A War of Green and Blue

Since the economy’s seemingly inevitable slide downhill reached the public consciousness about 7 or 8 months ago, Asda have been plugging their cheap, branded goods to exceptional effect. The supermarket’s ads have been all over the place, their bright green arrows declaring exactly how many of their products are cheaper than Tesco’s, Morrisons’ and Sainsburys’ based on an “independent” price comparison website. The ads’ content speaks of raw data, but the most important messages are far more embedded into the format of the ad as a whole, and resonate on a far deeper level than numbers alone –

The semiological language of the ad is intentionally thrifty – white, in British society, is a cultural byword for…