Please don't kill LeBron.

When looking at ads in can be very difficult to understand the intended meaning due to our cultural and ideological views. Katherine Frith provides us with a way of analyzing the layers of meaning in ads helping us decipher the advertisers intended meaning verse the cultural meaning of the ad. First by describing the surface meaning then the intended meaning and lastly the cultural or idealogical meaning of the advertisement. Due to my love of basketball and all things LeBron James I have decided to analyze a LeBron James advertisement.

When looking at the surface meaning of the Nike advertisement that I've chosen to analyze it is very easy to see the words, "Please, don't kill me" in the middle of the image, a large black man in a white sports jersey holding a basketball, and the words "Chron-illogical Disorder" very small in the lower left corner. 

Looking a little deeper into the advertisers intended meaning it is quite obvious that they are using the idea of transference by using a well known NBA Superstar as the man for the ad. Saying that this product can make you play basketball as good as LeBron can. 

The words in the advertisement are the key when looking at the cultural meaning. Not only is it LeBron James but the advertisement used the term "chron-illogical disorder" in this case it is obviously used as an urban term. When looking up "chron-illogical" it can be seen as a person who smokes to much chronic and loses all sense of reason or an "ill" person or skill which means sick, awesome, sweet, or fly. Both of these definitions culturally make the product more desirable. In the picture there are also numerous NBA symbols which associates the Nike product with the NBA which is every basketball players dream. Also in the eyes of a women there can be a sex appeal to how strong the picture makes LeBron look influencing their opinion of the ad.