Yerba Mate Aguila Advertisments

Aguila is a chocolate brand more than a yerba mate brand, but they do produce yerba mate. According to the company's website they were founded in 1880 as a chocolate company but they expanded within a few decades to also produce coffee and yerba mate ("Aguila"). Their slogan in the 20th century was "Total Solution for the Housewife," because they claimed to provide quick alternatives to more labor intensive recipes and dishes ("Aguila"). This fits in with the narrative of the advertisements I analyze. Additionally, their chocolate advertisements in the 1950's emphasized quality of the product and the role of the mother and wife in providing their family with the best products, which is similar to their yerba mate advertisements ("Aguila Chocolate").

The first advertisement looks to be from around the 1950’s for Yerba Mate Aguila. The woman pictured has blond hair and is holding a mate. The text on the top of the ad says “Taste Aguila Mate and You will Know What it Means to Have Mate.” The text underneath this claim is more difficult to read but it is a general explanation of what yerba is and what makes this yerba so special. This advertisement, like the Nobleza Gaucha advertisements, features a beautiful, blonde white woman holding a mate. Her hand is next to her mouth as if she is confiding in the viewer, telling them how great this brand is. This goes along with Parkin’s concept of placing pressure on women to provide the best quality products for their families (9). Advertisements use smiling, beautiful women to convince their audience of women that this is the best product for their family’s health and well-being. The woman’s beauty adds to this positive depiction of the brand of yerba mate (10).

The second advertisement is also from the 1950’s for Yerba Mate Aquila Extra. The woman featured is white, has coiffed hair and perfectly manicured fingernails, which indicate some degree of wealth. Therefore, once again, her whiteness and her richness are being used by the yerba mate company to make their product seem more appealing to people in her demographic and those aspiring to it. The text says that the yerba mate is of the best quality. The smaller paragraph asserts that once you drink the yerba mate you will exclaim that you finally are making yerba mate with the best brand. This once again fits in with Parkin’s six themes of how advertisers target women. The fact that the woman pictured is white, wealthy and fashionable preys on women’s insecurities by implying that if they too want the beauty and wealth of the woman pictured, they need to buy Aguila Extra (Parkin 9).

Also, both advertisements feature women as the sole figure in the ad. This was a typical advertising technique during the time since women were viewed by advertisers as the major consumers of food, according to both Parkin (6) and Milanesio (103). Throughout history, yerba mate was often prepared by women, despite the fact that it was consumed by both genders (Jamieson 278). Therefore, these advertisements fit in with a centuries old narrative of the domestic duty of women in preparing the beverage to be consumed by men and their household. This is not just evident in the Aguila advertisements. Despite the fact that the Nobleza Gaucha advertisements feature men, it is still very clear who is responsible for buying the yerba and preparing the drink: the woman.

Both of these advertisements play into the same concept of the “modern woman” that the Nobleza Gaucha advertisements also address. In her research on the women’s magazine Para Ti, in the 1930’s Paula Bontempo asserts that the definition of what is a “modern woman” is always changing (128). Despite the fact that she makes this claim on the basis of research of an earlier time period, it can still be applied to my research. For some who read the magazines in the 1950’s the modern woman is the woman who can balance her domestic tasks outside of the home such as work or consumption, as portrayed in the Nobleza Gaucha ads. However, for some, the modern woman is a woman who emulates the fashion in Hollywood (Bontempo 129). The fact that both women in the Aguila advertisements are wearing clothing that would be fashionable in the United States but that at the same time is more conservative and not too revealing, shows that for Aguila Extra, the definition of a modern woman is deeply influenced by the United States. This goes along with a larger trend in which advertisements featuring people or images who looked like they were from the US were taken more seriously in the 1950’s (Milanesio 84).