US and Them: loveLife, Commercial Brands and Everyday Life Masters Degree Dissertation Richard C. Delate 201511524 June 2007 1 Declaration I, Richard Cecil Delate, hereby declare that this dissertation, submitted for the Masters Degree in Cultural and Media Studies at the University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, is entirely my own work, with the exceptions of those references acknowledged in the text. Signed: 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There are many people who need to be thanked who encouraged me all the way through this journey. Firstly, I would like to thank the young people that participated in this study. I hope that they learnt as much as I did. I would also like to thank the management of loveLife who initially provided much information and collaboration on this project. I thank, Professor Keyan Tomaselli and Professor Ruth Teer-Tomaselli for their guidance and encouragement and to my supervisor Dr Warren Parker, for making the time and effort available to support this study. A special word of appreciation and acknowledgement to Professor Sonya Narunsky-Laden who provided much guidance and reading materials on issues relating to consumption theory. Much thanks to the staff at Dramaide - in particular Mkhonzeni Gumede - who helped setting up the focus groups for this study in KwaZulu-Natal, and Nicolette Solomon, who helped to set up the focus groups in Gauteng and helped moderate the groups. I also thank Mark Stirling and all my former colleagues at UNAIDS, who provided a lot of encouragement in completing this thesis. The following people also need to be thanked for their support: Hayley Reid for helping in sourcing publications and journal articles without whom very little of this would have been possible; my sister Jacqueline Duarte, my former partner Dominic Liber and the rest of my family and friends who provided a lot of encouragement and moral support at times when all hope of finishing this thesis had faded and who must be relieved that they will never have to hear the word “loveLife” again! If there is anyone I have left out, thank you to you too! 3 Abstract The issue of branding with regard to public health communication is the topic of this thesis. The case study investigated is that of the loveLife Lifestyle brand introduced to South Africa in 1999 by the US-based Henry J Kaiser Family Foundation. loveLife brought together the collective efforts of a consortium of NGOs concerned with adolescent reproductive health in South Africa with the primary objective of reducing the rate of new HIV infections, sexually transmitted infections and teenage pregnancy through promoting a healthy lifestyle approach using traditional commercial marketing techniques. This study draws upon the Circuit of Culture to explore the manner in which the meaning of the loveLife lifestyle brand discourse is constructed, produced, distributed and consumed through using a semiotic approach. To achieve this the study explores the meanings represented by loveLife through examining the images and texts from the television and radio programmes, outdoor media; print publications and public relations produced by loveLife. The manner in which these meanings were produced by loveLife as articulated in various policy documents. It explores how young people aged 12 – 17 from different socio-economic backgrounds consume and make meaning of the loveLife brand and use these in everyday life to express meaning about themselves in their social interaction and how carcereal networks of power comprising parents, religious groups and AIDS organizations have sought to regulate the meaning and social identities that arise from the representation of the brand. The study concludes that the representation of the loveLife lifestyle brand has given rise to a brand identity that positions adolescent sexuality as something that is cool and that everyone is engaged in. This representation has been the result of a deliberate brand strategy by loveLife that has sought to encourage more open discussions between parents and youth on issues relating to sex and sexuality. The unintentional 4 consequence arising from this representation is that in their consumption of the meanings of loveLife, loveLife’s interpersonal facilities are decoded by others in the community as being spaces that encourage sexual interaction by young people. Young people who attend these facilities are by implication decoded as being sexually active. This undermines the intention of the producers of creating spaces where young people can engage and interact in a variety of recreational activities including learning about sexual and reproductive health. An additional unintentional consequence of the representation is that stakeholders who exert power over young people such as parents and religious leaders have actively sought to regulate the meaning of the brand either through using formal channels of protest such as the Advertising Standards Authority of South Africa or through preventing their youth from participating in loveLife’s interpersonal programme. This study proposes that the quality of media messages be measured in relation to the meanings that consumers and those that interact with them decode. This includes exploring the social identities that these meanings give rise to and manner in which these find meaning through everyday interaction and the extent to which these meanings correlate with those intended by the producers of the message. 5 ABBREVIATIONS AIDS Acquired Immune Deficiency Virus ASASA Advertising Standards Authority of South Africa CEO Chief Executive Officer CCMS Centre for Cultural and Media Studies HIV Human Immunodeficiency Virus HST Health Systems Trust KFF Kaiser Family Foundation NAFCI National Adolescent Friendly Clinic Initiative NASHI National Adolescent Sexual Health Initiative PLHA People living with HIV/AIDS RHRU Reproductive Health Research Unit STI Sexually Transmitted Infections TAC Treatment Action Campaign TAG Technical Advisory Group UKZN University of KwaZulu-Natal UNAIDS Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS USSASA United Schools Sports Association of South Africa 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures ..........................................................................................................9 **PREFACE..........................................................................................................10 Chapter 1: Introduction ........................................................................................13 loveLife: An Introductory Overview ....................................................................16 Rationale for Studying the loveLife Lifestyle Brand.............................................17 Chapter 2: Theoretical Framework: The Making of Meaning............................22 Semiotics.............................................................................................................23 Myth....................................................................................................................26 Discourse.............................................................................................................27 Knowledge/Power................................................................................................29 Interpellation of the Subject .................................................................................30 Encoding/Decoding .............................................................................................31 Summary .............................................................................................................33 Chapter 3: The Circuit of Culture as a Framework for Studying Brands as Cultural Artifacts ..................................................................................................35 Brands Across the Circuit of Culture....................................................................36 Representation and Brands...................................................................................38 Identity ................................................................................................................46 Production ...........................................................................................................46 Consumption........................................................................................................48 Regulation ...........................................................................................................50 A Methodology for Analyzing the Articulation of the loveLife Brand..................52 Summary .............................................................................................................55 Chapter 4: Representing loveLife .........................................................................56 Enduring Signs – Placing loveLife in the minds of consumers .............................57 Non-enduring Signs - Articulating the meanings of loveLife................................67 Summary .............................................................................................................88 7 Chapter 5: Producing loveLife..............................................................................91 The development of the loveLife lifestyle brand in South Africa..........................91 Synergy: Providing the Software (Media) and Hardware (Services) for HIV Prevention............................................................................................................99 Using Research to Link Production to Consumption