The Windex Commercial, Windex: The Story of Lucy, shows a progression of a connection between a father and daughter as well as a physical evolution from the day the daughter is born until the day his daughter has her first child. This shows how windows and mirrors constantly are between the father and daughter, yet this distance unites them to be even stronger. The ad then ends with the slogan, “What’s Between Us Connects Us.” Although the commercial could have been for any kind of product due to the advertisement’s focus on emotion rather than tangible product, the ad was effective in the sense that I felt like I, myself, wanted to keep everything in my life as clear in memory as the glass throughout the ad. For instance, the ad features a the young girl looking through a clear, clean telescope, then into a mirror, and, in the end, through a hospital window holding her daughter, showing her father. The usage of using the father-daughter experience from the beginning of childhood, through adolescence, into adulthood made for a relatable and well-rounded audience reach that connected to people at every phase of life, showing Windex’s continued and archetypal usage. In addition, the treatment of the daughter as a seemingly gender-neutral child, showing her interest in astronomy and progression of height throughout childhood are not gender-specific qualities, which I applaud. In addition, I think the full-circledness of the ad made for a trusting message in the sense that it is a passed-down product that encompasses usefulness at every generation. One way I would improve this commercial by making it shorter because the message of the product gets lost after two minutes, especially because I could not tell what product the ad was for until the last few seconds. Also, I would find a different song to play throughout the clips of the ad to show how dynamic both the relationship of the father and daughter is as well as how dynamic the physical life changes shown in the story are.
The Google Pixel 2 Commercial, Ask More for Your Phone, flips the script on the normal technology advertisement of “this product can do this for you,” and, instead, has the actors in the advertisement ask what the product can do for them. The actors ask questions like “can it tell me if I need an umbrella?” and “can it take a selfie just by telling it to take a selfie?” in which the narrator answers yes to all the capabilities. The people presented in the commercial are people of all ages, races, genders, and geographical locations, giving an expert reach of mass target audience in an incredibly specified way, which made the ad incredibly effective right off the bat. Because Google was fitting in so many characters and technological possibilities within the commercial, there is a fast-paced and dynamic tempo that the ad maintains, keeping the audience engaged and curious for the next feature the Google Pixel has to offer. In addition, this ad is effective in its subliminal attacks on phones such as the iPhone in which the Google Pixel claims to not have storage limitations, unlike the iPhone, and it can get wet without damage, also unlike the iPhone. One way I would improve this commercial is by cutting down on the excessive actors in the commercial that do not answer the true capabilities of the Google Pixel, such as “Can it order me a sandwich? And another one?” The commercial is already long at just before two minutes, so I think the attention span would be kept if some of the fluff had been lessened. Also, I think it still needed to speak to the capabilities that are carrying over from the first phone such as music storage potential and app integration into the innovation of the phone. This way, the audience knows that the product, although innovative, is still solidified in its ability to perform simple tasks.
The McCain Commercial, We Are Family,begins with a question, “When it comes to family, what is normal?” By starting the commercial off with such a rhetorical and open-ended query, it opens up with just as many answers as you would assume. The commercial flips from families with different races, different parental situations, and different definitions of what families can mean. In a genius yet simplistic manner, this variety of family structure creates a parallel to the different varieties and structures of different potato products McCain has to offer. This usage of hitting on the inclusion of families of all kinds reaches audiences that may not have been reached if a singular, generic, nuclear family were to have been featured because it allows acceptance to all in peoples’ definition of “family,” making it incredibly effective. In addition, this ad is effective in this kind of social climate when although “family” defines so many kinds of social constructs, the togetherness and unity that dinner creates, specifically with McCain products, provides an intuitive yet subliminal commentary on the time that we are living in at the moment. One way I would improve this commercial is by maybe cutting down on the amount of different varieties of what family means and focusing a little more on providing a story of each family’s connection with how dinnertime allows unity. Also, I think the lighting kind of made the tone of the commercial unnecessarily gloomy when the copyrighting was incredibly uplifting and unifying, so I think production factors such as that should have been considered more in creating a form follows function.
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