Iron Bru Advert (2012)
https://www.youtube.com/embed/ibuLgsVcQUY
Messaging: Iron Bru makes everything alright? The ad seems to work at the level of parody through intertextually referencing a number of cultural myths - and thereby, the pleasure felt by the ad's intended audience in recognising the absurdity of such myths (while at the the same time, propagating/reinforcing such myths). In this sense, the ad presents a reworking of cultural myths around gender and socio-economic status ('class'). In doing so, the narrative centres on the archetype of the 'henpecked husband' - where the father/husband? submits to the will of his female partner mother/wife? and her mother i.e. the (archetype of the) dreaded 'mother-in-law'. Although you would need to support this claim - the framing of 'matriarchal power' as a threat (to masculinity) is more likely to denote lower socio-economic status (although, this is my assumption and so, would need to be support for the claim to hold weight). The ad then symbolically positions the Iron Bru brand/product in relation to this myth - logically, aligning the drink with the male protagonist and his supposed 'struggle' as he's faced with the threat of emasculation posed by the 'matriarchal power' of three generations of Fannys. And similarly, the ad uses cultural myths around socio-economic status to align the Iron Bru brand/product with lower socio-economic status men through the culmination of a stereotyped 'adversarial relation' between genders (a supposed 'male culture' against a supposed all-consuming femininity). The ad also implies (through the protagonist's behavioural shifts), that Iron Bru in a curative/remedial/recuperatory/restorative properties of the brand/product - allowing its drinkers to assuage/mollify/relieve their tribulations/subjugation - metaphorically, casting the drink as a 'cure', which in context with 'all-consuming femininity' positions it as a curative capable of restoring (downtrodden) masculinity. Note that the absurdity of a soft drink being a 'curative' will also not be lost of the intended consumer who will (presumably) find pleasure such an absurdity. Additionally, there are likely some cultural myths tied up in messaging around ideas of 'national identity' aligned with the brand e.g. supposed 'Scottishness' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irn-Bru, which Irn Bru might seek to leverage however, further research about such brand values would need to be done to make this claim.
