Media Meditation #1

A CLASH OF THE TITANS!


Lets start with a Super Bowl Ad




This Super bowl ad reaches into your Limbic brain like crazy. The whole ad is being sung and a recognizable tune. There are no conversations going on and no reading involved you are just sitting back and watching to pictures go by; and those pictures are saying a lot.

The “thesis” of this ad is you are now all grown up and a real man now you don’t need to hide behind tough body wash you are comfortable with yourself why not treat yourself to the best. I really like this ad I also think that is affective in the sense that you see the man in the ad growing up and becoming that man who is comfortable with himself to use a dove.

Dove took a great approach to getting their product out there and they positioned it in a great way. This is not for that man that needs his soap to tell him that he is macho, he know he is a man he has children and opened pickle jars to prove it.

THE SHIFTS:

Epistemological:
From word to IMAGE. This ad was aired during the Super Bowl and millions watched it right on their TV screens.

Technological:
from analog to DIGITAL. Everything is digital, the game and commercials were watched online.

Personal:
from mass to PERSONAL/PARTICIPATORY. The commercials were talked about on Facebook hardly even a day after. There are Facebook pages for some of the commercials.

THE PRINCIPLES:

Pacing:
this commercial had no breaks it was like one entertaining run on sentence. It was frame after frame after frame. It work well for what the commercial was going for; life moves fast and then you reach a calm where everything comes together and that is when men are now able to use Dove with confidence.

Production Techniques:
the shape of the new product, the colors of the new product, but the font and lettering was kept the same to keep it a “revamped” Dove product.

PERSUASIVE TECHNIQUES:

Symbols:
“The American Dream” work get married have children become established then use Dove because you are a real man.

Flattery:
“You are a real man now”

Humor:
it was one big humors advertisement. It starts off with the man’s birth and goes through all the ups and downs that he also went through. It picks out all the funny parts and even the parts that might stink like cutting the grass and makes them light hearted and humorous.

Plain Folk:
this commercial is about the everyday mature man. No one famous or special, because dove is all about the everyday man not the stars they are “The peoples soap”.

Nostalgia:
the target audience can all relate to opening the pickle jars, playing with the kids, doing the yard work.

Warm Fuzzies:
the wedding, the children, and just having a fulfilling life to the point where Dove is now your soap and treating you right.




Now comes a new commercial put out by Gillete




This ad is all Limbic, there are no words until the very end simply saying the tag line.


THE SHIFTS:

Epistemological:
From word to IMAGE.i saw this a few weeks after the Dove commercial was aired. right on my TV screeen.

Technological:
from analog to DIGITAL. Everything is digital, the game and commercials were watched online. From the TV right to YouTube.


THE PRINCIPLES:
Production Techniques: there is only one frame no movement. You are forced to only focus on the object falling as the man is getting clean. There are also two body washes and one is knocked over by the objects or smells that the Gillette body wash is washing off. The background is grey and “manly looking” and so is the packaging.

PERSUASIVE TECHNIQUES: '

Symbols:
every single thing that falls has a manly association. The Football, watering hose, nuts and bolts, grass, shovel, tools, and the Lobster Trap; the lobster trap made me think a little that isn’t very every day I don’t think.


Flattery:
“you are a man, and you do dirty manly things. You need to get a real manly clean.”

Humor:
all of the odors are falling objects so it is very straight forward and you can paint a picture of what he has been doing.

Plain Folk:
this is an ad for the very day man doing every day things and “Just being a MAN”


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The two ads are for exactly the same product.

And they both took were different approaches to selling them for obvious reasons.

Gillette is a man’s man brand and dove is just now starting to reaching out the male audiences. But you can see that Gillette is trying to keep its audience and buyers because there is a body wash in the bottom left corner of the screen with a butterfly and what I think of and I’m sure everyone else thinks of is Dove.
So it is like Gillette is saying that Dove cannot stand up to a real mans odors.

But then again I feel like the target audience is slightly different for the two challenging soaps.

For Gillette I see their target market to be UN married men who are still a man’s man working on their lawn and doing man stuff still playing games with the boys not the kids. He is doing his own shopping and wants to stay true to his manly self.

While Dove is for that married man who no longer has to shop for his own soap, who is still doing man stuff but is also smelling good for his little lady at home. His wife is a Dove fan and sees that there is now a Dove product out there for her husband and he is man enough to use it.

When I saw the Gillette commercial all I thought about was the Dove commercial, and it looks as is Gillette is trying to gain its footing back in the men’s hygiene department.

It’s almost like a clash of the Titans!