Wear the Pants

My most favorite recent ad campaign has to be Dockers’ “Wear the Pants” campaign. In the past decade, there has been a large focus on gay rights and the encouragement and acceptance for men to behave more metro sexually like go on diets, eat salad, or even drink lattes, so Dockers, I think in response to this is trying to bring the more manly, rugged, traditional men back in style.



Their new print ads consist of just words and a pair of their classic khaki pants. I will be using semiotics to break down the message behind the ad. The first think I want to discuss is the decoded iconic message. Unlike most ads, this ad doesn’t have much graphics besides the shape of a man composed by the words and the Dockers khaki pants. From this, we can interpret that the ad is directed towards men and is probably about pants since it is the only “real” object displayed. The second thing I would like to analyze is the coded iconic message. From the shape of the man, we can see that he is slim therefore implying that a real “man” would be fit. Also the background and simplicity of the ad implies a very natural setting which could remind us about the old days where men work with their bare hands out in the fields.

The last thing, and the most interesting thing, for this ad would be the linguistic message. Unlike most ads, the linguistic is usually just a supporter but in the new campaign, it is their strongest powers because it is extremely direct in what it wants from it’s consumers. It’s main slogan “Wear the Pants,” comes from the classic question that is usually directed towards couples, “who wears the pants in your relationship?” To wear the pants in colloquial terms, means to make all the big decisions and retain the most powerful status in the relationship and lately, within the media, we have been seeing women take that position. So Dockers, with this ad, is trying to remind men that they are suppose to wear the pants in the relationship, but I find it funny that their only justification for that is only because they are the men. It’s like their gender automatically gives them the right to have more status than women.