Advertisement Commonplace

A successful commonplace used by the advertisement for the “Alaskan Regional Hospital” was a play on the maxim “bigger is better.” The advertisement used a spin on the maxim by saying that “Big is good. Better is better.” This play on the saying illustrates the disagreement with the saying itself, while also portraying them as better than their competition despite being smaller in size.  The persuasiveness of the advertisement works well by taking the well known maxim and flipping it on its head to illustrate a smaller but better healthcare service. In modern society, especially in America, people often go out of their way to get larger things even if they are of lower quality. This is especially true in the food we eat as a society these days, and the advertisement also took advantage of that by illustrating their point by using a fruit as part of their analogy. As a consumer, especially those who are looking for healthcare, quality is much more important than the mere size of something, and the advertisement instills a certain doubt in its readers by questioning whether or not the bigger hospital or healthcare provider is truly better solely because it is more successful or “bigger.” It’s been a common trait for humans of both the past and present to want to fit in and find conformity in their lives. This often has its own place in our consumeristic society today by singling out those who do not buy the same products, or shaming those who buy from different brands. The obvious choice for conformity is to simply choose the most popular option, or the “bigger” one, even if it may not be as high quality as the one you may actually want to choose. The advertisement itself helps to flip that narrative to empower people to choose the better product based on quality and not “size.”