Textual Analysis: Bird’s Eye – Field Fresh Peas

Bird’s Eye – Field Fresh Peas

This advert contains features such as:

• Real Time
• Repetition
• Speech – There is a continuous voiceover that states the Bird’s Eye farmers try to grow the sweetest and tenderest peas, nurturing and caring for them for 5 months. The character of Clarence the toy polar bear speaks, telling the farmers to continue on to the peas, to support the overly dramatic action on screen, which is intended to create humour.
• Dramatic Action – The advert follow a story of a group of farmers going to their peas, while one falls and injures his leg, citing “leave me, go to the peas…go to the peas” this is done in an overly dramatic manner and creates humour. We see the character with a bag of frozen peas on his injury at the end.
• Music – Music is playing lightly throughout while the voiceover speaks, and it is done for dramatic effect.

This advert is a dramatization, that tells the story of a group of farmers heading to their peas and one falls and injures himself, telling the others to leave him behind and get to the peas. This advert creates humour through the over exaggeration of the narrative. The whole thing is made out to be an epic journey, and the character falling is done in an overly dramatic way to add to the humour.

This advert targets everyone. It appeals to the adults that will go and purchase the peas through the description of the product, and the humour in the advert, but also to the children as the character of Clarence The Polar Bear (voiced by Willem Dafoe) has proven to be popular with children, and the company are putting faith in the power of children’s persuasion.

The advertisement tries to create the image of Bird’s Eye peas being the best. They describe their product as the “sweetest and tenderest”, saying the farmers care for and nurture them for 5 months. They want the audience to see the advertisement and think that these are the best peas, and so they are the ones we should buy.

The advert shows 5 caucasian males of varied ages, and as farmers they are not shown to be very wealthy. They are shown in a positive light, and the use of music accompanied by the way they are walking almost makes them seem like brave heroes making their way on an epic journey.

The advert takes a light, humorous tone, but the speech is very formal. I think this works with what the advert is trying to create as it is almost parodying adventure films where the heroes go on epic quests, as these commonly have a male narrator that speaks formally.