EOC Week 7: Exciting Ad

When working with visual advertisement, you have various design principles you have to conquer. You have to make sure you define a focal point, have correct balance, guide the human eye, harmonize the colors, etc. The above ad is successful because it utilizes basic design principles to make them all work together wonderfully.

The Nike ad defines its unity by their use of elements. The ad appears to be very grungy, dark, and poor. When the word “poor” is said, majority of people think of the ghetto or an overall community with low income. The media made African citizens look poor and dirty; mainly because of the commercials for adopting poor children, movies, images, the fact that Africa has the highest percentage of AIDS consumers, etc. Nike made a grungy, poor, emotional setting for the ad and unified a young African boy to go with it. The colors of the ad harmonize with the setting because red symbolizes pain while black symbolizes darkness. The unification of the colors, emotional setting, and the African boy work well together.

As well as unity, the ad shows great balance. Even though there’s a human and a dog on the left side of the image and text on the right side, the ad is still balanced. There are five elements within the ad that corresponds to each other to help balance the advertisement: the African boy, the dog, the Nike symbol, the Nike’s slogan, and the perspective of the shot. The way Nike worked the five elements are phenomenal. They utilize perspective to make the African boy and dog appear smaller than usual because it’s further from the camera. By the African boy and dog being smaller, they made the Nike symbol and slogan fairly big to balance the shot between the boy and the original empty space on the right side of the image. By doing so, it completes the perspective because anything closer to the camera is bigger than what is further from the camera.

Nike did a great job with their usage of visual hierarchy. The viewer doesn’t have to ask themselves various questions about the ad. Incorporating the slogan with the image was visually a master piece. They have an African boy urinating on the wall and not caring at all. The slogan “just do it” is pretty self explanatory. Nike is basically saying to not worry about anything, just do it.

Lastly, the composition of the ad is very well done. The African boy was the focal point of the shot but to take your eyes away from one side of the ad, the designer made the Nike sign red and fairly big. The color red stands out the most out of any color. Your eyes are automatically drawn the boy, then you see a red Nike symbol which shifts your eyes to the right, and the slogan is in black because black text on a light background (or vice versa) causes a pretty big contrast. Once your eyes drift from the boy to the Nike sign, then the next destination for your eyes will be the slogan. By utilizing the boy, symbol and the slogan, they displayed good composition and made the sell.

EOC Final Project: First Thought

I’ve thought about doing a Trojan Condom advertisement. I was thinking about making a video that displays the importance of staying protected when having sexual encounters. I’ve sort of have a slogan already that I can use but it’s pretty basic. The slogan was going to be “Stay Protected.” I’m going to have to do some research and see if that slogan has been taken already. For the video, I was thinking about having various shots of males, and females, saying “I’m protected” then I appear at the end saying “I’m protected…are you?” then the slogan and the Trojan brand logo appears at the end before it shuts off.

EOC Week 6: Make 'Em Laugh

I found this commercial hilarious! I've chose this commercial because I liked how they advertised the product (Doritos). By making the little boy the "man of the house", they threw the viewers off course because it was totally unexpected. The little boy slapped the boyfriend and told him to keep his hands off of his mom. The ad was a success as soon as he said "and my Doritos." The message they delivered was to show how good Doritos are. Doritos were so good that it made the little boy protect his chips like he protected his mom. Not to mention the way the little boy looked at the boyfriend at the end to show how serious of a person he was. I believe the funniest part of the video was when the little boy slapped him. When you were first watching the video, the slap was totally uncalled for. You see a guy walking into the household and brought the lady flowers. Once she walks away to put the flowers in a vase, the boyfriend looks at her butt and gets excited about dating her. What does any boyfriend do when they see their girlfriend’s son or daughter? They try to connect and associate with them. The boyfriend tries to connect with the little boy by talking about a game then out of nowhere, he gets slapped. The way the slap sounded, the way the boyfriend looked, and the fact that it was a kid slapping a grown man, made this commercial a total success. They caught the viewers’ attention from the start by making it a current situation but they increased their attention once the slap was made. The emotional connection it made with me makes me want a bag of Doritos

EOC Week 6: Jerry Metellus

Having Jerry Metellus as a guest speaker was very beneficial! His time spent speaking to the class was far from wasted. There are many things I've learned listening to Jerry speak:

1. Everything you do in life is a lesson learned to help you succeed in the future. All your past experiences are learning experiences. If you start off working at a shoe store as a sales associate then you learned customer service, increased your people skills, how to speak in an appropriate manner as well as correct grammar. Once certain experiences are learned, you are then able to apply them to help benefit you for the future.

2. If you can't reach an audience emotionally then you won't sell. In order to successfully sell, a product or you, then you must have some sort of an attachment to the consumer. If you weren't too satisfied with the color blue and someone tried to sell you a blue car, then you probably won't buy the car. There's nothing about the product that emotionally attaches you for you to empty your pockets.

3. In the marketing world, make sure you do your research. There are many successful businesses but they didn't become successful off "luck." You must know your stuff and research. Where are the best places to market your business? Where is the highest population of your specific type of audience? Who are you trying to reach out to? All these things are incorporated when trying to market yourself, a campaign, a product, etc.

EOC Week 5: Ad Categories

The two ads above coordinate with each other. They are declarative ads because they are declaring how strong and how fast the vehicle is. They quote "It's better than technology. It's instinct."The above ad is a Red Bull advertisement. This is a fantasy ad because it gives us a personal fantasy of flying once we drink red bull. We get to enjoy our fantasy of having wings!

The above ad is for McDonalds. This is a good example of a recognition advertisement because even if I didn't say, "the above ad is for McDonalds"; you would still recognize the company just by looking at the color of the billboard and the golden arches on the McDonalds symbol (M).

EOC Week 4: Bob Isherwood, Why is he important?

Bob Isherwood was the creative director for the Saatachi & Saatachi Company. Bob knew how to work the creative side to advertising. At the time, advertisements were leaving the information era and entering the creative era. Not only did Bob sell products, but he also made emotional connections with the clients. “He believes passionately in the power of ideas to change the world and, appropriately, serves as the driving force behind the Saatchi & Saatchi Award for World Changing Ideas.” (http://www.saatchi.com/news/archive/clio_lifetime_achievement_award_for_bob_isherwood).

Bob battled the fight between relevancy and irrelevancy and constantly won. He believed that you needed good ideas to cut through the risk of advertising to make your ads relevant. Bob Isherwood says “The risk for clients isn’t being noticed. The Risk is in being irrelevant and invisible. Everyone’s fighting for attention, media owners and your competitors alike. This is an attention economy, and you need striking ideas to cut through.” (Advertising by Design, Robin Landa, pg 87).

Bob’s bright ideas for advertising brought him tons of recognition. Isherwood knew how to penetrate the consumers strictly from creativity. Bob figured he didn’t need many words to lure a client in; just a brilliant idea. Bob worked strictly from ideas and because of that, he denounced Saatachi & Saatachi from being advertisers. “…we’ve taken advertising out of our name; our focus is on building an ideas company. We see our role as transforming our clients’ brands, business, or reputation through highly valued ideas, and those may not be traditional advertising.” (Advertising by Design, Robin Landa, pg 87).

In November 2008, Bob Isherwood resigned from Saatachi & Saatachi. After bringing life into the Saatachi & Saatachi Company, he wanted to live a different life within his lifetime.

BOC Week 4: Jerry Della Femina, The Big Idea

“Della Femina himself is big, sweet and charismatic. He speaks in the Brooklyn tones of his childhood... Della Femina is definitely someone who eats the world leaf by leaf. His is one of those ‘American dream’ stories, in which a poor kid from a neighbourhood one senator described as /the breeding place for crime in the United States’ ends up owning a thriving business, a sprawling house in East Hampton, another off Park Avenue and many other fantastical things.” (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/145766a2-8fb1-11df-8df0-00144feab49a.html) He had learning disabilities and did badly at school. Jerry started his selling career by working in different retail departments, such as Macy’s, Dillard’s, etc. By the time he was 20, he got the idea of wanting to write advertising copy. He started selling ideas to small New York agencies until one agency decided to invite him in for an interview. Jerry offered to work for free, but the agent said that he had to pay a “token salary” and offered Jerry $5,200. According to Jerry, that was more than any Della Femina ever made.

Jerry Della Femina developed his persona as a business man. Jerry quotes “I invented myself” to Katie Roiphe, a Financial Times reporter, when being asked if his crazy behavior was natural or staged. He acted very wild and nutty in executive meetings and built up his reputation of being crazy. “In new business meetings, he could always tell he had clinched the account, when the executive said: ‘You are not as crazy as I thought you’d be.’” (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/145766a2-8fb1-11df-8df0-00144feab49a.html) Katie asked Jerry if Mad Men was in relation to Jerry’s business life. Jerry responded back by saying Mad Men was more dull than it actually was. According to Jerry, his advertising team made the guys in Mad Men look like bench warmers compared to them.