Adidas Ad Analysis

Advertisements are everywhere in people’s lives, and they take a wide variety of forms, but their purposes are simple: make the ads unforgettable so that people will buy the products. In “ADVERTISING’S FIFTEEN BASIC APPEALS” (1982), professor of communications Jib Fowles explains that ads usually employ emotional appeals to initiate customers’ desires to the products. As a sport shoe and clothing producer, Adidas adopted these kinds of appeals in their 2008 Beijing Olympics advertising campaign to attract clients from China (2008).

There is a basketball player Feifei Sui, a soccer player Zi Zheng, and a diver Jia Hu, who is playing sports with respect to their professions in each of the advertisements. All three of them are supported by the

For example, the slogan emphasizes that people can pursue their dreams as long as they stay together. Xu in the first ad has difficulty putting the basketball into the basket, but the people underneath her are helping push her up. Simultaneously, those people behind the basket are pressing the basket toward her. That is, they are helping her reach the height that she cannot attain by herself. In the second ad, with those people who support him, Zheng twists his body to an angle that he cannot stand still by himself, so he can score the ball. Similarly, those people in the third ad support Hu as he stands on the high platform. In order to be involved in the community, people may need to go to the same event, the Olympics, and wear the same costumes, the Adidas clothes. These ads show how Adidas market the Olympics and their products by appealing to the need for

The athletes in the advertisements are not only successful but also respected. These athletes, who are the representatives of the Olympic games, are famous in the world, which means that if other people join them, they can also be recognizable by others. Furthermore, the athletes are all standing on top of other people, which can also indicate their social status. All three athletes wear the Adidas clothes imply that these are the costumes for people with social status like them. That is, if people watch them compete in the Olympics and wear these Adidas clothes, they can also raise their status to a higher