The Ethos of Social Responsibility in a Coca-Cola Advertisement

Giovanna Ike Coan*

Abstract: This article analyzes a Brazilian Coca-Cola advertisement that was part of a
campaign whose slogan was “Com você, por um país melhor”. The theme of this
campaign was social responsibility and the focus in the advertisement studied here is
on the opposition between the categories of “workers” and “people”. My purpose in
this text is to discuss how The Coca-Cola Company makes use of various verbal and
non-verbal strategies for creating an agreeable ethos, in order to weaken its well-
known capitalist image and strengthen its proximity to the consumer.
Keywords: discourse analysis, advertising, ethos, social responsibility, Coca-Cola.

Maingueneau (2005) points out that every discursive production is

oriented, i.e., it is constructed according to a specific purpose. Advertising discourse is
oriented towards telling the public about a product or service in order to persuade them
to buy it; the successful effect of this persuasion is achieved through different strategies.
In the Coca-Cola advertisement analyzed here (see the appendix), the
company does not explicitly try to sell its product, but it aims at reinforcing its ethos.
Understanding ethos as the image the enunciator attributes to himself through discourse
– which is also constructed by the co-enunciator in the discursive process 1 –, Coca-Cola
tries to represent itself as a company that cares about its workers. However, by building
an agreeable atmosphere around its name, the ultimate objective of this advertisement is
certainly commercial.
This advertisement was taken from the Brazilian magazine Horizonte
Geográfico, published in June, 2006, and it was part of a campaign which had social
responsibility as its main theme and the slogan Com você, por um País melhor2. The
advertisements from this campaign could be found in different types of magazines.
The verbal part which first calls the attention of the viewer are the
sentences:

*
Undergraduated student at the University of São Paulo. E-mail: gikecoan@yahoo.com.br
1
“(...) o ethos é a imagem que o enunciador pretende atribuir a si pelo seu discurso, sendo construído pelo
co-enunciador no processo discursivo” (Greco, 2004:410).
2
In another advertisement from this campaign, found in the magazine Superinteressante from November,
2006, the heading was “Nossas garrafas também vêm com uma mensagem dentro.” and the text at the top
of the page clearly expressed this ethos of social responsibility, for it started by stating that: “Quando
você abre um produto da Coca-Cola Brasil, também está nos ajudando a colocar pra fora a idéia de um
futuro melhor. Isso porque a responsabilidade social da Coca-Cola Brasil não está presente apenas em
seus projetos sociais, culturais e ambientais, mas principalmente, em seus produtos. (...)”.
 Existem empresas que têm empregados. Nós temos pessoas.

This heading establishes the dichotomy empregados/ pessoas, opposing a

social category (social actors) to a biological one (human beings), and it also creates a
movement from distance to proximity through the use of the binary opposition others/
we. The first sentence is written in the third person, which, according to Benveniste
(1995), creates some distance from the viewer by providing an atmosphere of scientific
and universal objectivity3, whereas the second one is written by a collective first person,
which brings more intimacy to the discourse. In addition, by demarcating the boundary
between the others and we (Brandão, 1994), the advertisement emphasizes the positive
aspects of the latter, which is thus taken as the dominant pole of the pair.
These sentences not only call the attention of the viewer but they stand
for a key to the understanding of the advertisement as a whole, in both verbal and non-
verbal elements. First, we are going to analyze the former by explaining how the theme
of the heading was expanded in the text located at the top of the page, which we
reproduce below:

A Coca-Cola Brasil sabe: pessoas fazem toda a diferença. Pessoas são estimulantes,
criativas e fazem melhores ambientes de trabalho. Temos mais de 300 mil pessoas
trabalhando conosco, direta e indiretamente. Os investimentos para o bem-estar delas
e de suas famílias chegaram a R$ 110 milhões em 2004. Pessoas felizes e valorizadas
estão mais bem preparadas para exercer seus papéis. Esta é a cultura de uma empresa
que não cansa de dizer o quanto gosta das pessoas. E, talvez por isto, as pessoas
gostem tanto da gente.

This text begins with a referent4, i.e., the noun phrase A Coca-Cola
Brasil. This construction is similar to what Brandão (1994:47) observes in the analysis
of an advertisement of Petrobrás:

A enunciação é sui-referencial na medida em que a fala do locutor se dobra sobre si

mesma. Em outros termos, a Petrobrás fala de si mesma não como eu explícito, mas
como ela, um referente, criando com isso, uma ilusão de objetividade.

Besides, this objectivity caused by the use of the non-person of the

discourse (Benveniste, 1995) is reinforced by the presence of the punctuation mark “:”
(colon), for it makes the affirmative tone of the statement stronger than it would be in a
subordinate clause (A Coca-Cola Brasil sabe que pessoas fazem toda a diferença.).

3
This is reinforced by the indirect order of the sentence, with the verb “existir” in the first position.
4
“A referência designa a propriedade do signo lingüístico ou de uma expressão de remeter a uma
realidade. O referente é a realidade apontada pela referência.” (Charadeau & Maingueneau, 2004:418).
 Then, in order to establish a familiar contact with the reader, the voice of
the text is transferred into a collective first person (we), as it is possible to notice in
expressions such as “Temos mais de 300 mil pessoas trabalhando conosco” and “as
pessoas gostem tanto da gente”, which reminds us of the second sentence of the
heading (“Nós temos pessoas.”). Coca-Cola is well-known for being a huge and
successful transnational company – a position that certainly implies a relation of
distance with the consumers –, and it also has the image of one of the most
representative symbols of capitalism – an image that is part of our discursive memory
(or interdiscourse), i.e., of the discursive knowledge that makes any statement possible
and determines what we say through the formulations that have already been forgotten5.
It is through the use of a discourse that intends to shorten the distance
between company and consumer – by making use of the first person and an informal
and intimate tenor6, similar to everyday speech7 – that the company tries to construct its
ethos of social responsibility.
As Fairclough (1992:110) points out,

If the voices of powerful people and groups in politics, industry, etc. are represented in
a version of everyday speech (even a simulated and partially unreal one), then social
identities, relationships and distances are collapsed.

Another third-person sentence whose referent is Coca-Cola, the

company, appears in the text: “Esta é a cultura de uma empresa que não cansa de dizer
o quanto gosta das pessoas”. Here, by referring to a third-person and by using the
indefinite article – “a cultura de uma empresa” instead of “a cultura da nossa empresa”
– the text is presented as an absolute, perennial and ubiquitous truth. In addition, the
word empresa and the positive meaning given to it in the sentence recall the opposition
others/we of the heading.
As seen so far, the verbal text does not directly address the reader. The
exception is found in the box placed at the bottom left-hand corner of the page, which
shows the logo of the company Coca-Cola Brasil and the slogan Com você, por um
País melhor. According to Fairclough (1992:115), “direct address is conventionally
used as a marker of informality in modern advertising”. In the present advertisement we
5
“O interdiscurso é todo o conjunto de formulações feitas e já esquecidas que determinam o que dizemos.
(...) é preciso que o que foi dito por um sujeito específico, em um momento particular se apague na
memória para que, passando para o ‘anonimato’, possa fazer sentido em ‘minhas’ palavras.” (Orlandi,
1999:33-4)
6
cf. Fairclough, 1992:127.
7
This aspect is clearly observed in the use of the vernacular form “da gente” rather than “de nós”.
find an extra element, which is the company trying to demonstrate that it is worried
about the country, as well as (and together with) the reader/consumer (you); this feature
increases the proximity between these two interlocutors, and, thus, the confidence in the
brand8.
Moreover, the logo of Coca-Cola has its identity acclimatized to the
Brazilian context, not only through the addition of the name Brasil but also through the
yellow-and-green details put into it – the representative colors of this country. This
drawing in the logo is maximized in another part of the advertisement, appearing above
the picture of the two men in a truck, and it is painted in three colors, i.e., yellow, green
and red. Red is one of the symbolic constituents of the image of Coca-Cola and, not by
chance, predominates in the whole advertisement9.
The advertisement attempts to show that Coca-Cola does not have
empregados, but pessoas. This opposition, based upon the distinct meanings of these
words, has much to do with the capitalist system of production. According to Lukács
(1976), capitalism leads to the alienation, the fragmentation and the reification of the
modes of production, so that the products (the commodities) become the most important
element in this process, whereas the ones who produce them (the people, the human
labour) are forgotten or erased from the consumers’ minds10. As mentioned above, the
long-established image we have of Coca-Cola is that this is one of the strongest
symbols of our contemporary capitalist society. We could then interpret that, by using
the discourse of social responsibility, Coca-Cola intends to change its ethos – and,
consequently, the information we have from the interdiscourse –, so that the strategy of
humanizing a category of social actors is developed in this advertising campaign11. The
following statement of Maingueneau (2005:212) corroborates this concept of ‘changing
the ethos’:

O nome de uma marca (...) está associado a um conjunto variável de representações

sedimentadas ao longo do tempo, uma ‘imagem de marca’, sobre a qual a empresa deve
agir constantemente.

8
In relation to the pragmatic value of a slogan, Maingueneau (2005:171) presents that “o slogan está
associado sobretudo à sugestão e se destina, acima de tudo, a fixar na memória dos consumidores
potenciais a associação entre uma marca e um argumento persuasivo para a compra”.
9
As Gobé (2002:172) points out, “o script tipográfico particular da Coca-Cola e a forte cor vermelha são
inconfundíveis e memoráveis”.
10
“(…) the universality of the commodity form is responsible both objectively and subjectively for the
abstraction of the human labour incorporated in commodities” (Lukács, 1976:87).
11
According to Gobé (2002:242), “As marcas não são estáticas; possuem muitas facetas em suas
personalidades. Para crescer e manter-se como preferida na mente do consumidor, uma marca deve
evoluir para permanecer conectada a seu público-alvo, em sua existência diária.”.
 In order to change the image of The Coca-Cola Company as having the
sole intention of earning money by selling their products, the advertisement tries to
conceal the product itself and, when it refers to money, this is related to the amount they
invest in “people” (“Os investimentos para o bem-estar delas e de suas famílias
chegaram a R$ 110 milhões em 2004.”). But before stating that, the company justifies
such investments by saying that “pessoas fazem toda a diferença. Pessoas são
estimulantes, criativas e fazem melhores ambientes de trabalho”; and right after
showing the numbers, it discusses the results of such investments (“Pessoas felizes e
valorizadas estão mais bem preparadas para exercer seus papéis”). All of those
statements make a repetitive use of the term pessoas, reinforcing the importance they
have for the company (as emphasized in the heading); moreover, this use is significant
in the sense that the reader/consumer is also (and identifies him/herself as) a “pessoa”.
The identification between the consumer and the people depicted in the
advertisement is achieved through non-verbal strategies, with the participants in the
picture looking directly at the viewer – acknowledging his/her existence and addressing
them with a visual “you” (Kress & van Leeuwen, 1999) – therefore establishing a
contact and demanding some action from the viewer:

(…) the participant’s gaze (…) demands something from the viewer, demands that the
viewer enter into some kind of imaginary relation with him or her. (1999:381).

However, this demand is not authoritarian in the sense that there is the
tentative creation of a relation of social affinity with the viewer, for the participants are
smiling in the picture. This picture is a medium shot (i.e., it shows the head and
shoulders of the participants), which corresponds to a “far personal distance” in which
“subjects of personal interests and involvements are discussed”12. The angle is frontal,
showing that what the viewer sees is part of his/her world, something he/she is involved
with. As the men are not depicted from a lower or higher angle, but from the same
height as the viewer, it transmits the idea that participants and viewer are in the same
position in respect to power relations (cf. Kress & van Leeuwen, 1999).
As it was previously said, the advertisement intends to portray those men
not as workers, but as people. Yet this purpose seems to be contradictory when they are
depicted as two employees who are working (and wearing a uniform with Coca-Cola’s
12
Edward Hall, apud Kress & van Leeuwen, 1999.
logo) – although they smile and seem to like their job –, and when it shows the badge of
one of the workers, reinforcing the idea that his identity (and consequently that of his
companion) is constructed only through his relation with the company, despite of any of
the other identities these people might have (as husbands, friends, students etc).
Nevertheless, the advertisement at least shows a photo on the badge that
is different from the usual pattern: here the worker is smiling; thus the relation of social
affinity is reinforced. It also tries to present the uniqueness of the workers by displaying
their full names (Arlindo Cunha and Cristiano Garcia), which, according to Brandão
(2004), gives more individuality and significance to the named being 13. In spite of that,
again, the fact that they are portrayed working – i.e., in their social role – is translated
into words when they are classified as “funcionários do sistema Coca-Cola”.
A question we can raise is whether the word empregado in the heading
sentence “Existem empresas que têm empregados” has a more negative sense than the
term funcionário, used by the company to describe their workers. The dictionary
definitions present both terms as synonyms14, but maybe their use in ordinary
conversation confirms the difference. However, it is interesting to notice that
trabalhador is seen as a synonym for empregado, but not for funcionários15.
Returning to the argument exposed at the beginning of this article (that,
although the advertisement emphasizes the ethos of the company, its ultimate purpose is
commercial), we could say that Coca-Cola highlights social responsibility discourse in
the form of an advertisement by creating a hybrid “information-and-publicity” (or
‘telling-and-selling’) discourse (Fairclough, 1992:115). According to this author, this
form of “interdiscursivity” or “constitutive intertextuality” is common in contemporary
society and such hybrid texts

(…) testify to a colonizing movement of advertising from the domain of commodity

marketing in a narrow sense to a variety of other domains. One can relate this to a
current surge (…) in the long-term process of commodification, the incorporation of
new domains into the market, and a spread of consumerism. (1992:117)

13
“O nome é o primeiro passo de um processo simbólico de construção da identidade: o nome distingue,
singulariza, individualiza, confere estatuto de existência ao ser designado.” (Brandão, 2004:697)
14
In Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa (2001:1403), it is given that the synonyms and variant
forms of “funcionário” are the same as the ones for “empregado”, which include even items of negative
connotation such as “lacaio” and “serviçal”.
15
According to the electronic version of Novo Dicionário Aurélio (2005): “trabalhador”: 2. Aquele que
trabalha; lidador, pelejador. 3. Jornaleiro, empregado, operário.
 In the Coca-Cola advertisement we may interpret that there is actually a
“colonizing movement” of an argumentative text – which expresses through verbal and
non-verbal elements how this company is worried about its workers – from the domain
of informative discourse types to the domain of advertising, i.e., the domain of
commodity marketing. Thus, the strategy of using the discourse of social responsibility
intensifies the persuasive power of the company over the consumers of its products.
Therefore, in the analyzed advertisement, The Coca-Cola Company
makes use of various strategies to create an agreeable ethos, such as the movement from
a more objective to a more intimate and colloquial language and the mix of advertising
and social responsibility discourses, in order to weaken their well-known capitalist
image and finally strengthen the proximity between the company and the consumer
through a visual text that evokes affinity.

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Appendix