The Social Science Journal 42 (2005) 135–140

El Toro de Osborne: advertising, community, and myth

Carla Johnson∗, Alyson Leatherman

Saint Mary’s College, Notre Dame, IN 46556, USA

Abstract

Black bull cutouts, silhouettes ofEl Toro, dotted hilltops from the plains of La Mancha to the seacoastof Spain’sCosta del Sol. Then the European Union decreed that alcohol could no longer be advertised onbillboards. The Osborne brandy company removed its bull-boards, but public outcry brought them back,sans the company name—the Osborne bull had become a national icon. This is a semiotic case studyof the mythic system appropriated by the Osborne advertisement and the second-order semiologicalsystem that the iconic billboards created.© 2004 Published by Elsevier Inc.

1. Background

In 1954, black bull cutouts were designed and erected across Andalucia in Spain, fromthe plains of La Mancha to the Spanish seacoast, to advertise the brandy “Veterano.” Then,in September 1994, the Ministry of Public Works, Environment and Tourism, in conjunctionwith a 1988 law prohibiting public advertisements near main roads, brought the billboardsdown. Osborne, makers of the brandy, removed its bull-boards, but a public outcry duringOctober and November 1994 erupted in all levels of society. The main cry was that the bill-boards were not simply outdoor advertisements, but “artistic expressions of Spanish culture”(Roguer, 2001).

Public protest brought the bull-boards back, sans the company name. They reappeared notonly on Andalucian hilltops and in public squares but also on coffee cups, postcards, andT-shirts. The Osborne bull, whose initial purpose was to sell brandy, has become a nationalicon, rooted in the heart of southern Spain’s identity: “The bull means Spain” (Douglass,1977), specifically southern Spain, where the lifestyle can be expressed in the mythologies

∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 574 284 4768; fax: +1 574 284 4866.

0362-3319/$ – see front matter © 2004 Published by Elsevier Inc.doi:10.1016/j.soscij.2004.11.012

136 C. Johnson, A. Leatherman / The Social Science Journal 42 (2005) 135–140

surrounding the bull: the laidback, good life; the avoidance of hard labor; the pride, the virility,the moment of grandeur.

In “Myth today,” semiologist Roland Barthes asserts that myth, already “constructed froma second-order semiological chain which existed before it,” may be usurped by advertisingand empty itself, become impoverished (Barthes, 1999a). While the myth may lose its value, itkeeps its life. The Osborne bull initially appropriated the power of the mythologies surroundingbulls and bullfighting to sell a product, yet the advertisement could capitalize on this poweronly as long as the relay text, the advertising copy, was anchored on the cutout image ofthe bull. Today the bulls stand as wordless signifiers of the ancient identity that still “makesSpain special” (Hendra, 1996). Almost in defiance of Barthes’ theoretical system, the Osbornebull transcends its role as an advertisement, its third-order semiotic existence as usurper andappropriator, and captures a place in the second-order semiological system. This mythic systemhas for centuries distinguished the southern Spanish identity from the cultures of Europe andAfrica, the great continents of which southern Spain is a crossroad.

2. The study

Community is both an experience and an identity, shaped by the spatial component,theplace,where community occurs. A place generally has boundaries–walls, gateways, thresholds, andpathways–within which are its eccentric details. Place becomes deeply rooted in the humanpsyche; recalling a place or encountering images of a once-familiar place act as triggers fora multitude of memories. In urban settings, signs often become a dominant element as theycreate a density of writing over the space. This density contributes to urban clutter. Alongthe highways, which form the boundaries of rural settings, billboards become part of thelandscape. In both urban and rural settings, signs and billboards articulate the value system ofthe community in which they exist. Their images and themes reflect what the local populationgenerally views as acceptable and, furthermore, desirable.

As a component of place, alternative advertising both reflects and shapes experience andidentity. For example, billboards frequently employ double entendre, sexual innuendo, andpuns to catch attention with deftly equivocal sexual appeals in the staid British Isles. In theCatholic countries of southern Europe, where the audience is adept at visual encoding dueto the long tradition of iconography in the Church, the use of cultural icons, including thosetranslated from American culture, such as the Marlboro Man, seem to abound.

The semiotic study of the mythic power of the Osborne bull focuses attention on advertising’sability to exploit the relationship between groups of people with strong ethnic, national, orcommunal ties and the mythic systems that constitute the basis of their unusual cohesions. In theUnited States, billboard content and location within communities have become controversial.The makers of such products as alcohol and tobacco “have frequently employed billboardsand other advertising media to target brands to African Americans and Hispanics. Billboardsadvertising alcohol and tobacco have been disproportionately more likely to appear in inner-cityareas” (Lee & Johnson, 1999). Consequently, the Marlboro Man and cartoon characters, suchas Joe Camel and the Doral dog, disappeared from U.S. billboards as a result of a settlementbetween tobacco companies and 46 states in November 1998.

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Outdoor advertising refers primarily to on-premise (signs) and off-premise (boards that ap-pear along rural roadsides or in the urban marketplace). This advertising category, a subsetof out-of-home advertising which may also include transit advertising, provides alternative,supplemental media for advertisers interested in its cost efficiency, as it reaches more peo-ple at less cost than any other media (Lee & Johnson, 1999). Alternative advertisements arehighly visible—in fact, unavoidable, and the audience can neither turn them off (as withtelevision) nor turn the page (as with print) to avoid seeing them. While readers and view-ers must choose to direct their attention to print publications and electronic programming,outdoor advertising becomes part of the landscape. In a sense, outdoor advertising does notcirculate a message to buyers; the buyers circulate around the message (Houck, 1969). Al-though the viewing time is brief (about 10 s) and the billboards and signs may be rotatedto other locations or removed after a short period of time, some remain permanently at onelocation.

Historically, billboards have been viewed as a powerful and controversial advertisingmedium. Local and national legislation has been enacted in the United States and many othercountries to control the content and location of billboard advertising, an acknowledgment ofits assumed power to influence the surrounding community through its messages as well as itsunavoidable relationship to the visual environment. Ironically, when the Osborne billboardscame down as a result of legislation, the protest did not come from those who had enjoyed therevenue but from the community itself. Although outdoor advertisements may be viewed asunaesthetic intrusions into place and space,El Toro de Osbornehad come to form part of theSpanish countryside and to reflect its citizens’ values.

Semiotic analysis allows for definition of the artifact’s significance to the culture in whichit appears. Our study addressed the extent to which a billboard advertisement, a component ofcommunity and place, can both reflect and influence the surrounding culture. Semiotics, “thetheory and practice of interpreting linguistic, cultural, and behavioral sign systems,” has beenemployed in the interpretation of cultural artifacts, since the 1950s (Maasik & Solomon, 1994)when French semiologist Roland Barthes publishedMythologies(Barthes, 1979). Barthessought to demystify the everyday landscape—thus, his method is especially suited to the studyof the relationship between community ideologies (values and opinions) and billboards, themost public of advertising media.

Myth is “a system of communication. . . a message” (Barthes, 1999a). Thus, the bull (thesignifier) and the Spanish passion and pride associated with it (the signified) create the meaningof the bull in Spanish nationalism. In Barthes’ construction, the myth of the bull emerges froma semiological chain which existed before it, i.e., centuries of European fascination with thebull resulting, for example, in the stories of Europa and the bull and in the cave paintingsin southern France. Barthes calls this asecond-order semiological system; “the materials ofmythical speech (the language itself, photography, painting, posters, rituals, objects, etc.),however different at the start, are reduced to a pure signifying function as soon as they arecaught by myth” (Barthes, 1999a).

As has frequently been the case, a myth may be appropriated for advertising purposes. Whenthis happens, the myth “becomes form, the meaning leaves its contingency behind; it emptiesitself, it becomes impoverished, history evaporates, only the latter remains” (Barthes, 1999b).In the case of the Osborne bull, the bull as athird-order semiological systembecomes the

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accomplice of a concept, it becomes artificial. As the myth of the bull takes the form of theOsborne advertisement, “the form does not suppress the meaning, it only impoverishes it, itputs it at a distance, it holds it at one’s disposal” (Barthes, 1999b). Certainly, the bull-boardswere intended to exploit Spanish cultural identification with the bull.

Initially, the black, cutout image of the bull carried a relay text, the linguistic messageof the advertiser. When the relay text had to be removed to comply with the EU’s ban onalcohol advertisements on billboards, the image of the bull remained, a “pictographic stateof the image” common to partially illiterate societies (Barthes, 1999a). Whereas the primaryfunction of the anchorage (the bull) was to carry all the meanings associated with the mythicbull, the relay text usurped only a portion of its whole signification. Without relay text, whatremains is richer: all that the bull signifies to the people of southern Spain.

3. Findings

As evidenced by the naming of the continent after the myth of Europa and the bull, Europeanshave long feared, been intrigued by and exalted the animal. Original relationships betweenthe beast and man were of a predatory nature. Hundreds of Iberian cave paintings depictthis relationship. During the Middle Ages, the Iberian bull was considered a danger for themost valiant knight. “This beautiful and awe-inspiring beast, with its unique noble braverywould, when provoked, rather die fighting than flee—in essence, transforming the hunt intoan avid exchange in which the bravest warriors could bring light to their courage” (Carrion,2001). This tenacious courage led to the introduction of thecorrida de torosin 1133. Havingroots in both the aristocracy and the peasantry, “bullfighting offers a far more accurate gaugeof the Spanish society than graphs, statistics, or sociological studies” (McCormick, 1997).Bullfighting combines the theatrical elements of tragedy—it is formal, glorious, romantic, andintensely real. However, hierarchy requires that the superior defeat the inferior. “Those whoinvented the Spanish bullfight were unfortunately not philosophers; they were hunters andsportsmen” (Tynan, 1966). Thecorrida demands technique, poise, and valor on the part ofboth man and bull thus blending festivity and fatality in a uniquely Spanish combination.

This unique relationship between the Spanish and the bull extends beyond history and thedevelopment of thecorrida de toros. To the Spanish, the bull embodies unparalleled charac-teristics and entertains the life that every Spaniard desires. He has strength, grace, valor, andvirility. The bull is given the best food and pasture, is independent and free, and is not measuredby his work production. Rather, at the end of his life, the bull has the opportunity to fight, todemonstrate his pride and dignity, and to prove at theplaza de torosthat his life was moreworthwhile than walking to the slaughterhouse.

For this reason, the Osborne brandy company appropriated the bull’s image in 1954 topromote its “Veterano.” The original 16 life-size bull-boards, strategically placed in the hills,valleys, and curves of southern Spain, reminded the Spanish of the bull’s symbolic power,thus encouraging them to buy Osborne, the brandy loyal to Spanish strength, grace, valor, andthe leisurely life. By the 1960s, 500 Osborne bull-boards dotted the Spanish countryside, “animage that rears sometimes unexpectedly, three stories high, from behind outcrops of rockbeside the nation’s arid highways” (Hendra, 1996).

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Besides capitalizing on the bull’s symbolic power, the Osborne brandy company also ef-fectively utilized space to sell its product, placing the bull-boards only in southern Spain. Theboards looked so lifelike on the hilltops that they were sometimes mistaken for “real bullsstanding in the middle of fields or on the crests of hill” (Douglass, 1977). The bull-board wasunique in outdoor advertising. First, it was designed in the shape of its brand image; second,it was a solid color; and third, the only text was the name of the company. The board did notadopt the usual rectangle shape, bright or flashy colors, or an abundance of text. Instead, theOsborne bull-board was simple, black, and to the point.

The bull-board’s remote placement only in southern Spain also contributed to the advertise-ment’s ability to create a cultural identity. In comparison to northern Spain, southern Spain,consisting mainly of Andalucia, is recognized for its dry climate; flat, rolling plains; large agri-cultural areas (latifundios) with agro-cities; wheat, wine and oil; and Flamenco dresses andfestivities. “Un-European” and traditional, southern Spain is literally the “tail end” of Europenot only in its location but also its late admittance into the European Union.

The European Union (EU) began as a Council of Europe, inaugurated in 1948 as part ofEuropean post-World War II political integration. At the end of World War II, Spain’s rule bydictator Franco prevented the country from taking its full place in international life. A 1946resolution “barring Spain from entry to the UNO was not rescinded until 1950” (Roberts,1997). Spain remained politically isolated until Franco’s death in the 1970s. It was moredifficult for Spain, which had experienced great political isolation throughout the early yearsof EU formation, than for some of the other European countries to merge its national identityinto the EU. The EU decree that Andalucia should remove its Osborne bull-boards did notreceive a welcome reception, tied as it was to the southern Spanish character.

What we learn from this study is that outdoor advertising is intimately connected to its hostcommunity. This often results in communal regulation; however, when the image portrayedreflects the essence of local life, the billboard becomes more than just an advertisement, as thecase of the Osborne bull suggests. In fact, the Osborne bull has transcended its initial role as apurveyor of brandy and has become a national icon. This insight may be applied to other iconicoutdoor advertisements. The cultural power of the Marlboro Man maintains its brand’s positionat the top of the market despite changes in relay text (campaign tag lines) and the challengesof a “weak economy, consumer frugality, rising state excise taxes, continued growth of deep-discount brands and the influx of illegally imported cigarettes” (Dipasquale, 2002). From a20% market share in 1974, Marlboro grew to 40% by the end of the 20th century, occupyinga share larger than the next eight brands. As surely as the Osborne bull resonates with thecitizens of southern Spain, such icons as the Marlboro Man and Joe Camel have resonated withAmericans who could not avoid the iconic billboards positioned in their community landscapesand the appeal of these icons to a shared lifestyle and ethnicity.

Acknowledgments

We presented an earlier version of this paper, “Spanish Icon:El Toro de Osborne,” at theInternational Popular Culture Conference, Downing College, Cambridge, England, on August6, 2001.

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