The Wolfman's Idea Journal

SEE WHAT’S GOING FAST, AT A DODGE DEALERSHIP NEAR YOU.

I am not particularly certain why the Dodge Charger and Challenger are being advertised but I’m glad that they are; I enjoy these spots (probably because I’m in the target market).

The intended target is, as above, people like me. It is males age 18-35, with a competitive drive and a lust for victory, recognition, and carnal reward. So, nearly all males.

The message connects to the target’s need as it shows how Dodge is an excellent tool towards following that competitive instinct and to fulfilling the lust for victory and recognition.

The SMITH (Single Most Important Thing) in this message is that

“Dodge can show the other guy, ‘Suck it! I’m better.’”          

  The visuals support and communicate the product’s SMITH especially well—visuals and background music are the primary ways it is communicated. The actors in each vehicle lock eye contact, conveying the challenge, and the loser seems truly broken when eye contact is reestablished after, as the winner has the girl seated beside him.

I don’t feel the copy supports the message well—the commercial’s entire copy is the bolded text above. It is the visuals which primarily communicate the message, the copy conveys urgency to the viewer—these awesome cars are selling out fast!

Chuck E. Cheese wants you to know YOU’RE GONNA BE A ROCKSTAR! A BIRTHDAY ROCKSTAR!

Chuck E. Cheese’s Rockstar Birthday package is being advertised because it is a recent modification, as of August 2013, to their decades-old birthday package. Available in three tiers, this package is designed to make children truly feel more like the hero of their own party.

The intended target is the child, who will persuade their parents that their next birthday party needs to be held at Chuck E. Cheese.

The message connects to the target’s need as it provides evidence of the payoff to a child’s attention cravings which they well receive if they schedule their birthday party at a Chuck E. Cheese.

The SMITH (Single Most Important Thing) in this message is:

Have your birthday party here! You’ll be a Birthday Rockstar!

The visuals support and communicate the product’s SMITH by conveying the party atmosphere, which children associate with birthdays, and displaying the “rockstar” gear the birthday child receives.

I feel the copy supports this message very well by both making the child personalize the birthday message, with the initial greeting, and by explaining that they will actually receive the items shown. The chorus line of the song is simple and repetitive enough it has the distinct possibility of becoming an earworm that children constantly sing when their minds are otherwise unoccupied.

"Two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, on a sesame seed bun".

The power of creative advertising: more people can recite these as the components of a McDonalds Big Mac than can recite the Ten Commandments.

I learned this statistic Thursday (March 28th), when I met and spoke with Keith Reinhard at theTexas Advertising & Public Relations Conference. Reinhard is the chairman emeritus of DDB Worldwide. He is the creator of the Hamburglar, and led the team which created all the other popular McDonalds characters, from Grimmace to Mayor McCheese.

As he made this observation about Big Mac knowledge versus Ten Commandments knowledge, Reinhard made a simple, but powerful, observation:

http://tosh.comedycentral.com/video-clips/geiq45/are-you-moist-yet-

This video will not load onto this page.

Meta-ad comedy. Ad for a comedian, making a joke about an ad. (Long, full-version video).

  Tosh.0 is being advertised because, at the time I saw this ad (late February) the show’s new season had just launched (February 18th).

  The intended target is viewers who would enjoy Tosh’s show. If a viewer finds these ads amusing, they will watch the show and enjoy Tosh’s humor. But if they would not enjoy the show, and would be poor viewers of Tosh’s programming, they will not be amused by this ad and will not follow it

 The message connects to the target’s need as it uses Tosh’s humor to inform Tosh’s viewers that the new Tosh humor programming they craved is arrived.

 The SMITH (Single Most Important Thing) in this message is:

Daniel Tosh is hilarious, like these ads were. WATCH HARDER.

            The visuals support and communicate the product’s SMITH by showcasing the exercise ads Tosh  mocked, and thus communicating the joke.

 The copy supports this message well by delivering a payoff to the video iewers: a punchline. In the phrasing, this copy conveys Tosh humor by its sexual suggestivity.

In my entry a week ago, my March 20th post about the T25 infomercial, I talk negatively about my view on infomercials. I'm providing this CLR infomercial to contrast my dislike with their effectiveness.

I'm also posting this spot because it's the first  advertisement I remember working on me. My sister and I were sitting together watching TV when this came on. We both had the idea that,, from the effectiveness we saw and the properties we were told about, this was something which would be of great help to our mother. As soon as our program ended, we turned off the TV and went together to tell our mom of this WONDERFUL cleaning product that "Will help you so much!"

The product was purchased. I don't recall it ever being used, but I do remember seeing it on our garage shelves.

Lumosity is being advertised to capitalize and improve upon record numbers of both employees and subscribers in mid-2013.

  The intended target is selected much more by paychographics than demographics; as long as a consumer is an adult, no other demographic details are relevant. As far as psychographics, their target is health-oriented and prone to independently performing tasks.

 The message connects to the target’s need as there are very few products or practices shown to improve neurological health, unlike muscular or gastric health. Lumosity’s neuroscience basis gives support to the thought that this service may be a new step forward in cognitive health.

 The SMITH (Single Most Important Thing) in this message is:

“Lumosity is your brain’s personal trainer. Keep that muscle well-conditioned.”

The visuals support and communicate the product’s SMITH fairly well. It is difficult to visually display the mind-muscle flexing, however.

 I feel the copy supports this message quite well through referencing neuroscience and explanation of the many benefits of the product.

State Farm takes the mystery out of repairing the Mystery Machine.

Don't really have a lot to say about this one, just felt it was amusing enough to deserve recognition. Especially since I saw this while I actually WAS watching SCOOBY-DOO!

Lunchables is being advertised because it contains a new drink product along with the other packaged-lunch items.

 The intended targets are two: both schoolchildren and their parents.

 The message connects to the target’s need as: it satisfies children’s attention need in feeling that, by purchasing the product, they will receive more attention, perhaps even more than that kid with the interesting story; and it satisfies parents’ need in giving them the satisfaction that through their efforts and clever purchasing in buying this product, their child’s esteem needs are satisfied.

The SMITH (Single Most Important Thing) in this message is:

“Cool story doesn’t matter. Everyone wants to hear the smoothie,”

            The visuals support and communicate the product’s SMITH by showing that the storyteller child actually has casts to support the truth of his story. The other children still don’t care, listening instead to the smoothie.

 I feel the copy supports this message well by juxtaposing the storyteller’s hurt and crestfallen “I broke my arms!” against the voiceover snnouncer’s “It’s all about the Lunchables!”

Dr. Pepper 10 Bold Country

"Taste the Bold Country." This advertisement is clearly a part of a positioning effort by Dr. Pepper 10. It is an effort to position the beverage as a nectar for the masculine, a sign of virility.

Although this piece is new as of March 10th, this positioning effort is hardly new to the Dr. Pepper 10 campaign. Examples:

March 2013: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDCY56azew8

November 2011: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zza3GqEL5B0

Party in the Tub Light

After my first three posts up to the bat have been advertising hits, this post is about an advertising miss.

The Party in the Tub light is being advertised because, as with my previous analytical post (link), this product is a new release. It is less new than the Reebok ZQuick, however, having come out January 8th, 2014.

The intended target is mothers of young children. I say “mothers” rather than “parents” as the female voiceover seems to be overtly trying to elicit a sense of unity with the target women.

The message connects to the target’s need as it proposes an effective way to convince, even attract children to get into a bath, a method requiring low amounts of post-bath tub cleanup.

The SMITH (Single Most Important Thing) about Party in the Tub conveyed in this message is:

“Bring the exciting fun of parties into tubs; kids follow!”

            The visuals support and communicate the product’s SMITH by showing children’s excitement through happy faces. It also shows the children enthusiastically and creatively playing with the toy, thus conveying its attraction. The miss to which I referred includes the brief appearance of competing bath toys, with almost no discussion of features differentiating the Party in the Tub light or making it superior, aside from the mention that a single toy is easier to pick up and store than many.

I feel the copy does not support this message very well at all. I felt the presumptuously familiar tone of the voiceover expressing the copy combined with other unsavory elements to make the voiceover a large element of this ad’s miss. Additionally, as I mentioned above, the dearth of effective copy to differentiate this light from the many, many competing bath toy products is a weakness to this campaign. Another element I perceived as a presumption is that this ad seems to suggest Party in the Tub is the only thing to attract children to bathe, disregarding the myriad of other products, several of which I even have very fond personal memories of from my own early childhood. This presumption is even contradicted in their dismissive mention of other toys. To me, this says, “Party in the Tub is the only way to get kids in the bathwater, but if you even try using anything else, that bathroom will take forever for you to clean after.”

Shaun T presents FOCUS T25

My initial post for this blog, the Crayola markers, was meant to be an example of excellent professional creative work. This piece had enough creative success, supplementary to the Crayola post, that I, despite my intense distaste for infomercials, was successfully persuaded by this piece to make the financial and temporal commitment to this product!

One of the strong elements in successfully persuading me (and a very intelligent creative inclusion) was the section with the brand's video editor explaining how he himself was motivated to complete this exercise program by the before and after pictures he edited and the other program details he was made aware of. His word at being effectively convinced was particularly persuasive as he contrasted his attraction to this program against all the other programs for this brands he's edited before/after pics and other video for.

Another extremely persuasive element was the structure of this program with its compressed format of 25 minutes. I have a history of spending many hours every single day athletically involved (frequently in both competitive team practices and personal conditioning work); recent life events have however, unfortunately, reduced the amount of time which I have to devote to any activity outside of my primary focus on academic work. 25 minutes was within the limits of my freetime, though.

I called my mother on the phone to inform her both of the coming exercise program and of my expenditure towards it. She reacted with pleasure at my interest in fitness, but with hostility towards the expenditure. She felt this ad had "sucked me in", despite my efforts to convince her of the elements within it which an advertising creativity student could recognize the authenticity of.

Her hostility has mellowed considerably, however, since she was present to experience the program video when I first tried out the program. She no longer feels either that it was a foolish and impulsive purchase or that the program may be insensitive to my physical injury recovery condition. She does remain pleased at my interest in fitness, and proud at her former-jock son's return to athletic activity after his injuries.

LIVE WITH FIRE.

The ZQuick shoe is being advertised because it is a new product, released as of February 1, 2014.

The intended target is urban, unmarried young professionals. These customers live independently, under their own financing in small apartments. Age 25-34, but there is also appeal to older customers in their nostalgia for the passions they held at that age.

The message connects to the target’s need as the target is living inside a small box, they have a need to break out of their consigned societal role by adding something new and distinctive to their persona. Reebok promises that, through their product, customers can “live with fire”, and flames are certainly an unforgettable attribute.

The SMITH (Single Most Important Thing) in this message is its clarion call to:

Live with fire–fire of a superhero, fast as commuter locomotives.

The visuals support and communicate the product’s SMITH by showing groups of young friends utilizing the ZQuick shoe to run “Unnaturally Quick”, keeping pace with a commuter train on a more direct route and performing superhuman feats such as stopping a speeding automobile and hurdling giant walls in a single bound.

I feel the copy supports this message extremely well—there was no voiceover or dialogue copy written, the only writing is found in the conclusion of the ad as “Unnaturally Quick” dissolves into “Reebok ZQuick” and then a hashtag cuts in underneath: “#LIVEWITHFIRE”. These help make the message relevant, but it is the borrowed audio which I feel is most effective in communicating with the target. The audio is the theme-song to the show “Underdog”, about the canine superhero. The song was not written for this spot, yet I profoundly feel that it serves as a supremely effective anthem for the target’s needs and desires.

Excellent commercial! Saw it watching Tom & Jerry on Cartoon Network this morning.

Inauspiciously, for my first post on this blog, my major thoughts on this commercial are more along the media line than the creative line. After seeing this on TV and before posting it here, I immediately texted the youtube link to both my mother and my sister, a preschool teacher. I thought that their shared experience with children would make this product exciting for them.

So, my media thought was that, in addition to being shown during children's programming, this commercial should also be shown during programming aimed at middle-aged (30-45 year old) viewers on the Oxygen and WE networks, as this would likely capture and excite the mother demographic.

Another good media spot for this commercial would be to show it during family programming (e.g. family movies) on major networks, as this should catch the attention of, and appeal to, mother, father, and children.