An Analysis of an IKEA Pillow Advertisement

Have you had your daily dose of sleep? Because according to most people "Sleep is the best medicine"; Sleep, we all look forward to it after a hard day's work but have you ever stopped to see if you are getting enough? Is it because of the stress or is it your pillow? Let us assume like me you live a very busy life with school or work and have assignments coming in left, right and centre or have important meetings to attend too.

But have had a hard night before because you could not get to sleep and wake up looking like something straight out of a horror movie.

As homer once said "There is a time for many words, and there is also a time for sleep." This ad is very clever in making it catch the attention of the audience. Because at first glance it looks like a medicine ad but is actually an Ikea ad as the pillows are smartly disguised like pills.

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They have used many techniques like symbolism, allusion evocative language and connotation to make this ad stand out. So lay down and get comfortable as I tell you a story about this ad.

Firstly, let us talk about the use of allusion in the ad, the pillows are made to look like pills coming out of a container which says" sleep, naturally supplements focus and memory" meaning that sleep can make you feel more alive and refreshed and can make you get more out of your day.

This affect makes the audience think twice about why they are not sleeping and why they need to take medicine to feel refreshed, but ikea is showing that all you need is a goodnight's sleep with their pillows. In addition, by appealing to audiences need and desire for sleep the advert uses the element of pathos to position audiences to by the product.

Now to symbolism, which is a little easier, to explain, ikea has obviously made out to make the pillows look like pills falling out a container labelled "sleep, naturally supplements focus and memory" and using the colour blue to make the container stand out and appealing to the eye but also to make the audience feel relaxed and calm, like how you would want feel like before you go to bed. This ad has also used other techniques like evocative language, which makes the audience almost remember the feeling of being relaxed and having no worries because Ikea want you to be happy which makes them happy because you give them your money by getting a fluffy comfortable pillow and getting some much-needed rest.