Nicholaus1’s Weblog

In this Heinz commercial, the commercial starts out by showing two plates both on a blanket with hot dogs on them. Next to one of them is a bottle of Heinz ketchup, and the other one has a bottle of Brand X ketchup. There is music playing in the background and a squirrel approaches the blanket. 

The squirrel starts off by going to the hotdog with Brand X ketchup and after tasting it he quickly scurried off. He then went to the next hotdog with the Heinz ketchup and licked the ketchup off little by little until it was all finished. The ad ended by displaying “The Joy of Heinz.”

This commercial is like the Pepsi commercial in the lecture for the week. It shows the classic taste test but with a little twist. In the ad, instead of using a person to show which product was better, the ad showed a squirrel. This is only one example of how product testing works.

Personally, I don’t think the ad was very effective. I know it’s trying to show that even a squirrel knows good ketchup but the way I see it is just because a squirrel likes it doesn’t mean I would. I guess this again goes along with the lecture were it states that product testing ads and taste test ads were not very effective.

The commercial is set in something that resembles a train station which is filled with café’s, signs, and convenient stalls. The commercial starts out by a man passing by two other guys and them starting at each other as if they were about to fight. They circle each other and are facing each other still starting for a moment. Finally, they both draw their hands with their fingers pointing out as if they had guns. This causes a chain reaction and the camera turns to random other people in the station who make the same gesture.

There is a moment of stillness as you can see everyone in the station with their hands pointed at someone else, everyone ready to shoot. The mood is set like there is going to be a big show down. Finally, the camera goes back on to the original three men and one of them acts as if he has just shot his gun. Once again this creates a chain reaction and everyone in the station begins to shoot. The camera is then moved on to different areas of the station where different shootouts are occurring. There is even a scene where someone gets shot out of a balcony.

One of the gunmen goes outside and aims at a cab driver and pretends to shoot. The cab driver points and gestures that he will just be a minutes. After getting off the phone, he goes on to act as if he had really been shot. The final scene shows “Jump In.”

The commercial is an Xbox 360 commercial and is a clear example of a trope. More specifically, it is an example of metonymy. The reason the commercial can be identified as a trope is because the fingers are used as a figure of speech. They are there to turn or twist something. Metonomy is associating one thing with another. Another definition is using a physical object to represent the whole object.

The fingers in this commercial are showing that they are as powerful and dangerous than guns. They are used to represent power. When playing an xbox, the only way to control the character or the objective in the game is to use your fingers on the controller to manipulate the character. The commercial is actually showing that the fingers are powerful weapons in the game and everyone can play.

You are introduced to the commercial with a man walking into a home with a jewelry box approaching his wife. He utters “Happy Valentine’s Day,” and presents the gift to his wife. As she opens the box, we are given a glimpse of the jewel, and her face displays an amazed and surprised expression. A young child, interested by his mother’s reaction to the gift, decides to construct a gift box and labels it “KAY”.

The scene shifts to a screen in which the viewer is shown the prices for a diamond necklace and ring from Kay Jewelers. Then you see two glittering diamonds being displayed on a black background. The commercial concludes with the young child presenting the constructed box, which contains a necklace, to a girl. After that, you hear and see “Every Kiss Begins With Kay,” Kay Jeweler’s custom logo.

This advertisement really focuses on emotion, sound, time, money, and style. The commercial focuses on the viewer’s emotion. The customer and the target market, women, become attached to the product, the jewel. The advertisement particularly speaks to the customer’s heart, rather than his mind. Kay Jewelers are more likely to attract more customers if they attack customers’ hearts rather than their intellect, because jewels are expensive products and the customer must try to justify the cause of a purchase (because of their emotional attitude towards the product) with his/her intellect. Kay Jewelers force customers to make the “intelligent decision” by emotionally attracting them to buy their “specially selected [for Valentine’s Day]” jewels.

By excessively advertising their products and using their custom logo of “Every Kiss Beings With Kay,” continuously, many viewers are automatically attracted to the advertisement because they are able to sing along to the tune. The sound of the advertisement becomes familiar to the viewer, and every time the advertisement is aired, the customer is automatically attracted to the ad and therefore, to the product as well. This makes the Kay advertisement even more effective.

Another main aspect of the advertisement is the savings of money. We are only introduced to the prices of the products for a short moment, which may actually deplete from the effectiveness of the ad. The price of the products may seem extreme to some costumers, but decent to others. The $99 Diamond Necklace and Ring both seem like decent prices for such “usually expensive” products.

The style of the product is elegant, and so is the ad. As the author of “The Sixs Tugs-of-War” says, companies should try to sell the reaction, not the diamond. Both the reactions of the wife who received the jewel, and the young boy are surprised. The male viewer imagines his wife receiving the gift, and the wife imagines herself getting the gift from her husband or significant other. The advertisement sells the reaction rather than the jewel itself.

The commerical starts out by a salesperson talking about using Geico online and how easy it is. He jokes that using the web-page is so easy that a caveman could do it.

The commerical then shows the same salesperson in a upper-class restaurant sitting with two cavemen, to whom he is apologizing. The caveman are irritated because of the salesperson’s ignorance towards the existence of cavemen. They go on to order gourmet foods.

In the commercial, when the salesperson jokes about the caveman’s ability, it makes the consumer feel like that even those who are computer illiterate, should be able to use Geico online.

However, on the other hand the commerical does not use rhetoric effectively, in the sense that it insinuates that cavemen are dumb. This could be seen as both humerous or simply ignorant.