I appreciate a great commercial. If I’m going to have to sit through a commercial I didn’t intend on watching it might as well be entertaining. One commercial I found particularly funny is the Heineken – “Walk-in Fridge” – commercial. I can’t remember when I saw it for the first time, but I found it again on YouTube. The ad is only thirty seconds long, but very effective. In this commercial you see a woman giving her friends a tour of an upscale apartment, for what I’m assuming is a house-warming party. The woman leads her friends to a luxurious walk-in closet. The women begin screaming with excitement, jumping around and hugging each other. At that time you hear a group of men shouting as well. Then you see the man’s walk-in closet. It is a giant beer cooler full of Heineken. The beer is arranged nicely like shoes in a glamorous closet. There is a thick fog rising from the floor but not covering all the delicious beer lining the closet shelves. The men are jumping up and down yelling with joy at the sight of it.
At first glance I would think this ad is using the “snob-appeal” approach. They are definitely a well-to-do couple and the party does look high scale. But given a little more thought I think this ad touches on “plain-folks appeal” because what guy doesn’t want a closet full of beer. It also uses the “bandwagon effect” in the way that there’s a group of “cool” guys who all love Heineken. I don’t see that this ad uses Association Principle but I do see a bit of Myth in it though, unless you’ve got a surplus of money to throw around this isn’t something many people are actually going to have.
This ad is part of a string of funny commercials by Heineken. In another one a man drops a crate of Heineken and you see people all over the world feeling sadness even though they didn’t see it, very funny. Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHDT1CbI-74&feature=related. These ads are targeted for your average to well off 30 year old males. There is a hint of sexism involved, why is it assumed that the women are only interested in the clothes in her closet and not the tasty beverages in the man’s domain.
Even though I would not like to think I’m under the advertising influence, this does make me want to crack open an ice cold Heineken (too bad its only 8am). I think these ads are extremely memorable and highly effective on their target audience. Whoever Heineken has hired to put together this campaign has done particularly well. Writing this blog made me think more about what types of advertising works well with different demographs of people. One thing that always gets me is humor. The type of commercials I would talk about among friends are almost always funny. Unless I missed it, I didn't see anything in ch. 11 - Media and Culture - about humor. I think funny commercials are the most talked about, therefore the most memorable. Humor is universal. You can reach out to a broad audience with it. But I think these Heineken ads were specifically aimed towards men. I havn't noticed many funny commercials aimed specifically towards women. I just did a search on google for "funny women's commercials." On the front page there were two videos, one of them was funny but innapropriate for this blog, and the other was really aimed towards men. After that I did a search for "funny men's commercials." I came up with four funny commercials (including this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cMOc6Pwl3Y). Why aren't there as many funny commercials for women? Most the women I know enjoy a good laugh as much as I do.
