There’re many types of advertisements. Some show us the practicality of the product, some lure us with celebrities, and others simply lure us with the idea of the “non-reality”. I’ll be elaborating on what I mean by the latter. Above you’ll see an advertisement by Motorola promoting their phone- RAZR2. The advertisement toys with our mind. As learnt in my Communications class, communication is based on perception rather on reality. I cannot agree more. Often, we overlook reality to convince ourselves of the intention of the message the sender is conveying. For example, a person you don’t like tells you that your shirt is nice, and perhaps it really is, you’ll think that she’s just trying to be hypocritcal. We perceive the message to be threatening rather than pleasant, maybe based on past experiences when she has repeatedly said things she doesn’t mean. Possibly, our conclusion comes from the fact that the message was accompanied by nonverbal communication. We selectively observe the message that we want to hear and see.
Moving back to the ad, I personally felt tempted to buy the phone after watching it because it was simply so cool. Several factors prompted me with that decision: First, the 2 main characters inside were sleek, stylish and good-looking. They played with the fact that many people judge others by their appearances. Also, they were both wearing black, which is a “cool” color, in comparison with white. “Cool” colors are often used by the media to potray a certain image. For example, if they wanted to show that a woman is sexy, they would use colors like crimson red or dark purple. On the other hand, if they wanted to show a woman is kind and sweet, they would use colors such as pastel pink, light yellow etc. The ad manages to create a cool image of the phone by carefully choosing the clothes, hair and make-up of the leads. They fit comfortably into our personal constructs of whose cool and stylish. Second, the atmosphere of the environment is selected very carefully. They took a very casual setting and made it desirably cool. The lighting is also dimmed on purpose. Cool= good-looking= nightlife= dark environments. That is how the media usually potrays the cool image and creates the environmental stimuli. However, this only works if cultures are the same. For very traditional Chinese families, black is a color only reserved for funerals. In fact, the Chinese culture does not approve of the color, black, because of its association with death. Hence, when looking at an ad like the Motorola ad, they would not perceive it as cool. Rather, they would associate the phone with death. Having said that, most of the time it works, because the media of the world is mostly Westernized by the American culture.
Thirdly, the ad has no verbal dialogue. And since non-verbal communication is receiver-based, it’s basically up to our intepretation of the ad. This is effective because it does not spell out everything for us and different people intepret differently. They effectively used oculesics to fill in the “missing dialogue”. We saw different emotions just by observing their eyes- anger, surprise etc. Motorola also used Proxemics to change their relationship and situation. Using Edward Hall’s four zones of personal space, the 2 characters toggled between social, casual and intimate distance. Within the intimate distance, they used Haptics to show perceptions of liking and arousal of senses. They touched each other alot and were generally considered intimate.
Finally, you realized that whatever I said has nothing to do with the phone, RAZR2. But that doesn’t matter, because they managed to send their message across- RAZR2 is cool. It’s strange, because reality tells us that the phone has hardly any use in the ad, other than to cut their clothes, which we also know is impossible. Yet, we willingly convince ourselves that the phone is useful and looks good after that. This ad successfully communicated with us, and consumers will feedback to it by buying the phone.
Here’s something to think about: Are all ads out to “trick” consumers by using the right advertising methods and techniques? Is it right for ads to advertise something that isn’t really what it is? Yet, advertising is all about this.
