Social Service Advertisement is a media to deliver social messages to society. Generaly, the advert contains verbal and visual messages on humanities, health, security, culture, education, arts and environment. This media is often made use by government to socialise its programmes.
Isidorus Tyas Sumbo Tinarbuko, lecturer in Visual Communication Design from Arts Institute ISI Yogyakarta, said the social media advert contained connotative meaning in its verbal and visual messages. All those messages have markers that present the interaction between the verbal and visual texts.
His research from 1994-1998 on Kompas daily showed that the verbal and visual messages in the adverts from that period was very effective in delivering the verbal and visual messages. For example, in the Telecommunication advert Why version, Sshhh... version, Teach Them version, Cooperative in the version Candles and This is an Ant, National Discipline Movement advert in Ape and Ant versions, Reading Interest advert in A Camel version, Bald version as well as umbrella and Books versions.
In the advert Monetary Crisis in Glass version, Elections advert Broomstick version, Copy Right advert version of Gesang, Public advert Transport - Saving version. Furthermore, Traffic - Correct version, Arts and Culture advert Mickey Mouse version, and Petruk and Gatotkaca vs Superman version.
"The presence of the advert is easy to remember, target not finding the message hard to understand," he said on Thursday (17/12) during his open doctoral exam at Faculty of Cultural Sciences UGM.
The Visual culture observer said the adverts made in the early part of the Reform 1999-2006 were not effective in delivering messages as these are not easy to understand by the target.
"The advert in the reform period seemed a hard sell," he said.
What emerged there was the impression of pushing the intention of the communicator to the communicant on the existing verbal and visual messages.
Defending dissertation "Verbal and Visual Messages of Adverts (Semiotics Analysis of Social Service Advert in Kompas Daily 1994-2006)", he explained that the visual message in the advert made the verbal and visual message ineffective. The message cannot touch the feelings of target audience, making the message hard to comprehend.
Sumbo Tinarbuko revealed overall the verbal and visual interaction in the advert has presented interrelated verbal and visual messages. Between the verbal and visual messages involve rhetorics, hyperbole, metonymy, allusion, metaphore, antithesis, personification, allegory, and parallelism. Hence, the verbal dan visual markers can explain each other and signify the connotations in the adverts.