GHD Advertising Campaign Across Cultures . A Case Study

The type of advertisements addressed to young people seem to reinforce valúes conveyed by music, films and fashion. In this new cultural trend, GHD advertising apparently proceeds in an opposite direction, as the visual element of the new GHD advertising campaign is strongly interrelated with religión. Yet the new religious valúes GHD is offering appear to be more in line with urban trends than with asceticism. It is the aim of this paper to illustrate how the GHD advertising campaign in the UK establishes the identity and success thanks to intertextuality. I will further compare the same ad as it appeared in the Italian press and will point out how the GHD Italian versión not only loses its grasp of religión but is also less incisive in style than the English advertisement text. The result is a text in strong opposition to the visual it is linked with.


Introduction
In an era in which no set valúes seem to exist, young people are turning to their own invented valúes -conveyed and confirmed by music, films and fashion -which help them to have some reference points in order to survive in our increasingly confused and highspeed frenzied urban environment.The type of advertisements addressed to young people is no exception as it creates, supports and reinforces their hectic lifestyles.In this turmoil offered by such a new cultural trend, GHD 1 advertising seems to proceed in an opposite direction, as the visual element of the new GHD advertising campaign is strongly interrelated with religión.However, the new valué GHD is offering to young people is a kind of religión that appears to be more in line with urban trends than with asceticism.By exploiting the linguistic strategies of traditional religious discourse, GHD manages to créate an intriguingly new identity in which texts and pictures are interwoven in such a way as to perfectly conform to the exigencies of modern urban life.While this may be true with the English versión of GHD ads, the message is lost with the Italian copy.
It is the aim of this paper to ¿Ilústrate how the GHD advertising campaign in the UK establishes the identity and success of the fírm within the hair-product market thanks to intertextuality, which has played a fundamental role in creating a network of relationships with both religious visual art, the Holy Scriptures, and metropolitan settings.The investigation into GHD illustrated ads will reveal how pictures are employed and exploited to intermingle with the text in order to skilfully lead the target audience towards the right interpretation of the copy.
I will further compare the same ad as it appeared in the Italian press and will point out how the GHD Italian versión loses its grasp of religión.This is, obviously, necessary for cultural reasons: in a country where the Catholic religión constitutes the nation's heritage of beliefs and has so deeply influenced arts, literature and science for centuries, it is basically impossible to eradicate such a cultural and religious background from any aspects characterizing the Italian lifestyle.To maintain the religious idea at the basis of the English copy and transplant it into an Italian context would have meant hurting most Italian people' s sensitivity and running the risk of being blasphemous.In order to avoid that, GHD copywriters have modified the advertisement text in such a way as to annihilate its impact and make it less incisive in style than the English advertisement text.The result is a text in strong opposition to the visual it is linked with.

GHD Background
In 2001, GHD 2 hair-straighteners became phenomenally successful when trend-setting stars like Madonna, Gwyneth Paltrow, Renee Zellweger, Jennifer Aninston and Victoria Beckham started using them. 3However, to turn short-term success into long-term sustainable sales, GHD had to convert positive consumer perceptions of the hairstraighteners into GHD brand loyalty.Indeed, the hair-straighteners held near-iconic status, and the language used to describe the product had strong religious overtones.People who had used the irons worshippedthem, while eventhose who had notused thtmbelieved that fhese tools were capable oíhairmiracles.Belief 'was therefore firmly at the heart of the GHD brand, and it was this powerful theme which inspired 'A New Religión for Hair' as the cornerstone of the brand-building strategy.The advertising campaign was entrasted to Propaganda. 4  The new GHD ad campaign started in 2003 with so-called Iconic Worship 5 : advertisements were visible both outdoor as posters and in the various GHD sales outlets.In all of them the model occupied most of the space of the illustration, fhus assuming a central role.Light focussed onher and the trademark.A sort of halo was visible thanks to a visual effect which conveyed the sensation of being in front of an ángel.In these ads, although the illustration was decontextualized, the headline provided the anchorage to the visual element (Barthes, 1977), i.e. the link between the image and its context that allows us to see in words exactly how the subject's expression ought to be interpreted.There, such a link was present at an idealistic level only and yet it provided a certain relevance for the reader.It could be seen to anchor the interpretation of an image: "to fix the floating chain of signifieds" (Barthes, 1977: 39).
In the 2003 Iconic Worship-Christmas Ángel Campaign 6 , the model appeared in a metropolitan context.Compared to the previous ads, here the visual illusion was created by various sources of light, such as the moon, a light in a disco or in a pub.The resulting visual illusion formed a sort of halo that, being a source of light, illuminated and emphasized not only the model but also bofh the products and the trademark.The context of these ads and the intertextual relationship with the previous urban ángel ads conveyed the unconscious idea that here too the depicted models were indeed urban angels, a concept further augmented by the presence of the halo.Incidentally, the layout of the trademark GHD, written in small letters, could be interpreted as a misspelling of God, thus unconsciously emphasizing the existence of a link between GHD and God.A new set of ads 7 was published between 2004 and 2005 in the most popular women's magazines.Amongst them, the Urban Ángel advertisement (see Fig. 1) particularly struck me because of the evident relationship between the urban setting, the miraculous effects of GHD producís, and the new established religión helping young people to live in and cope with an urban context.After the great success GDH products reached both in the US and theUK, GHDtriedtolaunchtheminltaly too.The campaign started with the UrbanAngel ad that appeared for the first time in Italy in 2005. 8

Information systems in GHD Urban Ángel advertisement
The layout of the Urban Ángel advertisement follows a very precise composition plan that takes the reader by the hand and accompanies him/her along the correct path of interpretation.The positions of the figures in the illustration, the headline, the text (technically called copy) and the trademark, their interrelation and interaction, form what Kress and van Leeuwen (1996:181) define as "composition".Composition is conveyed to the reader thanks to various interrelated systems of information, more precisely known as the information valué system, the salience system and the framing system, existing within any text, regardless of whefher the text is visual, written or even both.The way in which composition is realized basically depends on the fact that in our Western culture, when we read we follow a Z-reading pattern (Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996: 218): text is written from left to right, from top to bottom, Une by line.The most immediate and natural división created by the Z-reading pattern of the page is into left and right, top and bottom, and centre and margins which help us to define the zones where the different elements of the visual are placed.Their corresponding informational valúes are Given and New, Ideal and Real, Centre and Margins (Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996: 181-229;Kress and van Leeuwen 1998).
Elements placed to the left of the vertical axis of the page are presented as Given pieces of information, or things that the reader already knows; New elements on the right are not yet known or agreed upon.The valúes of Given and New in the advertisement components are assumed by the advertiser, and it is up to the reader to accept or reject the roles as presented.
A sense of contrast is presented through layouts based on the horizontal axis.Elements in the upper part of the page appeal to the reader's emotions, expressing what might be.The bottom elements have an informative appeal, showing what is.These contrasting appeals can be awarded the valúes of Ideal and Real, where Ideal elements are more salient and simply contain the general points of information; Real elements give more practical and specific information.
The elements which in the illustration are placed in the Centre are the essential nucleus of information, with those set at the Margins as subsidiary parts of the image core."For something to be the Centre means that it is represented as the nucleus of the information on which all the other elements are in some sense subservient" (Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996: 206).One way to combine Given-New with Centre-Margin is evident in the medieval triptych, with the Centre showing a key religious theme (Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996: 207).
Elements are positioned so as to attract readers' attention and direct it to different levéis of importance.These various levéis are created through relative choices of colour, size, image sharpness and position.Often vectors, i.e. ideal lines created by the shape and position of elements, help to lead the eye from one element to another, in order of decreasing impact.This determines the Salience of each element (Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996: 212-214).
Sometimes, there are some characteristics through elements that imply división or that frame lines, which helps the readership to connect or differentiate the layout.These sections, or frames, give an advertisement a sense of unity and progression.TheFraming of an element suggests its differentiation and individuality, while the lack of Framing suggests unity and presents the picture as a whole (Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996: 214-218).
Applying this methodological approach to the GHD Urban Ángel ad, its linguistic analysis is somewhat particular: the división is more on the vertical plañe {Given vs New), than on the horizontal {Ideal vs. Real) as we have everything but the trademark and the images of GHD products on the Ideal plañe where the visual element is presented as a Given piece of information and the text as the New information.

GHD visual element
The visual element is in the foreground and thus is given more emphasis; light is focussed on the picture.This light source is outside the depicted image: it comes from an indefinite angle located on the right of the image but outside the picture itself-in the observer's world.It creates luminous vectors which help the reader to find the right path according to which the real meaning of this multi-modal text may be perceived: from the image to the headline, back to the image; from the image to the copy, back to the image and finally from the image to the illustrations of the products themselves.If the visual element may recall Botticelli's Birth of Venus 9 (since the birth of a beautiful woman from the sea and of 'a new religión for hair' is celebrated in the ad), the way in which light focusses only on certain elements immediately reminds readers of the religious painting by Caravaggio, La Madonna diLoreto. 10Caravaggio (1573-1610) adopted a realistic style of painting.This did not result from observing and copying nature but from accepting reality as it is; to him this meant excluding the search for the beautiful and aiming merely at truth.For him painting was not a means by which to detach himself from reality and observe it but a means through which to Uve reality (Argan, 1970: 271).The GHD picture makes a visual statement for the reader: just as in Caravaggio' s paintings, people using GHD products are not observing reality: they are living it.Those who do not acquire GHD products can merely observe reality.
As the GHD illustration is printed on a left-hand page of the magazine, it may be read as a semiotic unit independent from the text, with the girl at the centre of Kress and van Leeuwen's triptych.The long distance shot of the girl, the perspective, and her upright position compared to that of the young men transmit an idea of detachment from both readers and the youths.Her position expresses superiority and offers a hierarehical order in which both males and readers are subordínate to her. 11 The startling use of light and colour emphasizes the position of the angel-woman, whereas the men (and the observers) are left in darkness.Ever since the Middle Ages, light has been associated with the idea of perfect life, beauty and purity.Therefore anunconscious message is conveyed: those who use GHD producís attain perfection in life and in their souls.This message is supported by the common perception of "photographs as a naturalistic, un-mediated and un-coded representation of reality" (Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996: 162).We all know that the camera does not lie -though those who use one may -and the picture offered by GHD represents a real moment frozen in time: GHD ads allow readers to perceive an instant of adoration (both received and offered) capable oífreezing the rush hours of our frenzied urban society.If this is something we all want to believe -just for a moment to forget stress and the high-speed lifestyle we are required to cope with each day -the GHD ad campaign goes even further: it offers us a belief (the visual element) that can come trae with words (the text).Words do depict a process that takes a certain amount of time to unfold but by describing facts that speak for themselves they make beliefs become truths.The way in which we use pictures and/or words expresses modality, i.e. the representation of the truths of the world we live in.So if a picture is the popular assessment of a belief (low modality of truth), words are the popular assessment of truths (high modality of truth) (Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996: 159-161).This is the role of both headline and copy of the GHD advertisement: respectively that of providing a metropolitan context of the visual element and that of transíorming a belief into an absolute truth.Both the headline and the copy are positioned in the New part of the ad.If the picture represents the Given (traditionally there has always been a beauty on every beach, and if not, we all know Botticelli's Venus -a beauty emerging from the sea), the text is the New part since we will be introduced to the new urban Holy Gospel.

GHD Urban Ángel: English vs Italian advertising texts
5.1.The English and the Italian Headlines " And there she was.An urban ángel.Made not born".The English headline is very catchy for three basic reasons: 1.The sentence "and there she was" links the picture to the successive text.The parallelism with a religious text is conveyed by the presence of the conjunction at the beginning of the sentence.Thus a religious register is introduced which hints at and confirms the miraculous effects of GHD products; 2. The "Urban Ángel" is the beauty on the beach.We are allowed to realize that she is not a woman, but an ángel and not a mere ángel, but an urban one.If religious angels are created by God, urban angels are created according to GHD rules, and the pun between GHD and God establishes that GHD is God's urban religión; 3. The source of light coming from the right-hand angle outside the illustration underlines a specific part of the headline: "she was an urban ángel made".Even if made belongs to a different sentence, the words are read as though forming one complete sentence, thus breaking away from the slow rhyfhmic path offered by the use of parataxis, typical of religious language.Such contrast sets in opposition the usual contemplation offered by a religious creed, and the hectic life of our modern cities.We are not required to choose between religión and rush-hour: we are offered both.We do not have to deny either religión or modernity.GHD guarantees both.GHD seems to move in an opposite direction to society: it returns to religión.Yet by moving away from the mainstream, GHD emerges from globalization, and offers consumers new valúes to which to anchor in order not to lose their own identity.
The English headline "And there she was.An urban ángel.Made not born" is rendered in Italian as "Angeli metropolitani si diventa.Non si nasce" (Urban Angels are Made.Not Born) As in English, the beauty on the beach is not simply a woman, but an urban ángel.
Alfhough the reference to religious angels is clear, and although urban angels are created according to GHD rules, there is however nothing that supports the fact that GHD is God' s urban religión, which on the contrary is what we have seen in the English versión.
The first striking element in the Italian versión of the English headline is that the sentences Angeli metropolitani si diventa.Non si nasce (Urban angels are made.Not born) reproduces a cliché that should be constructed the other way round and basically Angeli metropolitani non si nasce.Si diventa (Urban angels are not born.They are made).This may well be a linguistic violation employed as a strategy to startle the audience and attract their attention by going against their expectations.Yet, in this way, emphasis is not only given to the words Angeli metropolitani (Urban angels), but also to Non si nasce (they are not born), whereas the position of the key-words si diventa (They are made) is blurred and thus underevaluated.The Italian headline just seems to be a parallel, though imperfect, versión of the English text.In Italian, too, there is a sort of paratactical relationship, typical of religious language, between the two sentences.It is rendered with punctuation: the fullstop instead of the comma conveys the idea of a longer pause between one clause and the other.However, the Italian versión loses the original forcé and subtlety characterizing the English headline.
Furthermore, there is no relationship between the headline and the text: the former, formulated in an impersonal way, refers to the audience formally; the latter is linked to the image as it acts as a long caption describing the ad illustration.The register is neutral, in the sense that it has no religious anticipation and therefore contrasts with the depicted image: although we understand that the Urban Ángel is the beautiful girl on the beach, the Italian audience is not able to identify the pun between GHD' s religión and God' s because the following text does not imitate the language of the Gospels.Furthermore, the source of light does not emphasize any words of the headline.The synaesthetic possibility of reading three sentences instead of just two is lost in Italian, where everything is much more explicit.

The English Copy
The headline and the text, as stated previously, form the New part of the triptych and are set in the Ideal sector, where the emotional appeal is strongest and where we can see "what might be" (Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996: 193).The fact that what GHD offers goes against the mainstream is evident in the layout of the text, which breaks away from the conventional rules of writing but at the same time recalls the layout of literary works written at the beginning of the 20* century, this idea being further augmented because of the presence of enjambments.
Just as in a biblical parable, the copy represents the idealized essence of the information, and elaborates the belief represented in the picture on the left 12 : As she walked upon the sand the eyes of the multitude followed.
And when she tumed to speak to them, they saw that the sea spritz had blessed her with beautiful natural movement.And she spoke to them of the miraculous soothing effects of GHD cooling mist, and astonished them with sun survivor shampoo & conditioner and they no longer feared the sun The first lines immediately recall St. Mark's words (13:7-11) 13 : Jesús withdrew himself with his disciples to the sea: and a great multitude from Galilee followed him, (...) when they had heard what great things he did, carne unto him.And he spake to his disciples, (...) For he had healed many; insomuch that they pressed upon him for to touch him, as many as had plagues.Anduncleanspirits, when they saw him, felldownbeforehim, andcried, saying, Thouartthe Sonof God.(St.Mark, 13: 7-1) The relationship between GHD and the religious theme is further established thanks to the intertextual link to the Holy Gospel.As in the Gospel according to St. Mark, the contrast is between the main character and them.The dichotomy is between Christ/She -the Urban Ángel -and the multitude.Yet in St. Mark's Gospel it is Christ who speaks to the multitude in order to convert them to the new religión, whereas in the GHD ad the Urban Ángel does not need to do so: the facts speak for themselves, as "they saw that the sea spritz had blessed her with beautiful natural movement".Her words come after the crowds saw with their own eyes.They are already convinced of the blessed, miraculous effects.Indeed, they were astonished and no longerfeared the sun.
The syntactical structure of the text reproduces that of religious discourse, with a high exploitation of past tense verbs and a strong use of parataxis rather than hypotaxis, this being pinpointed by the presence of the conjunction at the beginning of each sentence.According to the Christian religión, God revealed Himself and His essence through the Holy Scriptures, which makes of the Bible a powerful manifestation of sacred reality.Ever since the Middle Ages, perfect religious speech has afways imitated that of the Holy Scriptures.It is characterized by directness and precisión aiming at a harmony which totally reflects that of the Gospels.Simplicity and transparency of language are a means by which the author wishes to nárrate the religious story without the influence resulting from the connotative qualities of the words or the manipulative effects of rhetoric (Witalisz, 2001).This is what the GHD ad achieves.The fact that the text is not anachronistic depends on its interrelation with both its layout (it bridges the gap between ancient religious discourse and modern literary works) and the illustration (the bikini-ciad beauty on the beach, the young men and their surf-boards).

The Italian Copy
Exactly as with the English versión, the Italian headline and text are set in the New-Ideal sector of the triptych, where we can emotionally perceive "whatmightbe" (Kressandvan Leeuwen, 1996: 193).In the Italian versión, GHD services seem to go against the mainstream as physically represented by the text layout, just as they do in the English versión of the text: here too there is a break from the conventional rules of writing; here, too, there are enjambments.In the Italian versión, however, the copy does not elabórate on the belief represented in the picture on the left, as the religious context conveyed by the picture is suppressed in the text 14 : Lei é una fulgida visione, un'eterea apparizione, una magnifica rivelazione.La linea estiva di prodotti ghd le da un controllo totale sull'acconciatura: spariti i capelli crespi e danneggiati dall'esposizione ai raggi UV, la sua chioma risplende sfolgorante nel solé.Le piastre per styling in cerámica ghd mettono i trend londinesi alia sua portata: un giorno ricci morbidi e sexy, un altro capelli super lisci e lucenti.Che sia oggetto di venerazione non sorprende: é un angelo metropolitano venuto ad annunciare la venuta di ghd.
The text 15 of the Italian versión strikes the audience for its complex fhough strange Italian syntax.Firstly, in Italian the personal pronoun in a subject position is usually omitted.To start a sentence with 'Lei' (She) means attributing to the subject (in a Given position) a marked thematic role (Halliday, 2004: 67) The resulting rhetoric effect is that of pinpointing the pronoun in order to contrast it with other possible subjects (i.e, as in "It is she that was a visión, notMary").Yet here the context is already clear and there is no need to do so.Secondly, the first three lines show instances of pre-modification: fulgida visione (fulgent visión), etérea apparizione (ethereal apparitiori), and magnifica rivelazione (manificent revelation).Although in Italian there is no standard rule as to the position of quality adjectives, the trend in oral language indicates that there is a strong preference for post-modification, rather than pre-modification.The latter seems to be more frequent in written clichés or stereotyped utterances. 16The combination of a marked thematic subject plus pre-modifier adjectives implies the need for a precise identification of both subject and adjectives for which there is actually no need, given the context.
Thirdly, at the beginning of the copy, the language of the text seems to be an imitation of the medieval Dolce Stil Novo style, with a register characterized by poetic licences.It is therefore poetical, formal and obsolete.Yet there is a change in lines 4-6, where the style is much more colloquial.As from line 7, the style is once again formal and obsolete, more suited to a medieval sonnet than to an ad: chioma (head ofhair/locks) for hair is a word that is rarely used in everyday speech.Besides, the term chioma is anachronistically placed near the words raggi UV (UV-rays).The register seems to be a melting pot of ancient and modern, but the result sounds peculiar, rather than poetic.
Fourthly, there is the presence of incorrect idiomatic expressions, such as da un controllo totale ([they] give her total control over), where the Italian cliché should be lei ha un controllo totale {she has total control over); and metiere alia sua portata (to be placed within her reach), instead of essere alia sua portata (to be within her reach) -the mistake is not actually in the wrong translation of the lexis, but in the wrong mediation of the syntactical structures which should be the other way round, i.e, ha un controllo totale sui suoi capelli grazie alia linea estiva diprodotti GHD (she has total control over her hair thanks to GHD summer line producís), and / trend londinesi sonó alia sua portata grazie aiprodotti GHD (London trenas are within her reach thanks to GHD producís): it is evident that English still underlines the Italian versión where the effort of emphazising the GHD products has resulted in a non-Italian syntax.
Finally, it is not completely clear why the model should be an ángel: the religious context created by GHD previous advertising campaigns in the UK is not visible in Italy; furthermore, in the Italian versión of the Urban Ángel advertisement text, there is no religious clues to support the idea that the girl is really an ángel, as suggested, on the other hand, in the English Urban Ángel ad.

Conclusión
The new GHD campaign reflects and at the same time offers its readers the modern attitude people would like to assume: that of being regarded as having self-confidence as well as the ability to turn heads wherever they go.They would like to be style-setters who bring colour and glamour to our everyday urban environment.To represent these ideal modern leaders, the GHD ad campaign seems to break away from the mainstream, suggesting valúes that contrast strongly with the ideáis and models offered by our society, which aims at financial gain rather than at a moral creed.However, mis going against the flow is merely apparent.The new belief is established thanks to the well-planned layout of the GHD ad where its visual elements and texts are intermingled and interrelated, where both recall ancient religious art and discourse, where both illustrations and texts are transposed into a modern setting, thus bridging the gap between NOW and THEN.
All this, unfortunately, is not evident in the Italian versión of the ad, since we have seen that from a linguistic point of view, the GHD Italian versión loses its grasp of religión.The Italian advertisement seems to be the parallel but imperfect versión of the English syntactical structures.The register is not religious and therefore is at odds with the depicted image.The Italian audience may understand that the Urban Ángel is the beautiful girl on the beach, but it is not able to realize the pun between GHD and God: the inability to perceive GHD's urban religión in further augmented by the absence of a text imitating the language of the Gospels.GHD's aim was to target the Italian market.The choice between ranning the risk of appearing blasphemous or sticking to the certainty that the ad would be accepted by a Catholic target audience has obviously fallen on the latter -marketing strategy has prevailed over any linguistic incisiveness.The English GHD ad campaign has therefore been transposed in Italian in such a way that the resulting advertisement text has lost its shrewd and clever impact.Notes * Although I wrote many times to both GHD and Propaganda for copyright permission so as to be allowed to linguistically analyse their advertisements, I had no reply at all.Yet, according to GHD legal policy available at http://www.ghdhair.com/uk/legal.php,I apparently can use GHD materials for my " own personal use and research" (under Copyright and Trademark terms).In any case, I wish to acknowledge and thank them.
1. GHD is the acronym for Good Hair Day.