“Let’s live like Galicians”: Nationalism in advertising

This project consists of the multidisciplinary analysis of the persuasive strategies used in a regional TV commercial to promote GADIS, a Galician (Spain) supermarket chain. The video, which provoked an overwhelmingly positive reaction within Galician society, strategically appeals nationalistic feelings in order to achieve specific commercial objectives. In this commercial GADIS presents itself as a company that defends local attributes (Galician, Galicians, and ‘Galicianness’) against foreign ones. The speaker, by playing off positive stereotypical features of Galicia and inverting negative ones, builds and conveys a positive image of Galicia which is intended to make Galicians proud of their Galicianness. In order to make the advertisements more acceptable, GADIS praises the Galicians through the use of humor and irony, which serves to mitigate the nationalism presented.