Nichole’s WebBlog

Finally embedding actually worked!!

Anyway, look what I found. The first McDonalds commercial ever! Wow, is this ad creepy. I have no idea how this was affective at all. But, I was not around at this time. The line “I like to do everything that little boys and girls like to do” just sounds wrong. I guess in the 60s though, there wasn’t as many profiles.

Maybe at this time, the cool part about McDonalds didn’t have anything to do with the commercials, but the fact that you could get food… FAST! I’m not sure how many fast food restaurants were around then, but I would be willing to bet not even a third of what is around now.

Overall, this ad would not be even close to effective in todays times, but in the 60s I can see how people would be excited about going to McDonalds and grabbing a cheeseburger in less than five minutes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fY1Pl1zGowc

 For some reason ever since the settings changed I cannot get my ads to embed, if you have any advice feel free to help!

Anyway this is a public service announcement for meth, obviously. I think this is done really well for a couple of reasons.

The jingle for instance is very catchy and upbeat. But listen to the words… very dark. I still have it in my head and I listened to it more than ten minutes ago! Emotionally the song does a really good job at grabbing the attention of the person watching the ad.

At first glance, the ad could be for anything! Because it is not obvious it’s a public service announcement until a third of the way through. The girl is pretty, dressed well, and smiling. Not until later does is who sores and cuts all over her face and body.

The overall effectiveness of this advertisement is great. Most public service announcements are boring. A voice in the background telling you the facts, but this one grabs your attention. Demands it, really.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7Ig2JJRpdo

For some reason I couldn’t get this embedded, the page seems a little bit different, so this link will have to work.

All the talk about the Halo commercial reminded me of my favorite video game commercial of all time, maybe even one of my favorite commercials of all time. Of course I am referring to the Gears of War advertisement. In my opinion this ad is perfect in every way. From the song “Mad World” by Gary Jules to the graphics.

When looking at my notes for this week I see no use of any master tropes in this commercial, such as irony, humor, synechdochy, etc. Generally in an ad it is good to use a trope, but in this case it is still awesome without any.

This ad basically grabs me from an emotional standpoint. The song drags people in, you stop what you are doing and watch this commercial… no matter how many times it plays, you pay attention every single time! When the commercial is over, you want more. How genius, I know I was at the store buying that game the day it came out. Funny thing is the game wasn’t even as good as the commercial. But that is what sold the game.

Music, in my opinion can make or break an ad. The wrong song in can have you flipping the channels without second thought to the commercial. A song like Mad World hits people, they listen to the lyrics, think about what is being said. You may already know that Gary Jules redid this song, it’s originally by Tears for Fears, if you have time, listen to it. Imagine if they would have used Tears For Fears instead of Gary Jules version? Would it have been as effective? No, I do not believe so.