Altoids: Wintergreen Ad Analysis Essay

Every year, Americans spend billions on oral hygiene products to cover up the smell of foul breath. A popular product they tend to buy for this problem is Altoids mints. The marketing strategies used in their ads are what helps them to sell their product. With the “Altoids: Wintergreen” ad, they are able to make the viewer feel what it is like to eat one of the mints, just by looking at it. By using color psychology, and logos, the “Altoids: Wintergreen” ad is able emphasize the quality of their mints, making people with unpleasant breath choose them over other brands.
The colors used in the ad help to establish the sense of coldness you get from the mints. David Straker (2006) says according to the meaning of color, “the more towards the blue/purple end of the spectrum you go, the colder it gets.” The mint green color in the background is considered to be a “cool color,” which would trick our brain into corresponding it with coldness. With the red tagline, you can associate the color with Christmas, which happens in winter. The red also contrasts against the green, making the “ALTOIDS WINTERGREEN” stand out, just like their “curiously strong mints.”

The image of the little boy adds to the theme of winter as well.

The choice of wardrobe shows that he is cold while holding the mints in his hand. The way his tongue sticks to the mints show how “strong” they really are, just like the way your tongue would get stuck to a pole that’s incredibly cold. He also might give a sense of nostalgia to anyone who has played in the snow as a child. This is where Altoid’s logos approach comes into play. Logos is the appeal to logic. It would be logical for the little boy to appear as cold if their mints are cold. The same idea is applied with the name of their mints being

“Wintergreen.”
“Between 35 and 45 percent of the people in the world have some level of bad breath,” says the Bad Breath Institute (2012). The Bad Breath Institute (2012) also said that “In a survey of 5,000 singles conducted by Match.com, 43% said fresh breath matter the most before a date.” These people would most likely be the ones attracted to this ad. Altoids is able to convince these people into buying their mints, because of how strong they are able to make them seem. This quality is obviously something someone would be looking for when trying to cure foul breath fast, like when you are on a date. By emphasizing how strong their Wintergreen mints are, they already have a better chance at selling their products than other brands.
Through the use of color and logos, the Altoids: Wintergreen ad is able to appeal to people looking for strong mints to cure their foul breath. Viewers may not realize that the ad is using these qualities to convince them how great the mints are.