It’s easy to relate Klein’s article about “Superbrands” to the commercials displayed during the Super Bowl. With a $4.5 million price tag per 30 second commercial, it’s obvious that only the most profitable, wealthy companies are going to be advertising during the most watched television show in US history. These huge corporations have the advantage of an enormous marketing budget to reach such an enormous captive audience. But for me, the most interesting way to view these companies is not by studying how they beat out competitors or how large their distribution centers are. What piques my interest is how these commercials become texts themselves, not just an intertext telling us to purchase a product. I find it fascinating how companies use these advertisements to position themselves in terms of branding.
Gray explains that “branding is about surrounding a product with layers of symbolism” (Gray, 311) to give the product more value. The ideologies presented in commercials for products stem way beyond the use or function of the product itself. For example, Coca Cola’s #MakeItHappy commercial addresses the increasing aggression on the internet. They display hateful messages that were received by people morphing into positive ones, all due to Coca Cola spilling on internet servers everywhere. While this is obviously fictional, Coca Cola is creating an association between their soft drink and that warm, fuzzy feeling one may have gotten from the commercial. This could be considered their brand identity.
This brand identity Coca Cola presented in the aforementioned advertisement is not the first time the company adopted the theme of “happiness” to promote their product. This past holiday season, Coca Cola started the ad campaign “Make Someone Happy”, featuring Santa Claus. Yet another example is their “open happiness” campaign of 2009. This ideology that Coca Cola has aligned itself with is not directly connected to buying their product, which attracts many viewers. This can be considered their “textual hook” that speaks to audiences and differentiates itself from other promotions, as Gray speaks about. But even though they are not explicitly telling us to buy their soda, they are making their brand associated with the idea of happiness, which has become almost like their trademark. This is something that may be even more valuable.
Another consistently popular advertising campaign is what many affectionately refer to as the “Budweiser Puppy”. These incredibly popular advertisements follow the adventures of an adorable puppy and its horse best friend, and are constantly tugging on America’s heartstrings and leaving audiences teary-eyed. Many people, myself included, love to watch these adorable commercials. In order for commercials to engage audiences, they “will need to have constructed a series of meanings, themes, and/ or characters to which the audience responds” (Gray, 309). The puppy and horse are characters to root for, making this Budweiser commercial more than just a commercial.
When viewing Super Bowl ads from a media studies perspective, the intrigue does not stem from finding out how funny or witty or upsetting an advertisement is. When critically viewing commercials with Gray in mind, we can see more deeply what makes an advertisement successful or not, and how important it is to analyze them as texts of their own.
Sydney Megan Jow says
I found this post intriguing and very on point. The example of Coca Cola perfectly represents how a company can use the power of branding to aid its success. Since the beginning of its advertisement run, Coca Cola has instilled in its consumers that it is a product marking good times, entertainment, and wholesome American values. Take its latest campaign for instance, the firm printed different common names or positive words on their cans as part of their “Share a Coke” campaign, this particular marketing scheme effectively boosted US sales for the first time in a decade.
I find it very interesting, as someone who strongly dislikes Coca Cola — I see the drink as a sugary, brown, syrup that when it comes down to it — is pretty bad for you. Most people are well aware of this, but because of Coca Cola’s ingenious promotional skills consumers continue to associate the unhealthy carbonated drink with feel-good happy times. This just goes to show how powerful branding can be!
mjc5742 says
A completely agree that only very large companies are able to pay for advertising space during the super bowl. The price tag is definitely a barrier to entry that we could probably have a whole separate discussion on.
I thought issuing the example of the coke commercial was very a very good choice in illustrating your point. Coke has done a very good job over the years at creating a warm fuzzy feeling with their commercials, and I’m sure that they can credit quite a bit of their sales to how consumers feel towards their company overall. Coke is a great example of creating an alternative meaning to their product since they have been doing this in their ads since they started advertising the drink.
This definitely goes the same for the Budweiser commercials as well.
Another commercial that came to mind when I was reading your post was the new pay with love McDonalds campaign that was aired during the super bowl this year as well.
When we look at these commercials critically it is easy to see the motives behind the companies that produce them.