinner, bad cooking. As the food turns out to be questionable and Heineken saves the evening.

Appeal

The TV commercial captures the viewer’s attention and reinforces product and brand recall by connecting a humorous moment, bad cooking, with the product’s benefits, a good beer.

Leverage Point

The creative asset effectively moves the viewer (consumer) from understanding the benefits of drinking a beer in a social gathering and linking those benefits with their personal values.      

Conclusion

The usage of artifacts in the environment, culturally designed clothing items used by the talents and color placement are strategically embedded in the visual experience denoting an effective African American cultural experience. The expected result of the ad is to lead the viewer (consumer) to a favorable attitude toward the advertisement, product (beer) and brand.

The ad through the power of visual imagery conveys that the product (beer) is so part of your life making moments memorable regardless of how the moment turns out to be.