Thursday, March 8, 2012

Week 1, Prompt 4: "Why Good Advertising Works (Even When You Think It Doesn't" by Nigel Hollis (The Atlantic)

Central argument: The author's idea is that advertisement requires a formula to make it work.

What is the reason which makes an advertisement become good? Even that an advertisement is not good, if the producer follows the formula. For a picky person, an advertisement requires a lot of different factors to make that person pays attention to. Then, what is the formula? A formula is that the advertisement should be easy to memorize. That is not enough, I suggest! Making an advertisement is like making a dish, to make a good dish; it requires a lot of different ingredients. Different ingredient for an advertisement can be ethos, pathos, and logos. Since people tend to believe in common sense; therefore logos is used the most. In some cases, adding to many ingredients will make the dish become bad. Advertisements nowadays become so hard to understand. For an example, some advertisements are just so random, and do not get to its main point. According to the article named Why Good Advertisement Works (Even When You Think It Doesn’t), it does not just give the answer of how an advertisement work, but also explain the reason why.

A television watcher such as woman is the one that actually put their eyes and concentration on the advertisement more than man. That is my assumption because woman tends to look at stuffs carefully than man. Unless, in the opposite situation. In this case, I choose the first case.
Woman has to look through variety advertisement on a product to choose a good one. These day, most of advertisements are also most the same. Therefore, woman cannot memorize everything, but to choose the one that easy to memorize. Let’s take an example, for the advertisement about The Old Spice the deodorant. The commercial only has a shirtless guy on a horse to promote the product. Seem so simple but the commercial has a lot of effect. Whenever woman talks about any hot guys, they will automatically promote about the product to their friend; since the commercial only shows a hot guys. Easy to memorize is the main formula to promote the product.

Advertisement producer tries their best to convince or persuade the costumer to buy their product. By repeating the same formula (easy to memorize) and adding different factors will make the advertisement easier to get attention of the viewer. For an example, by using logos (others might call syllogism) will make the viewer seem to believe; since it is almost commonsense. Let’s take an advertisement about Apple and BlackBerry. In the advertisement, you see a black- berry is shooting as a bullet but it does not piercing through an apple. Through this the logic behind the ad is that Apple product is good. If a customer buys an Apple product then the product will not be pierced by a black- berry. On other words, Apple product is better than BlackBerry product. Following the formula and adding a logic, for sure that the product which is promoting in the ad will be sold.

It is not simple to make an ad but if following the formula. It will become easier to promote the product. Being simply will make the viewers feel much better, because they do not have to think a lot to understand the ad. Then what do you look in an ad?

1 comment:

  1. The formula for this kind of essay is simple. In your introduction, include something like:
    Person A believes B. I agree/disagree because of X, Y, and Z.

    ReplyDelete