Sunday, April 22, 2007

The Persuaders

Advertisements are always looking for the new angle of trying to sell their product. This show teaches the way the advertisement world functions. All of these companies were trying to show us what a commercial is really hinting towards, for example a Cheerios commerical is not just selling cereal but selling a feeling of reliability and warmth and building a friendship with it's consumers. It's just cereal. In one part of the show a man was interviewed about the feeling that bread can give. The man was asked if bread makes you feel warm, friendly, and other feelings. The man kind of laughed saying no he doesn't feel these things when he eats bread but then he answered yes that bread makes him feel lonely. How can bread make you feel lonely and why would he suddenly change his feeling on bread?
After the show we looked through magazines to find other advertisements trying to sell a feeling. We found that many car adds try to sell feelings of family and friendliness, reliability. One add was selling a mini van with a DVD player, the DVD player will make the kids happy keeping them quiet and behaved so mom and dad are happy. Is TV the answer to everything now? We discussed the Nike adds, just do it. Mr. Viles said what is just do it, he noticed that the commercial voice never says just do it because people would feel like they were being told what to do. When it's just written people will just do it. Advertisments try to sell a feeling with their products, does it actually work?

No comments: