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Saturday, February 19, 2011
Jingles
Nothing is more annoying than have a commercial jingle stuck in your head. You keep repeating the same short song and pretty soon everyone around you is singing it too. This is a very effective way of advertising, because it gets people to remember your product. One of my favorite jingles is the Band-Aid one.
Public Service Announcements
PSAs are a great way to spread knowledge quickly and efficiently. They bring awareness affecting an issue, public attitudes and potentially having a call to action. They can be on the radio or in the form of a commercial. Some of the most well known PSAs deal with the issue of keeping kids off drugs. I was able to find this article showing the 9 Most Awful (And Awesome) drug PSAs ever made. They are hilarious and ridiculous but still get their point across.
Local Advertising
One of the things I like most about going to Oshkosh is its feeling of community. It feels as though the whole city embraces the campus and doesn't treat it like a separate entity. I see this most in local advertising. Places around campus are continually targeting college students by giving special deals with their Titan card, handing out fliers with coupons on campus, or having special discounts for students.
My favorite local business in Oshkosh is New Moon Cafe. It is located in downtown Oshkosh making in a short walk away from campus. They always have fliers around announcing their open mic nights and every year they give coupons in the dorm's welcome package. I think they do a very good job of using their targeted demographic to decide how to advertise.
Overall I think local advertising is all about know your audience and learning how to adhere to their interests.
Central Route vs. Peripheral Route
Advertisers have many techniques for making their product appeal to customers. There are two main ideas behind this. One is called central route persuasion. This method is usually applies to logic and help when making a large purchase such as a car. When a customer is making this type of purchase they often do research and get all the facts. They will then choose which one applies to their needs. An example of this for me, is thinking about purchasing and iPhone 4. I look at the ads in detail and I don't get distracted by the music or the commercials production value. I'm also doing a lot of research of what the phone's features are, how much it will cost per month, and if the product is worth the price. This type of persuasion is best when the company provides as much information as possible to appeal to the customer's logic.
The second main form of persuasion is peripheral route. This style involves using emotion and the costumer's other interests to make a sale. An advertiser might use a celebrity that relates to their demographic, music that the costumer likes, an attractive spokes person , or maybe the commercial just made them laugh. These type of ads create spur of the moment purchases and are usually cheaper products. An example of this might be the Skechers commercial staring Kim Kardashian. People who like her, or her body might be very inclined to get those shoes without even caring if they are good shoes or not.
To keep these two techniques straight, I wrote these limericks:
Central route to the noggin makes me avoid all the jargon.
Peripheral route is less thinking so I do much more getting.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Stereotypes in Ads
When one watches as much TV as I do, it's impossibly to avoid the constant advertisements being thrown my way. Usually I don't pay much attention to them, I'll flip the channel, check my facebook, or hit the restroom. I have however noticed that no matter how far we've come in gender equality, there are still ads that can't seem to get around it. I find that most ads for things such as dishwashing soap, cleaning supplies, and kitchen appliance almost always feature women. They are portrayed in the typical woman of the house, apron and all. Men are seen in most beer commercials, and lawn care commercials. It doesn't seem like that big of a deal, but by showing these images we are only instilling these ideas in younger generations. I think it's important for the media to show genders in varies roles because that's how the real world operates. I would even go so far as to have a homosexual couple star in commercials as well. Many people don't realize how powerful advertising is, and that by using these images future generations will learn that these things are perfectly normal. I found this McDonalds commercial from Europe and I can only hope that someday more ads like these will be aired. Gender stereotypes should be a thing of the past.
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