Speech 212 Commercials

Between 10-11:30 am on Tuesday morning I watched the “Today Show” on NBC and recorded the commercials I watched during that time slot. One thing I noticed about most of the commercials was the products they were selling were directed to women. Stuff like Neutrogena face wash, Ikea, Special K weight loss cereal, and tide. There were many more advertisements but they fell into similar categories as the ones listed above. Five million people tuned in the Today Show this week, and the majority of the audience was female. In the advertising world the “golden” demographic is females between the ages of 18-45. For household items, clothing and makeup this demographic is the largest consumers of these items. It makes sense that commercials advertising these products would air during a show with mostly a female audience. Most of the commercials didn’t use humor to sell their product, the appeal was mostly glamour or useful. The Tampax Pearl commercials are designed to appeal to the usefulness of the product by showing a female going about her daily athletic life using Tampax Pearl. Revlon used glamour to sell their makeup. The woman in the commercial looked beautiful at a party and attracted a good looking man, adding a hint of romance to the production. In most of the commercials women were the main characters, or the only characters presented. In the few commercials were men made an appearance it was very brief. Advertisers were trying to relate to women by making women represent their products. It works most of the time but, in commercials like Special K we see a thin women trying to lose weight on the special diet, but it’s not very identifiable since most people trying to lose weight wouldn’t look a healthy weight. I guess the advertisers were trying to make the point that Special K does work because she’s thin and pretty but still it makes me question the scenario, even though I know commercials aren’t realistic. In the Ikea furniture commercial the advertisers were trying to make the couple act like the average couple but I think they tried too hard. The dialogue’s between is kind of corny, and I’m sure furniture shopping between real couple’s doesn’t play out like this. At least this commercial was kind of funny. Even though I had some skepticism about the people in the commercial I still remember the commercials. Overall they were fine, and entertaining, even though they were somewhat unrealistic, but I guess that’s the point of most commercials, their trying to present the best/most glamorous scenario so we’ll buy the product.