Advertising is a very tricky matter and television commercials are no exception. You may have a certain idea in mind and everyone in the marketing war room may agree that it’s a terrific concept. You invest all that money in shooting the 30-second ad and buy a bunch of spots on TV to showcase this creation. You think that it will increase awareness of your brand and help to improve the general public image of your product. Unfortunately, not everyone is going to interpret your television commercial in exactly the same way.
As is normally the case around here, I was watching TV the other day and caught a commercial that I wouldn’t otherwise notice. I’ve seen it before and I had the exact same impression of the ad as the first couple of times. You’ve probably seen it too. It’s for Secret antiperspirant for women and it showcases a woman describing five ways or things that are great about Secret. She says that it builds her confidence, for example.
What I found, though, was that I felt the woman became more troublesome or a hassle on society after gaining this “secret” confidence. She hails a cab with her arm way up in the air, because she feels confident in her underarms and their lack of sweat. When the taxi stops, she tells the taxi driver that she doesn’t need him anymore and that she’ll walk. If I was that cab driver, I’d be pretty peeved. I come to a screeching halt, thinking that I’m picking up a customer, only to get snubbed. It’s almost worse than getting shot down at the club.
Am I the only one who feels this way? With this interpretation in mind, do you find that Secret antiperspirant commercial could be giving off the wrong message?
James
October 9, 2008 3:04 pm
I find most commercials troublesome and bothersome both. I prefer ads that try to be funny or at least treat me with some amount of intelligence. I don’t buy into ads like this because it all feels so phony. In fact, most marketing doesn’t work on me, I just don’t care that much about what brands I consume.
Attorney Minnesota
October 10, 2008 11:58 am
You raise an interesting point: the commercial builds the image that the product makes you more confident, but the commercial also implies that rudeness is part of that confidence. Maybe the commercial is meant to appeal to people’s desire to be more powerful or rude, if they so choose. It seems the commercial could be more effective if it eliminated the rudeness, because the rudeness message may undermine the commercial’s overall appeal to viewers.
Webkinz Ganz
October 12, 2008 9:49 pm
Yep, sometimes I don’t understand why they send one or another message. Probably they right that modern confident man is quite a bit rude, but that shouldn’t be so. I think they should make some image that confident man really should be or was 50 years ago.