Cholesterol(ad journal entry 11)
Keeping with the theme of drug company rhetoric I decided this week I would discuss the commercials for Lipitor and Vytorin; both drugs are used for people with high cholesterol. As you can see for the Lipitor commercial the man in the ad makes a point to mention that he is a doctor and uses Lipitor. So right off the bat the viewer will think, “Well, if a doctor uses this drug then it must work”. Since the beginning of time the doctor has always been someone we can all trust, and the advertisers are feeding off of this concept.
Next is the drug Vytorin, and Vytorin uses a more understandable approach. If you watch both of the Vytorin ads you will see there is a difference. The first one aired prior to the other, and you can tell that the second is a little more creative. Both commercials have the same idea but just updated. When I first saw these ads I actually thought the commercials were really cool and I wanted to see what they would come up with next. One downfall, in my opinion, is that a viewer might just be interest in how much food can take on human characteristics and not that the drug is actually intended for lowering cholesterol. One thing that stuck out was the repetition of “comes from two sources”, so people know that cholesterol comes from both a persons genes and from food.
To compare the two the Lipitor commercial is serious, clam, and has an older gentleman explaining the drug. In the Vytorin commercial the facts are explained in terms someone who doesn’t know much about medicine would understand. The Vytorin ads are also very colorful and use a voice over rather than an actual person telling the viewer about the pill. Both drugs are used for the same reasons but their different advertisement styles will untimely sway a consumer on whether they appreciate a serious doctor or a silly take on cholesterol medicine.
Fuel for Life (Ad journal entry 10)
This week, I took Sarah’s advice, I am going to discuss the ads I chose for my campaign proposal. For said campaign proposal I chose the advertisements for Diesel brand perfume/cologne (the name of fragrance is Fuel for Life). The ads are both in television and in print, and the same models appear in all of the ads. The models are dressed in very little clothing, almost all of the models have dark features, and are all foreign. I chose this ad campaign because first of all I like the perfume and also because I felt that the ads consist of most if not all of the elements we have discussed thus far in class. I’m going to assume that for our final assignment we will have to go deeper into discussion, so I will only touch on a few key topics. The topics I want to touch on are from “The Six Tugs-of-war” and “Wernicke and Broca”.
Starting with “The Six tugs-of-war”
Style vs. Substance
The ads for Diesel are Chic, dark, and sexy. The viewer would not actually know that the ads are for a fragrance. In the print ad with the female models the perfume bottle is off to the side. If you are not paying attention you might not even see the product. In the print ad with the male models the men are holding the bottle, but they are shirtless and the viewer cannot focus on the product. It seems as though the models are what is being sold, and they are actually trying to sell you a bottle of perfume/ cologne.
Sight vs. Sound
Trying to determine which is more essential is somewhat difficult since both elements are incredibly important. The images of these ads are provocative, seductive, and even dangerous. The music in the background is also very sexy. In this campaign the “sight and sound” are equally important, for the commercials, and could not be as powerful without each other.
For the print ads, of course there is no sound and if you’ve already seen the television advertisements, you can hear the sexy beat from the ad. While discussing sound the concept of echoic intrusiveness and Wernicke and Broca returns. The sound of the music penetrates the mind of the viewer evoking the sexy images from the ads. Also the advertisers are clever to choose foreign spokes models. Their accents are attractive to a lot of people and will drive those people, so these ads are perfect containing all significant elements of advertising and as we all know Sex Sells!!
