Hagiography

Narrative by Charles Leech, Posted August 25, 2024

Detail from Canadian Tire commercial

The CASE FILE series — to which SEMIOVOX has invited our semiotician colleagues from around the world to contribute — shares memorable case studies via story telling.

When I first arrived back in Canada, looking for work as a newly-minted PhD in semiotics, I thought for sure I’d find work — fulfilling work — at an ad agency. When I thought it through, I figured that no self-respecting ad agency could possibly function without a staff semiotician: there wasn’t anything ad agencies did that couldn’t be aided by semiotic principles.

So I thought.

You probably saw the punchline coming: that career aspiration was a bust, in the early oughts. I couldn’t figure out how to explain what I did, and agencies couldn’t figure out how to monetize it. But once I discovered market research as an industry, I realized my relationships with ad agencies could unfold that way. It was research!

One of my very first projects for an ad agency was with Doner, who had been responsible for a very popular, very successful commercial for Canadian Tire. It was set in the dust-bowl prairies of the 1920s and featured a young boy pining for a shiny new red bicycle from the Canadian Tire catalogue:

The agency knew, from their tracking numbers, that they’d captured lightning in a bottle with that ad — it played during the Christmas season for years — but nobody could figure out how. They’d tried conventional consumer-facing qualitative, but nobody there could explain it either. So I put my hand up.

I started thinking about the ad with the same vague trepidation I still often have: Good heavens, what is there to say about this? Am I going to find anything interesting to say? And then, sure enough, as it happens every time, I do. There is something timeless and classic about the nostalgia in that ad, supported by perfect production values: costume, lighting, casting, acting, all in harmony.

I was struck by the lighting, and especially by the back-lighting, and that quickly led me to the first of a double-punch of revelation: the back-lighting is an aspect of hagiography, which artists have used since Byzantine times to identify saints or holy figures through halos and lighting techniques. Immediately, the right hook that followed that left jab, was the further realization: the ad is near-religious in its depictions: the biblical trials of the land, the labouring in the wasteland; the dust (of the desert?), the longing for a better world/afterlife, the pining for redemption; and then the moment of truth: the red bicycle is held, aloft, like the sacrament in a Christian ritual. The boy’s face is a study in awe (a curious emotion, awe: equal parts wonder, respect, and fear: being in the presence of the borderline terrifying).

So, I presented these findings to the clients, and the reaction was extremely gratifying, and helped confirm for me that I’d chosen the right path: they were stunned at this idea, all of which they’d manage to achieve unknowingly (not always, but often the case with ad agencies). For the first time, they’d been given a plausible explanation for what the hell was going on. Nice things were said. I was on my way.

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