Maigan Winser 31st October 2012

What is the advertisement saying about belonging and how does it say it? Perceptions of belonging are shaped within personal, cultural, historical and social contexts. Belonging emerges to connections made with people, places, groups and communities in the larger world. The community has the choice to belong or has barriers, which prevents belonging.

People are born into groups based on personal, social and cultural proximity. They voluntarily join groups based on shared interest, beliefs and relationships. In these groups people are influenced by how people think of them and how they think of themselves. Your belonging to a group can boost your self- esteem. When you feel you belong, it comes with feelings of being wanted and loved, and this makes you feel more valuable. As humans we feel the need to belong and be expected by others. We all need to feel like we have a place where we need to belong, to feel important and to be cared for. Belonging provides a place to get heard and supported; being heard validates our feelings to make them real and important. It provides a place for us to feel loved and nurtured, a place to be accepted. People want to belong because we lose perspective on what is happening to us and to have a caring support can provide that. Many people are pushed into belonging whether they want to belong or not. Example for this would be a child born into a Muslim family forced to follow their culture and beliefs.

In the advertisement ‘Coca Cola CCTV’ 2012, is prompted to belonging of happiness. The purpose of the ad is creating a desire in the viewer to buy Coca Cola by manipulating the emotional need in all human beings to feel connected and belong. To belong to society is to become part of society. Techniques used to manipulate the viewers’ emotions include sense of trust in belonging by looking over the cities and streets, as we are becoming part of the society. The advertisement ‘looks at the world a little differently’ to bring the world to belong rather than showing acts of crime. The generosity is shown through this by the negative images towards the positive of belonging and the sense of trust.

The use of subverting the expected with subtitles pulls the viewer deeper into the advertisement. An example of this is