Advertising: It's Always Sunny On E !

Power of Advertising For the three hours I watched television, on a Friday night, I flipped to a total of 3 different channels with unique commercials and persuasion techniques. I watched It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia at 8 PM on FX, Keeping Up with the Kardashians on E!, at 9 PM and Criminal Minds at 10 PM on CBS. I specifically picked these 3 channels because I hypothesized that what I would see on FX would be more male-centered ads, E! commercials would be more geared toward women, and that CBS would be relatively neutral, with a mix of both. For the most part, I was correct based on the advertisements shown in the time slots I watched them on. In general, the commercials shown on each network were similar to one another. On FX, the

On FX, the majority of commercials used the appeal of saving money, and desire to adventure and have fun. Among all the food products and drinks, the companies were selling the idea of a more adventurous lifestyle more than anything. On E! The primary appeal coincided with the primary ads, for makeup, they sold the desire to be beautiful. Also, E! had a much higher probability of using a celebrity to speak on their product. This is thought provoking, because it is proven that everyone, regardless of gender, responds more positively to messages being communicated by attractive people. But, only on E! were these beautiful celebrities utilized the most. On CBS, there were no specific commercials, or persuasion techniques that appeared more consistently than the others. There was a commercial for almost every type of appeal. I think that this can be made sense of by understanding that CBS doesn't do much niche marketing, as they’re a huge broadcasting company. The viewers of most of their programming can’t be lumped into a gender, age, or race group. For example, there was heart attack medicine, seemingly geared toward older people. There was also a 7 Up commercial, that used 2 Chains, a rapper more popular with young people, but the commercial itself featured a middle aged

Admittedly, this is probably because I am the target audience for these types of commercials. I recalled the commercial better when I remembered Jennifer Lopez was in it. I even was more interested in the vaseline commercial, because it was narrated by Viola Davis, which was noted at the bottom of the screen. I don’t wear makeup, but if I did, I’m fairly certain I would just go with whatever brand Kerry Washington endorses. On the other hand, I can see how the primary appeals on FX, (money saving and adventure) would work best for their target audience. With CBS, almost all commercials were not as memorable as a whole. This might be because of their lack of consistency of both product types and