Print Advertisements: Quality Street and NHS 111
Two Print Adverts, Two Eras
This lesson studies two set print advertisements the exam board expects you to know in detail: the Quality Street advert from 1956 and the NHS 111 “Help Us Help You” advert from 2023. In the exam you may be given a copy of one of these products and asked to analyse its media language, explain its context of production, or compare it with an unseen advert in the same form.
The 1956 Quality Street advert shows a well-dressed man seated between two women, with a gold-framed picture of two Regency-era characters above them and the product name in bold purple lettering across the bottom third. The 2023 NHS 111 advert shows a long shot of a concerned father sitting beside his sick daughter’s bed inside an NHS Urgent Treatment Centre, with the tagline “Get to the help you need” framed around his head.
Quality Street (1956): Media Language
The gold frame around the man and the product creates anchorage that connotes a halo effect, elevating the product to something special. The overall composition is triangular, which helps to anchor the audience’s eye onto the product held at the centre of the frame.
Typography forms the bottom third of the poster. The bold purple colour of the brand name stands out against the rest of the image, drawing the consumer’s eye. This is reinforced by a bold serif font, which uses connotation to link the brand to richness and quality.
The advert uses persuasive language techniques — alliteration, emotive language and superlatives — that suggest a well-read, educated audience. The hand-drawn, artistic design and rich palette of primary and secondary colours reflect the post-war consumerist culture of the 1950s, when small luxuries were becoming affordable again.
The Quality Street brand characters Miss Sweetly and Major Quality have appeared in the gold frame since 1936. Their Regency-era costumes reference early nineteenth-century British history, and the 1956 advert targets young to middle-aged adults aged 25–40.
Quality Street: Representation
The man is centrally framed and directs the audience’s eyes towards the product, which carries phallic symbolism. This links to Laura Mulvey’s male gaze theory: the image suggests a male-dominated society in which the man controls the choice.
Two stereotypes of women are relied on. First, their supposed need for chocolate — a common and enduring stereotype. Second, their subservient body language towards the dominant man, implying that romantic success depends on being led by a man. A deeper reading suggests the women are using romance to access the “prize” — the product in the man’s lap.
The man’s formal dress connotes a higher-class, wealthier society and positions him as the modern working businessman — the “provider” of the brand. Miss Sweetly’s exposed flesh and strong feminine colours contrast with Major Quality’s formal uniform, signifying power in their historical relationship. The advert is aimed specifically at 25–40 year olds, who are meant to see themselves reflected in the man and women at the front of the image.
The female characters’ clothing connotes a similarity to the sweets shown in close-up along the bottom of the poster, inferring a dilemma on two levels: the man choosing between two women, and the women choosing the chocolate.
This is a patriarchal narrative typical of adverts from this period. Intertextuality is created because Miss Sweetly and Major Quality have symbolised the brand since 1936, referencing the elegance and social change of the Regency era.
Quality Street: Social and Historical Context
The Regency era (1811–1837) saw a surge of elegance in fine art and architecture, alongside technological advances such as the steam-powered printing press. The 1950s saw a similar shift: fine art, theatre and small luxuries, once mainly available to the wealthy, became more accessible to a mass audience, reflected in the Conservative Party’s 1951 election slogan, “Set the People Free”.
By 1956, Britain had emerged from wartime rationing, and small luxuries like chocolate were becoming an acceptable part of grocery shopping again. The advert layers social class: the two women appear lower class than the man in the suit, who is lower class than the Regency characters in the gold frame. The product itself is the one thing that unites all these classes.
NHS 111 “Help Us Help You” (2023): Product Context
The NHS 111 campaign launched in December 2022. It was created for NHS England by M&C Saatchi London and distributed by the UK Government’s Department of Health and Social Care. It is funded by NHS England and HM Government, with no commercial aspect at all.
The campaign encourages people with an urgent but not life-threatening medical need to call 111, go online or use the NHS App, rather than going straight to A&E or dialling 999. The primary target audience is all adults, but the campaign brief specified extra investment in reaching people under 35 and parents of children aged 5–12.
The NHS 111 campaign was created by M&C Saatchi London for NHS England and funded by NHS England and HM Government. The brief specified extra investment reaching people under 35 and parents of children aged 5–12.
NHS 111: Media Language
The dominant image is a long shot of a father sitting on his sick daughter’s bed inside an NHS Urgent Treatment Centre. Like most public health campaigns, the models are not famous, so ordinary adults can identify with the scenario. The father’s neutral grey top, jeans and slippers, and the daughter’s stripy pyjamas and fairy lights, construct a sense of familiarity.
The father’s concerned expression and reassuring arm gesture convey protective care, while the daughter’s neutral expression and position in bed suggest illness and a need for care. His dominance in the frame casts him as the hero of the narrative, on a quest to find help — with the NHS framed as the helper, providing the 111 service through his tablet.
Across the image runs the tagline “Get to the help you need”, using the imperative “get” and direct address “you” to construct a persuasive mode of address. The body copy uses simple, direct language so that even people with low literacy can understand the message. A sans-serif font is used throughout for the same reason, alongside the NHS’s recognisable blue, Pantone 300.
A triangle icon in the bottom right corner echoes highway warning signs, connoting urgency. The HM Government logo (top left) and the NHS logo (top right) both appear, reinforcing to the audience that this is a public service message rather than a commercial one.
The Urgent Treatment Centre background uses grey walls, heavy-duty carpet and LED downlights to connote a clinical, professional and trustworthy workplace. This is the same background used across other products in the campaign, with only the foreground image changing.
The contrast between the clinical waiting area and the daughter’s bright wooden bed and colourful bedding is deliberate. It highlights the universal theme of family care, making the NHS 111 service feel more approachable, especially to parents of 5–12 year olds.
NHS 111: Representation
Men are not stereotypically shown as emotionally nurturing, but this advert challenges that by showing a father actively seeking help for his daughter. This represents health literacy: by making the father a responsible decision-maker in his daughter’s care, the advert frames using NHS 111 as an intelligent choice rather than only an emergency measure.
The choice to represent a Black family is significant, since Black men have historically been under-represented in health campaigns. Studies show that representation in health advertising is crucial for improving health outcomes, because audiences who do not see themselves represented may not feel the message is aimed at them.
The daughter’s gender is constructed through her plaited pigtails and the dominant use of pink, a colour stereotypically associated with girls. Her youthful age is reinforced by props, costume and her dependent look towards her father. A model wearing a hearing aid also appears, reflecting the campaign brief’s commitment to reaching disabled audiences, including British Sign Language users.
NHS 111: Social, Cultural and Political Context
The father as primary caregiver challenges the traditional idea that mothers are always the main carer, but it reflects real change: research by Fisher and colleagues (1999) found that fathers’ time spent on childcare rose from less than 15 minutes a day in the mid-1970s to around three hours a day during the week. Models in the campaign’s background also wear face masks and work behind plastic screens, reflecting social-distancing procedures in health settings after the Covid-19 pandemic.
The advert constructs verisimilitude in each separate setting — the treatment centre and the bedroom — but the two are combined to represent how accessing NHS 111 on a tablet brings the help of the Urgent Treatment Centre into the home.
Comparing the Two Adverts
Both adverts use a central adult figure to guide meaning, but the gender roles are reversed by era and purpose. Quality Street (1956) constructs a man in control of women through Mulvey’s male gaze, reflecting 1950s gender norms; NHS 111 (2023) constructs a caring father figure challenging the stereotype that men are not emotionally nurturing. Comparing the two shows how representations of gender and family shift alongside real social change — exactly the kind of judgement the extended comparison question rewards.