GENDER FRAMES AND GLOCALIZATION

A Semiotic Analysis of Always and Orkid Ad Campaign

Over the years, the prevalence of gender studies of various stereotypes has been over bloated in the literature. This is due to the fact that scholars on gender issues have all times been faced with one form of stereotype or the other. These stereotypes are roles, portrayals, and representations which have evolved into realities and standards of people in the society. Although the first wave and second wave feminists in their scholarly contribution have made a seismic effort to set the records straight as it relates to women in the socio-cultural, economical and even in the media representation. The effort of these group of feminists to an extent has shown considerable records of reversal or deconstruction of women representation. To increase the amount of impact of their efforts, new approaches towards gender issues need to be adopted to further broaden the paradigm shift on gender ideologies. Therefore, there’s a need to embark on the new academic ground to help in the deconstruction of these existing gender roles, frames and obscene representation on women. This new academic approach which cuts across global and local ideologies deserves utmost attention. The western global countries have shown a certain level of deconstruction and reversal through its ads and at such has transferred certain narratives through its global brands. The motive behind this move is basically to change certain local narratives for a better representation of a certain group of people. This approach is called Glocalization. To this end, this work moves to examine a reversal or deconstruction of narratives on gender frames through glocalized ads. A semiotic analysis was employed to critically analyze an advertisement campaign of Always and its subsidiary product Orkid in Turkey. The finding reveals that subsidiary products of global brands avoid ideologies that have a global dimension in order to weasel out of deconstructive realities to gender issues. To truncate this move, global brands are to ensure a smooth blend of global and local narratives to ensure that its local products also involve in the deconstruction process of gender frames.