No smoking

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfAxUpeVhCg

Many advertisements rely on triggering an emotional response to get a point across. Usually they try inciting happiness and positive feelings with their product or massage. However another angle is to incite fear or sadness to portray a message. In this old anti-smoking ad we can clearly see why they would use such an angle. Everyone knows smoking is bad for you so any add promoting it pretty much has no choice but to try to trigger a negative emotional response. Trying to use negative emotions however can backfire and make people completely dislike you’re ad. This particular ad is a good example of this. Many felt using a crying child to convey a message of abandonment was way too harsh. The ad people felt would only scare children not just of smoking but losing their parents in general. Also many people who were already stricken with illness that already have children do not deserve to feel guilty about not being there for their children. Despite the message getting across many people felt the commercial itself was much more out of line than the act of smoking itself. One other thing to end this post is many believe the child was not acting when he cried, but was actually being filmed while he believed his mother had actually left him in an airport.

Demographic

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRQFJF6OV4g


The commercial here is for vitamin water. Vitamin water is already very popular and can be found in pretty much any food store. Already very popular like any good product it is always seeking to expand its demographic of customers. For the most part it is a drink that appeals to the everyday working person on the go looking for an alternate for soda and sugary drinks. For many years this was the basis of it ad campaign. In this commercial however we can see a much more comical approach and a chance to expand their demographic. The commercial is full of internet “memes”, online videos, jokes, characters that for the most part are only internet humor. To focus on the demographic of the internet community shows how well this business knows its product targeting a group so specifically. Funny enough however much of the internet community actually hates the commercial. They feel their “memes” which as of 3 to 4 years ago were just something internet geeks, like myself, found funny. To us or them I should say was not watered down by mainstream media. I guess it goes to show nothing is not for sale.