Representation of desire in advertising: a psychoanalytical critique of coca-cola

Abstract

In consumer cultures across the globe, the feeling of desire has been a crucial element in marketing messages. Brands frequently use desire in their advertisements through the portrayals of sexuality and the depictions of male and female bodies. In this regard, advertisements are structured like dreams or fantasies that reflect the unconscious and repressed desires of consumers. Accordingly, this paper aims to analyze the representation of desire in advertising through the discussion of a Coca-Cola advertisement, “Asansör” (The Elevator), which was published on YouTube in 2017. As a part of the brand’s global advertising campaign, the metaphor of an elevator was used frequently by Coca-Cola in different cultural contexts. The Turkish version of the advertisement narrates the encounter between Kıvanç Tatlıtuğ, a famous Turkish actor, and a female hotel worker, as they are trapped in the elevator. This paper argues that the brand employs psychoanalytical narrative techniques to structure the elevator as the unconscious, or, in Jacques Lacan’s terms, “the Real”, whereas the ordinary life outside the elevator is characterized by “the Symbolic” as an outcome of social norms and conventions. CocaCola product signifies a fetish of desire that manages to go beyond the Symbolic order and make the characters feel the intense and disturbing presence of the Real. In sum, by applying a psychoanalytic methodology in the analysis of the text, this paper will explore the different unconscious structures within the advertising narrative and discuss the representation of desire with reference to the psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan.