This study examines two norm-breaking advertising campaigns. Through a sociosemiotic multimodal analysis I have examined a selection of advertising images from two norm-breaking campaigns: Försvarsmakten’s campaign Kom som du är and Arbetsförmedlingen’s campaignGör plats. The purpose of this study was to create a deeper understanding of how norm-breaking advertisement uses verbal and visual resources to affect attitudes and prejudices. To answer this purpose, the study has been based on the following questions: How are prominent participants constructed in norm-breaking advertising? How does image and text interact in order to change attitudes and prejudices? How does the presentation of the prominent participants in the advertising images relate to the overall purpose of the campaign?

The result of this study indicates that there are patterns regarding how verbal and visual resources are used in the analyzed norm-breaking advertising images. The overall result shows that how the participants are portrayed makes the advertising images both demanding, contact- creating and engaging. Text and image interact in such a way that they both strengthen and complement each other and together they express demands that point toward a desired attitude and social change. The advertising images contains different people represented in a non- stereotyped way which relates well to the overall purpose of the campaigns.