Mouse Trap Advertisement Analysis

One of the main focuses of an advertisement is to sell a product. As explained by James Twitchell, the primary focus of advertisements is, "... not to just to brand parity objects but also to brand consumers as they move these various communities. ... Hence, at the macro level the task of advertising is to convince different sets of consumers - target groups - that the quarter they observe is somehow different in meaning and value than the same quarter seen by their ... neighbors." (Twitchell, 2012, p. 182-183) Since the demographic of a population increases, differentiates, and gets older, different people in the same demographic see different meanings in the same product being advertised. Correspondingly, advertisers often have to mass produce …show more content…
One use of this technique was implemented by the use of the mouse in the commercial. At the beginning of the commercial, there was a regular sized mouse hole, which implies that there was a regular sized mouse about to appear. The expectation of the small mouse was exaggerated by Figure 5, which shows that the man is significantly larger and more dominating than the mouse. The viewer had begun to expect that the mouse is going to be small. But once the mouse breaks through the wall, the reality is shown to be that the mouse is significantly larger than expected. The idea of using the size of the mouse also symbolized the idea of size and power of the middle and lower class. The commercial implies that the rich expects that there are only a few people that make up the middle and lower class, when in reality, there are significantly more people than expected. Similarly, uses the imagery of the mouse hitting the man to show that we expect that the lower class does not have a lot of power, when it reality, it has more power than previously thought. The expectation vs. reality of the size of the mouse also comes to symbolize the taste of the chips. The commercial uses the expectation of the small mouse to imply that people have a preconception that their product does not contain a lot of flavor. While the bigger mouse is used to show that in reality, their product is more flavorful than what people might expect. The commercial uses the idea that the people have more power than expected to show that the company is on their side so the consumers feel comfortable in buying their product, as well using it to show that the product has a lot of flavor in it, so that the consumers know to buy the product. By constantly applying the idea of