ABSTRACT
An old-fashioned poem? Yes; at least part of one. But it is also something else. These lines have been taken from an advertisement for a range of Citroën cars (see Figure 5.1). The words themselves are from the love poem ‘To His Coy Mistress’, first published in 1681 and written, as the advertisement tells us, by Andrew Marvell. The ad copy that follows invites the reader to link sentiments expressed in that poem with their
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The creative team in the advertising agency have found a way to convey the idea that the Citroën range is beautiful; that, in some sense, a person could fall in love with these cars. Just as the section of the poem suggests how the lover will spend time carefully cherishing every part of the woman he desires: eyes, breasts, forehead, and ‘the rest’, the advertisement’s images offers up the car’s body for closer consideration; headlights, windscreen and a curvaceous boot. The analogy is clear and the proposition simple: the Citroën range of cars deserves all the adoration given by a loving poet to his beautiful mistress – the relationship to a thing (a car) is reconceived as a relationship between people, and the metaphor caras-woman is given another airing (see, for example, Dichter 1960; MacRury 1997; McLuhan 1951).
