HOW CHILDREN PERCEIVE FOOD ADVERTISEMENTS ON TV: A SEMIOTICS ANALYSIS

In digital era, advertising can reach people wider than before. Children are one of targeted consumers for food advertisements. Everyday children are shown by food advertisements while they are watching TV. These advertisements functioned both to deliver and utilize a wide variety of meaning, symbols and message called semiotics. Moreover, children are treated with variety of signs and symbols, but they have different ways of interpreting them.. This study investigated ten children (8-to-10 years old) to know about their perception towards food advertisements. Using semiotics analysis researcher interviewed children about ten food advertisements that are broadcasted on TV. The result shows that most of children can perceive well all signs and symbols communication conveyed by food advertisement. The most influence symbol that affected children to try product is food image that are usually performed in zoom mode and slow motion. Children also get understanding message, culture and value conveyed by food advertisements in positive side. It can support children to behave positively. While brand personal get les attention that brand character of food advertisements which children prefer more cartoon character as a brand mascot of food product.


Introduction
Advertisement is one of the way producers communicate their product to consumers in which the purpose is to affect the customers and the communities around them (Sharma & Gupta, 2015). Producers will try to emerge unique and new ways in promoting their product, so that consumers will be attracted and do not feel bored to pay attention to watch the product on media. In order customer can receive the message of the product on advertisement, producers use language, sign and symbol which is packaged in an attractive advertisement that can represent the quality of the product sold.
Advertisement is also a means to convey newest innovations of the product that can attract the attention of the costumers, both old and new costumers. Television is one of advertising media that still has great demand by producers in Indonesia to promote and sell their products.
One of the most advertised products on television is food, which accounts for nearly 50% of daily adverts. Even the food industries had burned through billions of dollars consistently to advertise meal which has low quality in supplement but has high in calories (Qutteina, Y., Backer, D.C, 1993;Panuti &Zoest, 1996; (Chandler, 2007)) have concurred on the basic meaning of semiotic that is the investigation of signs or an epistemology about the presence or the fact of sign in cultural life. To make clearer in getting the purpose, semiotics sees everything can be translated as a sign which can be taken fundamentally substituting for something different. Ferdinand de Saussure emphasized language as the arrangement of signs which language was better system on presenting signs than any other framework sign in the world. He expressed that we did not only utilize language or offer meaning to something existed in the real world, but also for something didn't exist (Chandler, 2007 the teaching of signs. He also stated that "the strengths of semiotics is, it positions meaning at the nucleus of consumer behavior, which provides a rich meta-language for semiotic consumer research, and recommends a multiparadigm philosophy of science" (Mick, 1986). The doctrine will be easier for children to be received.
The blend of semantic sign with the various media, audio and visual, in the advertisements enabled children to investigate the terms and though (Bignell, 2002). These compositions will produce a sintagmatic sequence of image, sound and words which guide consumers to be able to interpret easier. A sport star will be easier to be recognized both of by adult and children.
He is able to influence the consumers with his performance. Moreover children often view the national sport star as a national hero (Sevilla & Rubio-hernandez, 2011) (Flavell, 2000;Kuhn, 2000). Through the implication of advertisements, advertisers predicted that children are able to form their perception about the commercial product through the replication of a realistic which stimulated them to judge the product for its pleasure and esthetic qualities. Children accept that the prime function of advertisements is to illuminate new product and give insights concerning the current brand, yet they know that advertisements were broadcasted to sell the product. (ChildWise, 2004).

Conclusion
This study intended to investigate how children perceive food advertisements on TV using symbol communication shown. While moods or emotion shown in food advertisement is the easier sign interpreted by children than others, but this sign is often missed to get attention for children.
However this study is only used a few number of object to be surveyed since the limited time, so the researcher suggest for the next researcher can study this semiotic analysis toward the advertisement using wider object and wider kind of advertisements.