Advertising to me is a love hate relationship. Being a marketing major that sounds absolutely insane in my brain but I feel like certain advertisements like commercials, and posters are not as creative now as they once were. Nowadays everything to do with advertisements is social media whether it may be on Tik Tok or Instagram or any other platform it is all repetitive and annoying that it is pretty easy to just click “skip ad” on a YouTube video or just scroll right past it.
Advertising is quite literally everywhere though not just on social media it is in music, comics, posters on the street and more. Personally, the most effective way for a commercial to speak to me is if it is full of life and colors with a catchy tune or a really creative slogan. Commercials like that just make me instantly think about the company and I will randomly just sing the tune around the house or the dorm because it was so catchy. A specific commercial I can think of is the Reese’s Puffs commercial where the kid was just rapping and I thought that was so cool and catchy and it made me try Reese’s Puffs for the first time, though I did not like them the commercial did its job.
As we all know advertising is not just commercials there are also events with companies and partnerships that can sometimes be very interesting. An event that I always think about is when McDonald’s partnered with rapper Travis Scott and introduced the “Travis Scott Meal” which was really popular due to how popular of an artist Travis Scott is. Another example that I personally remember is when singer Summer Walker was going to release her album “Still Over It” in late 2021 her marketing team put several copies of a hard drive in various cities in a bulletproof glass box. The challenge was to take the pink hammer that was set up with the box and try to smash the box to get early access to the album. Both of these are tactics that personally worked for me and had me intrigued to buy the McDonald’s meal or listen to the album.
Streaming services were a great way to get away from ads while trying to watch television. With advertisements literally being everywhere now on certain platforms like HULU and peacock you have to pay extra on your subscription just to not receive ads. Ads are usually very annoying especially when you get a double set of ads on a YouTube video and they both can’t be skipped. The Superbowl ads are usually amazing and have a lot of thought to them makes me wish all ads were like this. Which brings me to these questions: what is your favorite Superbowl ad if you have one? Do you think if ads had more thought into them and actually tried to speak to you personally you would be less likely to skip them? Enjoy a couple of my favorite commercials.
Mass Media & American Life 
The ad examples you showed are great examples of advertising that I remembered, but didn’t consume. Most of the ads that left a memorable impression on me, I never actually consumed the product they were trying to sell. Most of the people that I talked about the ad with didn’t either. I this still considered successful marketing since the ad was being talked about, but the product wasn’t being consumed?
LikeLike
Your post made me realize just how vast the field of advertising can be. I had previously thought of advertising as a concept that primarily embodied scripted video, audio, or print, and it had never really occurred to me that an advertisement could be a hamburger, or a public challenge. Also, I appreciate you mentioning the power of setting an ad to music. There were so many times in my childhood where I would have an ad’s catchy song playing in my head, despite not even understanding what the product or service was.
LikeLike