Syllabus Blog #2: Pick An Advertisement and its correlate popular culture; identify the audience?

In the article “The Efficacy of Brand-Execution Tactics in TV Advertising, Brand Placements, and Internet Advertising” Jenni Romaniuk discusses how advertisements are designed and what they need to succeed. According the Jenni Romaniuk, “The key mechanism for communicating the brand is direct branding execution, which is how the brand name is presented throughout an advertisement. This execution consists of an advertisement's mode, its timing, and its structure—all of which can help a brand name "cut through" other media clutter and be noticed by viewers.” This means that advertisements mode, timing, and structure are the building blocks for an advertisement's execution. If all three aren’t present in the ads then the ad's message won't be heard correctly.

The advertisement above is for the new Verizon phone called the Droid. The phone was released in November. The Droid is similar to the iPhone but very different as well. The Droid has so many capabilities that go beyond the iPhone and any other Smart-phone on the market. For example, the Droid is the first smart phone that uses the new Android 2.0 technology. The audience that is being a addressed in this commercial is 15-35 year old men and women who are iPhone owners or Verizon customers. The audience of this specific commercial is probably people who like art because this commercial is very artistic. The commercial uses art and visuals to attract you even more than the usual phone commercial. This commercial makes fun of skinny girls with little dogs in order to show the phone isn't dainty like a women. The problem that this commercial is addressing is that before this phone version customers would have to switch to AT&T if they wanted a phone like the Droid but now they don’t have to and some customers will switch to Verizon for the Droid. The objective of this commercial is to introduce the Droid while trying to disregard the iPhone. Droid’s slogan is “In a World of Doesn’t. Droid Does.” According to the slogan the iPhone and all the other cell phones isn't capable of performing the tasks that the Droid can. The Droid can run apps simultaneously which the iPhone is incapable of doing. The Droid also consists of a 5.0 megapixel camera, which is just as many pixels as a good quality digital camera. The commercial also addresses the fact that the Droid is fast. They describe the phone as “Fast, Racehorse duck taped to a scud missile fast.” In order to appeal to an artistic crowd the commercial uses vivid imagery, vibrant coloring, and very creative graphics. I think this commercial has gone where no commercial has gone before which also represents the Droid as a cell phone. The Droid incorporates so many different advances in the world of technology.

The commercial grabs the audiences’ attention just simply with the word choice and the way that it attacks the iPhone without directly mentioning the iPhone. My favorite line of the ad is “Should a phone be pretty? Should it be a tiara wearing digitally clueless beauty pageant queen?” This is a direct stab at the iPhone, but it is cleverly worded to make you only think about the words they are using. I know that when I watched this commercial for the first time I instantly wanted a Droid. Who doesn’t want a cell phone where you can do several things all at once on the same screen? I was instantly drawn in by the word choice. The words used in this advertisement create images. Each image and word used in this ad causes the audience to understand exactly how fast or how unique the Droid is. It is very important in advertising for the audience to clearly understand the way a product works. The commercial is really effective because it makes you fell like you can’t live without the Droid and that there is nothing like it. “The phone is not a princess it’s a robot.” I think a lot of money went into the making of this commercial because the commercial has a lot of transitions. Also, because the commercial is very high tech and this represents the product.

I found an interesting article called, "What Matters most in Advertising Campaigns?" by Ban van den Putte. According to the article, “every year, more and more money is spent on advertising. Between 1997and 2006, television expenditures rose by 24% in the United Kingdom, by 43% in the Netherlands, and as much as 57% in the US. But is all this money well spent.? Lodish et al. (1995) found that increasing the television advertising budget was effective for 55% of the brand introductions studied, but only for 33% of the established brands (though a recent update of this study showed that advertising campaigns became more effective after 1995). Den Putte states is wondering whether its "money well spent on advertising." I think that just because you spend more money on advertising doesn't necessarily mean that your product is going to become successful. I am sure there are plenty of companies who have spent more money and have done better but that doesn't mean that this is always the case. I think that it is important for companies to understand that they don’t need to spend a lot of money on commercials for products that have been a round a long time and that are already to firmilar to most audiences. t. The companies need to save their money to spend on advertisements for new products. I do understand that sometimes it is necessary to being an old product back to life by making a splashy new commercial.

Work Cited:

Ban van, den Putte. "What Matters most in Advertising Campaigns?" International Journal of Advertising 28.4 (2009): 669-90. . EBSCO.

Romaniuk, Jenni. "The Efficacy of Brand-Execution Tactics in TV Advertising, Brand Placements, and

Internet Advertising." Journal of Advertising Research 49.2 (2009): 143-50. . EBSCO.