As an interdisciplinary field, advertising is closely related to art as well as to various branches of science. Researchers have been investigating this relationship using methods such as content analysis (Hetsroni & Tukachinsky, 2005), semiotics (Okat Özdem & Geçit, 2013), literary analysis (Stern, 1991; Etienne & Vanbaelen, 2006), art and literary criticism (Stern & Schroeder, 1994), textual analysis (Stern, 1996), and multimodal analysis (Periasamy, Gruba & Subramaniam, 2015). Most of these studies are grounded in the theories and concepts of art, literature, and narratology.

The art of theatre also shares similarities with advertising, particularly in audiovisual forms such as TV commercials. Esslin (1996) argues that a great deal of television content, such as advertisements, should be considered within the field of drama. Drama theory and dramaturgy has been adapted to marketing and consumer behavior studies using a variety of different perspectives. Stern (1990) used dramaturgy to analyze advertisements as dramatic texts and discussed absurdity in advertising in terms of theme, action, setting, character, language, and tone.

In this study, we analyzed a TV commercial of Eti Tutku, in terms of absurd dramaturgy. In this way, we presented an example of advertisement analysis in dramatic framework and evaluated absurdity in advertising on a theatrical basis. Using a commercial that is considered an absurd narrative, we discussed the term absurd on the field of mass communication.The term absurd is often used to describe meaningless, bizarre, extraordinary or irrational events and situations. Beyond that, absurdism represents an existentialist philosophical thought based on the idea that humanity and the universe cannot be explained by reason, logic, and congruity. This idea happened as a response to the collapse of the great ideals such as rationalism and modernism, which were presented to humanity in the 20th century. Absurdism had a great influence on different literary and artistic fields, and also created the modern theatre movement called “Theatre of the Absurd” (Esslin, 1999). To describe the absurd state of humanity, absurd plays depict bizarre characters, unrealistic settings, nonsense language, and events that do not rely on cause-and-effect relationships. Eventually, absurdist expression crossed the boundaries of theatre and can now be seen in cinema, television, and advertising.

Stern (1990, p. 192) argues that absurdity is used as a dramatic form in advertising. Advertisers often take advantage of creative elements such as absurdity to capture consumers’ attention and gain a place in their minds in the advertising clutter. AriasBolzmann (1993, p. 3) defines absurdity in advertising as “the incongruous juxtaposition of pictorial images, words, and/or sounds that viewers perceive to be unique, irrational, bizarre, illogical, or disordered.” Stern (1990, p. 197) states that absurd dramas depict non-rational, ambiguous, and meaningless worlds rather than orderly, meaningful, and value-laden ones found in traditional realistic dramas. Accordingly, a playwright of the absurd shows the true nature of the world and lets the audience decide how best to cope with it. According to Stern, a brand that claims to be absurdist, acknowledges that the world and its own are imperfect. By making fun of this situation, an absurdist brand seeks to inspire trust and sympathy and lets the consumer choose whatever is personally best in an environment of uncertainty.

The commercial that is subject to analysis in this study (Image 1) begins with opening a door on which is written “Eti Tutku Customer Services.” The opening of the door, which evokes the opening of a theatre curtain, prepares the viewer for an advertising narrative that depicts events between the brand and the customer. As understood from the dialogue, a customer is here for a kind of coffee fortunetelling. The customer representative acts as a fortuneteller by using the fluid chocolate cream of Tutku biscuit. The other characters, including the customer and a bizarre man and woman, respond to her senselessly. The commercial ends with a description of the product features, such as “delicious fluid chocolate cream.”

The theme of the advertisement is based on meaningless and ambiguous messages like absurd narratives. The brand presents the product feature, fluid cream, in an unrelated manner to its real benefit. Thus, the brand makes use of a sympathetic way of persuasion by making fun of itself and the advertising world’s idealized promises.

The main action in the ad is the act of fortunetelling by using the cream of a biscuit, and this seems meaningless and purposeless. It is totally unclear why the characters do that, or what happens as a result. The only meaningful message of the ad is that the Tutku biscuit’s chocolate cream is fluid and delicious. This is also the most important promise of the brand to consumers.

As in an absurd play, the setting is discordant because the place that resembles a spaceship or an empty studio is decorated like a living room of an ordinary house. It is seen that the place presented as a customer service unit is a strange and unreal place with a very low probability to be encountered in everyday life. 

Characters can be regarded as absurd with their appearance, speech and behaviors. In particular, the male and female characters that appear like copies of each other seem as if they were taken from an absurd theatre play. These characters, which resemble car crash test dummies with biscuit images on their temples, act in exaggerated and meaningless behaviors and contribute to the perception of uncertainty in the ad. Acting is also in an exaggerated style in accordance with absurd plays.

The language used in the ad can be considered absurd with regard to dialogues and mimes, which do not make any sense to the audience. Dialogues are full of ambiguous and meaningless words. Characters respond to each other’s meaningless words as if they are very important. The contradiction between the spoken words and their meaning is remarkable.

The ad has a sarcastic and humorous tone as is found in absurd plays. With this ad, the brand subjects itself and its product to ridicule and humor. The brand also makes fun of the advertising world’s idealized promises. This can be considered parody, which is another characteristic of absurd plays.

As a result of the analysis, we can see that the commercial uses the absurd narrative form in terms of dramaturgical framework and shares similar characteristics with absurd plays. The brand conveys an absurd and ambiguous message, contrary to many brands that present ideal values like happiness, trust, freedom, or being the best. It seems inexplicable why the brand chose to use a worthless, meaningless, or absurd theme. However, in the cluttered advertising environment, it is possible that absurdism may be the right choice for attracting consumers who are weary of idealized promises.

In summary, we can argue that Eti Tutku adopted the absurdist strategy and preferred absurd narration in its ad. This can be considered a literary or artistic reflection on mass communication. In addition to this study, future research that focuses on different literary and artistic aspects such as narrative formats, metaphor, musical elements, graphic design, photography, and visual arts will contribute significantly to the field of advertising.