Reflexivity exposes the metalanguage that composes the underlying code of advertising. Cosmopolitan viewers can then consume the sign of someone conversant with both the content and the metalanguage of ads. Current advertising practices try to turn self-reflexive awareness of advertising codes into an object of consumption - a sign which the viewer can clothe herself in and thereby indicate a certain immunity from the manipulative effects of swallowing too much code.

Reflexivity has been enco

Sunlight dishwashing liquid introduced the the tongue-in-cheek self-mocking ad

ded in a variety of ways. A character in an ad may call attention to the nature of the ad itself. Usually this means a character either steps out of character to address the audience - e.g., the knowing wink or an aside. This was done with an ironic inflection in a Sunlight dishwashing soap ad that features cartoon bubbles of dialogue which mock the absurd notion that clean plates could be the key to a romantic relationship.

Perhaps the most familiar instance of advertising reflexivity is the campaign constructed around Joe Isuzu. These ads build on the humorous discrepancy between the huckster's statements and the advertiser's superimposed commentary on the screen to call attention to the commonly shared view that car salesmen and car ads are dishonest. The commentary thus allows the advertiser to inform on Joe Isuzu, and unite with viewers in exposing the hype behind selling cars. The ad exposes the excess and exaggeration of the system of advertising and thereby absolves Isuzu as different from the rest.

Another method of encoding reflexivity is to use camera techniques that call attention to themselves. These include cinema verité techniques which do not try to disguise the presence of the camera.

The amateurism of home video offers the truest, and most populist, glimpse of unmediated reality

But the most common method of drawing awareness to the constructed nature of the advertisement has been to point to the television screen within the screen of our own television frame to call into question the constructedness of the ad. Several years ago, Le Tigre's TV campaign consisted of revealing the actual video construction of the ad. The screen within the screen ostensibly calls into question both the relationship between image and reality as well as the relationship between the imagemaker and the viewer. When the screen breaks up or rolls within an ad does it remind viewers that a form of self-interested production has taken place? Scratches, defects and glitches in the video are not only techniques for encoding 'realism,' they also draw attention to the mediated character of the advertisement. When Sprite featured ads made by high school students to whom they had loaned hand-held video cameras, and when Surf detergent featured 'genuine' American families constructing their own ads, they did so because obviously amateur production violated the familiar codes of slickness that define most advertising. Implicitly then, the code of slickness is made to appear as a method of disguising cultural production and hence, as a means of deceiving us.

Max Headroom was not only a product of the age of media reflexivity, his use as an advertising icon of cynically aware media reflexivity by Coke is the archetype of how easy it is to absorb and reroute critique into the cult of personality. Max Headroom began as a dialectical vision of a futuristic capitalist media system that presides over what Baudrillard would call 'the total simulacrum.' As the first computerized and totally simulated talking head - unconcerned about feeding or keeping safe a material body - Max has no misgivings about bursting the mirage of the media bubble. Coke immediately appropriated the image of the video-stuttering, truth-exposing Max housed in the electronic body of the television screen.

Like the "Bo Knows" campaign for Nike, the Diet Pepsi ad campaign featuring Ray Charles joins intertextuality with reflexivity to lure viewers back into the appellation box where we are hailed and engaged in unusual narrative strategies. The first Ray Charles ads played off jokes based on knowledge of his blindness. As he prepares to taste his Diet Pepsi, someone switches a Diet Coke for the Diet Pepsi. He takes a sip and frowns as we hear a stagehand laughing off-camera at the practical joke. In the post-Levi's age of individuality, jokes based on a handicap are acceptable. The handicap is a badge of recognition and achievement: here then is the true taste test and the true blindfold. Diet Pepsi is here referring back to its own campaign of many years featuring the blind taste test as the proof of its pudding. Both Ray Charles and Diet Pepsi have one thing in common, they are both "the Right One, Baby!" A subsequent ad featured a blindfolded Joe Montana taking "the Pepsi Challenge. In front of Montana sit two Diet Cokes, but he's not fooled. As he pulls away the blindfold, he, and we, see Ray Charles sipping a Diet Pepsi and then having a good horselaugh. Isn't making commercials fun?

These ads appellate viewers as media (content) literate, familiar with the referent systems of Ray Charles and cola-wars taste tests. Foregrounding Ray Charles and Joe Montana as discriminating connoisseurs of diet colas tacitly addresses viewers in terms of the popular criticism generated by their previous use of celebrities such as Michael Jackson who did not drink the product. Like "Bo Knows," each successive Diet Pepsi ad refers back to the previous ads. 'Getting the jokes' depends on recognizing the references, and this insider knowledge puts the viewer backstage, positioned as the commercial's director. Thus privileged, viewers may share the camaraderie of the practical joke, and thereby feel as if they participate in the construction of the ad -- this is Diet Pepsi's means of reflexively denying deception.

Finally, the 1989 Infiniti campaign exemplifies an ad campaign that self-reflexively problematizes the categories of 'desire' and 'need' in relation to the semiotic meanings of objects. These ads are, by now, famous for their Zen-like commentary on the simplicity and beauty of nature along with the photographic absence of any apparent commodity. A typical ad showed waves breaking against a shoreline or the symmetry of birds flying in formation, while a male voiceover tranquilly discoursed about the meaning of consumption and the meaning of needs. The campaign included self-conscious dialogues about the relationship between status and commodities: "It does not stick out as a symbol of status." One ad featured an older man quizzing a younger man about why the latter wears an older man's wristwatch. He engages the younger man in a semiotics of wristwatches: 'what does that watch on your wrist say about you?' Has the younger man accomplished something that would merit wearing a watch that 'makes this kind of statement?' "Are you at the top of your profession?" "Do you make a million dollars?" Responding 'no' to each query, the younger man subtly negates and redefines previous value structures. Do commodities make a decisive statement about your station in social life? In tone and content, the Infiniti ad campaign suggests a critical attack upon status semiotics, but this attack is actually aimed at outmoded notions of deferring gratification on major ticket items. With a tone of quiet defiance, the younger man asserts that one wears the watch (owns the car) because he (you) recognizes quality and wants to experience the aesthetically most pleasing watch (use value) right now, regardless of any social signals it may give off.

Hyperactivity

Advertisers compete at differentiating their images to stand out in the marketplace. In heavily saturated consumer markets, positioning is geared toward effectively differentiating the signs of commodities rather than the commodity itself. Confronted by the 1980s pincers of bored, jaded viewers and the constant requisite of maintaining market share, many advertisers opted for a rapid-fire barrage of images. The result was a heavily stylized form of cultural noise consisting of an arresting visual and aural array of signifiers strewn together in a fused stream. All the signifying techniques discussed above have been thrown into the pot of hyperactivity - the screen within the screen, hyperrealist encoding, scratchy, grainy images, offcenter and crooked camera tilts. These approaches appear most often for leisure-time goods such as sodas and beers; goods associated with the body such as shoes and jeans; for cars, motorscooters. These ads seek to energize daily life -- Michelob Light, Coke, Diet Coke, Pepsi, McDonald's offer energy fixes - the sign of energy. The intense style of super-abstracted editing establishes a tension between the mundane and the excitement that comes from the world of the product.

Ads which utilize the codes of magnified realism have quickened the pace of cuts and images. Obviously, the popularity of MTV in cutting images to fast-paced music demands a comparable speed of editing, and constitutes a prerequisite to being able to decipher hyperactive texts. There can be little doubt that MTV styles also contribute to declining attention spans, and thus again set the stage for hyperactive ads. A series of related factors have reinforced this tendency toward hyperactivity. First, the constantly rising costs of buying time on TV in recent years has motivated advertisers to compress their messages - i.e., their encoding sequences. Second, the field of signification that advertisers work on has become so saturated by competing images and signifiers that it becomes increasingly difficult to differentiate them. As a result, the effective commercial half-life of signs becomes shorter and shorter. Combine this with bored and jaded viewers, and advertisers find themselves constantly upping the ante in their efforts to grab the ever-dwindling attention-spans of viewers. Hyperness is another method of commanding 'hey look at us, we stand out.'