Semiotic Analysis of The Campaign "Greenpeace: Ocean of The Future"

This essay will be analysing a global charity campaign - “Ocean of the Future” from Greenpeace by using the method of semiotic which is about the meaning created by signs and symbols. The campaign has just release on April by the Ogilvy UK & Greenpeace which urges the supermarkets and the public to limit the use of plastic packaging throughout the UK (Greenpeace, 2018). By breaking down the campaign, the denotation level of the video where signs are identified according to Saussure theory will be analysed first, then a second level of analysis will be what ideas the audience associates with which is the connotation level. The last level of analysis will refer to Roland Barthes theory of myth which is the recognition of the ideologies that this campaign is related to. This essay will argue that the campaign “Ocean of the Future” evokes audience’s sympathy and warns the audience to take action for environment protection.

Greenpeace is a non-government organisation aims to ensure that the future generations has a peaceful and sustainable world (Greenpeace,2019). The campaign presents a short storyline which is about group of young students going on a school excursion in an aquarium to see an ‘Ocean of the Future’ exhibition. At the start of the video, the students were very excited and curious about the marine creatures before going into the aquarium. However, when they walked into the aquarium, what they see were all plastics in the water reflecting “ocean of the future”. This campaign utilises range of signs to create messages to the audience where they should acknowledge about the harmfulness of plastic and take action to create a better environment for the future. The following paragraphs will start breaking down the video and analyse scenes that demonstrate how advertisements communicate with the audiences using semiotic language.

The video starts with a sign with large blue and white fonts “welcome to the ocean of the future” that is set under the ocean which introduces the audience the theme of this campaign. The first scene is about the students being interviewed before visiting the exhibition. “I want to see the penguins...”, “I am excited to see the catfish…”(Greenpeace UK, 2018), both the language and facial expressions from the children were happy and optimistic which signifies that the aquarium will be interesting and leads the audiences’ curiosity about the exhibition. The background music also represents the excitement before visiting the aquarium as the music is bright and joyful. As the children walk into the aquarium, the view they saw were plastics floating in the water. Their expressions and the background music immediately turned into a down and sad temper. This change of atmosphere emphasises the shocking view of the plastics all over the water. The contrast between the children turning from a happy expression to a dismayed expression highlights the idea that the future environment will be not like what we are expected. The facial expression and the music are both the signifier where the audience are signified with the idea of the serious damage with the future ocean. This can be referred from Saussure’s theory where “Every time you hear or read or see the signifier, it correlates with the signified” (Halls,1997, Page 31).

The camera then focuses on the plastics including water bottles, plastic bags floating in the water along with the serious melody. The connotation level of this scene is about connecting with the audience as these plastics are things we used in our daily life and leads the audiences to reflect themselves being involved in the generation of plastics. Statistics like “UK supermarket generate 800000 tonnes of plastic each year”, “a truck load of plastic ends up in our oceans every minute” (Greenpeace UK, April 2018), were informed to the audience. These facts are a sign of warning about the amount of plastics that is threatening our environment which also evokes to audiences’ guiltiness as being part of damaging the ocean. The camera continues to move around the aquarium and captures the signs on the wall. These signs are explaining the different plastics that are in the ocean and how they pollute our environment. The connotation here is about the sarcasm of the signs on the wall. The signs are usually for introducing the marine creatures in the aquarium where now they are informing about the different kinds of plastic that are polluting the ocean. At the end of the video, one of the students reflected “there should be millions of fish and zero percent of plastic” as it shows the child’s naivety , it juxtaposes with the originality of the ocean where children thoughts of the world are always natural and clean which emphasises the issue of plastics is damaging the natural environment.

The campaign shows that the different forms of elements can be all considered as a signifier leads the audiences to be signified to an idea. Advertisements aim to evoke audiences’ feelings and persuade the audience with a particular idea. In the campaign every movement of the camera and every visual can be interpreted by the audience with meanings which suits to halls theory, “every signifier given or encoded with meaning has to be meaningfully interpreted or decoded by the receiver” (Hall, 1980). Not only the language or visuals can perform meaning, but also things we listen. In the example of “ocean of the future”, the background music was a signifier as the music turns from a joyful melody to a serious melody when the children saw the plastics in the aquarium which could be interpreted by audience that the change of atmosphere highlights the seriousness of this issue and the sad reality of the ocean. The campaign uses symbols to construct meaning and connect the meaning with their main idea. In this case, they utilise children as a symbol of future which connects with the topic “ocean of the future” as the children can represent the future and are able to change the future. This campaign are targeting to audiences from the UK as it is a tv commercial was presented in the UK, however, children can be a specific targeted audience because of the main characters are children and they can receive the knowledge of plastic pollution from young age which can make changes to the future. People who always go to the supermarket can also consider as targeted audience as the campaign are aiming to stop supermarkets to use plastic bag so the customers can make powerful movement to support their aim.

Advertisements deals with “fragments of an ideology” and the signified ideas are “very close to communication with culture, knowledge and history” (Halls, 1977, page 39). Barthes believes that the meaning of signs is given by the cultural society. The concept behind the campaign “Ocean of the Future” comes off the back of a Greenpeace petition calling on supermarkets to reduce their use of plastic (Greenpeace, 2018). The video mentioned ocean plastic pollution that was collected during a beach clean of the local beach at Dingle, near to the aquarium. It highlights that “UK supermarkets generate 800,000 tonnes of plastic packaging every year” which leads Greenpeace to call on supermarkets to “dramatically reduce their plastic footprint” (Greenpeace, 2018). Plastics takes a long period to be break down and the ocean is accumulating more and more plastics over time which damages our ocean. Environment protection is the final aim of this campaign where people should take care of the earth and stay in sustainable environment. This can be related to the ideology of environmentalism where environmental movements are involved to improve the earth. The environmental movement here is the call out to supermarkets to reduce their use of plastic. The awareness of environmentalism first appears in the human record at least 5,000 years ago (Rex Weyler,2018). The society now has become more aware of environment protection which this campaign purposely exposes the ugly reality to people and urges them to take action.

In conclusion, different levels of semiotic analysis can be shown through the campaign. The analysis of the storyline and the visuals that make the video together are the denotation level of analysis where signifiers are identified. The audience are signified with a message or meaning from the signifier which refers to the connotation level of analysis. Each of the movement and visuals shown in the campaign creates meaning and interpretation from the audiences. Finally, using Roland Barthes’s ‘myth’ as the basis, ideologies within the message were examined where in this case is environmentalism.

References

1. Weyler, Rex. 'A Brief History of Environmentalism.' Greenpeace International. January 5, 2018. Accessed May 9, 2019. https://www.greenpeace.org/international/story/11658/a-brief-history-of-environmentalism/.
2. Greenpeace UK. 'The Ocean of the Future Should Be Filled with Fish Not Plastic, Ogilvy & Greenpeace Campaign Tells Supermarkets.' Greenpeace UK. April 17, 2018. Accessed May 9, 2019. https://www.greenpeace.org.uk/press-releases/ocean-future-filled-fish-not-plastic-ogilvy-greenpeace-campaign-tells-supermarkets/.
3. Hall, S. (1997) Excerpts from ‘The Work of Representation’, in Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London: Sage, pp.1-27. Accessed May 7, 2019
4. Greenpeace UK. 'Is This The Ocean of the Future?' Digital image. Https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKzqLdkuj6I. April 16, 2018. Accessed May 7, 2019.
5. Greenpeace. 'Questions.' Greenpeace UK. 2019. Accessed May 9, 2019. https://www.greenpeace.org.uk/about/faq/.