In honor of Super Bowl Sunday, I decided to make my TOW about a powerful advertisement for Audi, in which a teenage boy takes the car to prom and in doing so gains the confidence to kiss the girl of his dreams. The Super Bowl is known for its advertisements, which in some cases attract more viewers than the actual game itself. As a result of this notoriety, several Super Bowl ads rely more on being entertaining and interesting than actually informative, so as to increase awareness about their product, rather than relying mainly on logos to sway an audience.
The advertisement made the argument that the audience should purchase an Audi, based on the evidence that the boy shown gained enormous confidence simply by driving one. This was demonstrated by the progression of the boy from awkwardly having his mother pin his boutonniere on in a dark house (the lighting reflected the somber mood), to riding away from prom with a black eye (from the girl's Prom King boyfriend) and screaming at the top of his lungs, apparently full of excitement from living life to its fullest. The assumption is that the audience should feel confident when driving a car, which fits the luxury type cars that Audi sells. Furthermore, the target audience of this commercial is primarily teenagers who are searching for their first car (since they can relate to the boy shown) and their parents, since the dad's "cool" gesture to his son was a message to other parents about a potential way to connect with their teens.
The details are what made this advertisement special. The boy starts out in a dark house, with his younger sister making comments about his single status that only further emphasize how "uncool" he is. As he sits down in the Audi, the bright lights illuminate the logo, and from that point onward the commercial is a blaze of flashing lights, pump-up music, and confident smiles. The boy parks in the Principal's parking lot (an example of the "carpe diem" attitude inspired by the Audi,) gets noticed by the students who have supposedly ignored him until that moment, and speeds along an empty, lit bridge to complete the picture of pure exhilaration. The effect of these details was to make the audience feel the emotion of the boy as if they were him, although I'm not sure the advertisement was entirely effective.
Perhaps it is because I live in a society that has become so immune to the messages of advertisements, but I feel no real desire to go out and buy an Audi simply because some actor rode in one and had "the time of his life." To be effective, I would need statistics about other features of the car, such as its price, fuel efficiency, and durability. In a sense, I am "begging the question" about the major premise of this advertisement. However, if the point of the ad was for me to remember the commercial and the car brand, then clearly it was effective, as I chose this commercial out of several of the night to write about.
http://www.hulu.com/adzone/450448?playlist_id=1031&asset_scope=all
No comments:
Post a Comment