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Tag Archives: commercials
Codebreaking: Samsung’s Next Big Thing
In it’s latest ad for it’s flagship smartphone, Samsung has decided to attack Apple head on:
Ok, actually they’ve decided to attack Apple’s customers head-on. By casting Apple’s customer base as a status conscious nothing-better-to-do hipster fanboys, they hope that you will infer that Samsung customers are the opposite: rational, driven people, persuaded by performance and quantifiable feature not by… Read the rest
Codebreaking: “No Women Allowed” to Drink Dr. Pepper
Stupid question: is this commercial sexist?
The highlights: The ad plays on masculine stereotypes in an tongue-in-cheek backlash to some imagined feminized world. Beard guy doges lasers and shoots a big gun while running through a jungle, simultaneously mocking romantic comedies. He hops into a jeep driven by his square-jawed friend, all the while extolling the manly virtues of Dr.… Read the rest
Toyota Thinks You Hate Your Kids
Toyota has been buying a ton of ad time promoting their Venza “crossover” SUV outside of the normal target demographic for this type of vehicle. Rather than aiming at young, childless couples, they’re now aiming at retiring boomers. Salon reasons that this move is a result of the economy hurting younger buyer’s spending power, while the agency… Read the rest
Codebreaking: AT&T tries for authenticity
I’ve written before about the previously dominant postmodern cultural modes are yielding to a new cultural attitude that based in “our grandparents” generation, one that seeks authenticity, purpose, and meaning.
Advertisers and the commercial semioticians they employ, are of course among the first to pick up on this, dissect it, and attempt to exploit it. Here is a commercial… Read the rest
Codebreaking: Doritos’ “Best Part”
http://www.youtube.com/user/CrashtheSuperBowl#p/u/5/qRMMBXx3kqk
Advertising doesn’t just sell you the products you love and aspirational images. It also tells you what to shun and who not to be.
In Doritos’ “Best Part” we see a masculine, recently haircutted black man just a notch or two of attractiveness below Nivea Man. Looks good but not a supermodel – he could be you if… Read the rest
Mom is super embarrassing, or worse
A mom shops at her daughter’s favorite hip clothing store, Hollister, daughter is embarrassed. Only CNN knows better. They found a study from Temple University–”[M]oms are turning into ‘consumer doppelgangers’ of their children, shopping in teen stores so as to mimic the identities of their teenage daughters.”
OMFG, well now it’s time to… Read the rest
Codebreaking: Do You Think This Girl is Beautiful?
Eguchi Aimi is the newest member of Japanese pop group AKB48. Here she is with the rest of her group, in a commercial for candy. Eguchi is the third girl in the commercial (0:04), and the one who holds the little purple candy. She’s also the one in the center of the wide shot. Before I tell you how old… Read the rest
Mr. Rogers Today
Thought you might find this interesting. Wait a few minutes into the video.
I wonder what a child is supposed to think after a full 30 minutes of this.
[Editor's Note: It's worth sitting through the whole 5 minutes of the video. -PB]
June 23, 2011
Tagged advertising, commercials, gender, media, Mr. Rogers, television, women
31 Comments
Codebreaking: Cyborg Eye from HAL 9000 to Droid Smartphones
Verizon is currently rolling out its 4G LTE network (better, faster, more, etc) and is heavily promoting the phones that support that network. The latest of these is the Samsung Charge, rechristened by Verizon as the Droid Charge, indicating its flagship status in that carrier’s product lineup.
Here’s the ad:
Gunmetal grey, distressed concrete and stone, heavy-handed references to experimental… Read the rest
Codebreaking: Playing Spot-the-Difference in new Acura ads
Acura released two ads promoting the new 2012 Acura TL. In each ad, a famous athlete dressed in full gear and uniform is systematically stripped down to their undies and then redressed in stylish eveningwear. Cut to TL, which is as stylish as the newly-dressed athlete, and therefore, as our subconsciousness connects the dots, as equally high-performance. Beauty and brawn… Read the rest
Codebreaking: Asian Kids Raised By White Parents Party Too Much
Okay, folks, this one should be a softball:
We have older white parents and an Asian son. Asian son comes home from college holding VitaminWater Revive, older Dad calls Asian son on it, son flashes back to his Hangover-style lost weekend spent partying, then Dad congratulates him on hitting the books, and all is well in sugarwaterland.
The commercial airs… Read the rest
Codebreaking: Pristiq treats you like the automaton you are
Fresh from the Fritz Lang Institute of Psychopharmacology comes Pristiq, an antidepressant targeted at women who “feel like they have to wind themselves up to get through the rest of the day.”
Pristiq may be a wonderful and helpful drug, but there is something unsettling about this advertisement. What is the meaning of the toy? Why does the cured patient… Read the rest
Luxury Advertising Banned in China? Then Redefine Luxury as High Art.
How do you advertise luxury, aspirational products in China, which is moving to ban exactly that kind of advertising? By exploiting Marxism. Look closely:
You watch this droning, anodyne, short-film-length commercial, and your reaction, like many Westerners and Americans, is that the ad stinks. It’s too long, and the message isn’t clear. We’re used to ads that rely on… Read the rest
May 5, 2011
Tagged ads, advertisements, advertising, china, commercial, commercials, feminism, women
16 Comments
Budweiser ad is both gay and not-gay, and not about either.
This is what the internet is preoccupied with today:
In the Budweiser ad below, are the soldier and the man he calls in a gay relationship?
Did it matter that I prejudiced your opinion by asking the question before you saw the ad?
Most who see it think the man and the soldier are brothers, and the hug is simply… Read the rest
April 27, 2011
Tagged ads, advertising, budweiser, commercials, gay, media, soldier, war
19 Comments
Codebreaking: Imported from the Rust Belt
All three ads tell a decidedly post-crash story. What is the story they are telling? How is the story told? Consider the signs (it helps to turn off the sound): dilapidated buildings, obstructed flags, obscured parades, closeups of large hands, arms, and backs. Labor, physical work. Black and white, and desaturated color. Old footage inter-cut with new. Railroads. Power lines.… Read the rest
April 20, 2011
Tagged advertising, American dream, auto, cars, chrysler, codebreaking, commercials, jeep, levis, rust belt, semiotics, signifiers, signs
23 Comments
Codebreaking: Diet Coke’s “Stay Extraordinary”
The older a product is, the more it is a commodity, and the fewer objectively discernible qualities or features it has, the more the advertiser is forced to construct a fictional “grand narrative” to sell you a product. They have to tell a story about the world, and place the product within that world in a way that is conspicuous… Read the rest
April 15, 2011
Tagged ads, advertising, codebreaking, codes, commercials, diet coke, ethnicity, gender, race, semiotics, technology
45 Comments
The iPad and the Death of Techno-fetishism
Apple’s new iPad commercial signals the death of technofetishism in high technology.
The ad is a radical departure in a number of ways from Apple’s earlier branding strategy. Gone are the white backgrounds, stark compositions, and austere images that places the device and the apps in the foreground. There is no rapid fire forced association of product with adjectives like… Read the rest
April 7, 2011
Tagged ads, advertising, apple, commercials, computers, iPad, technofetish, technology, xoom
23 Comments
Tide Knows Dad Better Than He Knows Himself
This is a new Tide detergent commercial showing how Tide undermines Dad’s attempt to control his daughter’s sexuality. Dad is a central character in the ad, and all the action revolves around him. But the ad is not targeted at fathers. Women still do most of the family shopping, so we should read the ad as addressing moms. The… Read the rest
March 28, 2011
Tagged ads, advertising, anxiety, commercials, ego, father, freudian, id, media, postmodernism, sex, sexuality, subaru, supergo, T-mobile, tide, women
142 Comments
