A Multimodal Analysis of Car Billboard Advertisements: Audi/BMW Rivalry

Abstract

Within the plethora of advertising media, billboard advertising is gaining precedence due to its high visibilityandaccessibility to all viewers. This study explores the multimodal nature of billboard advertising by focusingon the interplay between theverbal and visualmodes employed by BMW and Audi advertisers.It accounts forthemeaning potentials and affordances of the semiotic resources and uncovers the advertisers’persuasive strategies. In doing so, the study draws on Hallidayand Matthiessen’s(2014)systemic functional grammar and Kressand van Leeuwen’s (2006) visual grammar to examine five billboards and a zeppelin. The study examines the headlines in terms of the grammatical structures of Theme/Rheme, Mood, and transitivity. It also explores the advertisers’ choices of visual semiotic resources to orchestrate representational, interactive, and compositional meanings. The study concludes that the two rivals: BMW and Audisucceeded in deploying the visual semiotic resources to communicate signified messages, except for one image.Regarding the verbal mode, Audi successfully manifestsmanipulation of the meaning-making metafunctionsto convey verbal messages;BMW conveys messages via lexical items only.Themultimodal approach to the analysis of billboard advertisements offers an insight into the integration of the verbal and visual modes to create signified meanings