Everyday the average Australian is swept away by exposure to a tsunami of up to ten thousand commercials, print ads, brand labels or anything a business can produce to get your attention and compel you to buy (Marshall, 2015). Good Evening I’m Kellie Bartlem, tonight’s guest presenter for The Gruen Transfer. What is The Gruen Transfer you ask? It’s that split second when a store’s confusing layout makes you walk out with a year’s supply of cat food and Swedish chocolate, when all you really wanted was a new toothbrush. This is a show about persuasion. About advertising. How it works and how it works on you (ABC, 2008). With television still by far the most effective advertising medium, tonight’s new segment Thank You For Watching will shrink
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Whilst the denotative reasoning behind this ad is to sell you Old Spice body wash, it also is accompanied by various implied selling points. For the women, this ad is selling the satisfaction of having the opportunity to be in relationship with a man that will cater to her every desire, no matter how elaborate such may be. Similarly, while women are being offered the chance to change the man they are with, those same men are being offered the chance to change themselves through association with a product that will supposedly provide them a masculine identity comparable to a national football icon. As a result, we are left with lasting impressions that encourage sales through positive connotations with the product (Gales, …show more content…
Society plants certain ideals into our opinions and beliefs, which can mold our viewpoints into a certain norm. This is seen particularly through the utilization of an ‘ideal man’ stereotype that is enforced throughout society by fathers, brothers, mothers and everything in between when they tell their young, impressionable sons to ‘be a man’ whenever they do something remotely weak. Enforced by the constant reminder in the Old Spice advertisement that your man could smell like the buff Old Spice Guy, if only he “stopped using lady scented body wash and switched to Old Spice”, this ad plays on the insecurities of the secondary male target audience and consequently changes their attitude towards the product to one of desire, as the company is relying on the common knowledge that today’s modern society is at its least confident (PSU Education, 2016). Furthermore, the emotions of the female target audience are not left untouched by playing to the enforced attitude that states every woman is expected to desire being connected to an attractive man who exudes success, high social status and doesn’t let their lady wake up to cold coffee in the morning. Thus, in conjunction with society’s insecurities and the emotional appeal of the Old Spice ad, the audience is being tricked into forgetting their value of ‘substance over style’- whether they actually like the distinctive
Whilst the denotative reasoning behind this ad is to sell you Old Spice body wash, it also is accompanied by various implied selling points. For the women, this ad is selling the satisfaction of having the opportunity to be in relationship with a man that will cater to her every desire, no matter how elaborate such may be. Similarly, while women are being offered the chance to change the man they are with, those same men are being offered the chance to change themselves through association with a product that will supposedly provide them a masculine identity comparable to a national football icon. As a result, we are left with lasting impressions that encourage sales through positive connotations with the product (Gales, …show more content…
Society plants certain ideals into our opinions and beliefs, which can mold our viewpoints into a certain norm. This is seen particularly through the utilization of an ‘ideal man’ stereotype that is enforced throughout society by fathers, brothers, mothers and everything in between when they tell their young, impressionable sons to ‘be a man’ whenever they do something remotely weak. Enforced by the constant reminder in the Old Spice advertisement that your man could smell like the buff Old Spice Guy, if only he “stopped using lady scented body wash and switched to Old Spice”, this ad plays on the insecurities of the secondary male target audience and consequently changes their attitude towards the product to one of desire, as the company is relying on the common knowledge that today’s modern society is at its least confident (PSU Education, 2016). Furthermore, the emotions of the female target audience are not left untouched by playing to the enforced attitude that states every woman is expected to desire being connected to an attractive man who exudes success, high social status and doesn’t let their lady wake up to cold coffee in the morning. Thus, in conjunction with society’s insecurities and the emotional appeal of the Old Spice ad, the audience is being tricked into forgetting their value of ‘substance over style’- whether they actually like the distinctive