Title – Shock Treatment
Every company that has a product to sell wants to have their advertisements grab the attention of the potential buyer. Companies today are competing at high levels to come up with the advertisements that will be flashy and aggressive so consumers will become interested in their product. However, a commercial or an ad might not get the initial point across or cause many viewers to be confused when they see them. Sometimes, what the company is trying to do might offend people. Ethical lines may be walked upon so that the strong points can be presented to the consumer.
For example, Nike has introduced a new commercial that has caused quite a stir among critics. The title of this commercial is 'Beautiful';. The thirty second spot, created by longtime ad agency Wieden & Kennedy, debut nationally on October 12 during the National League Championship Series and will air into November. What this ad focuses on is a handful of athletes who have each suffered serious scarring or physical trauma while participating in their sport of choice. The spot is filmed in black-and-white, accented by a haunting rendition of the song 'You Are So Beautiful To Me,'; and featuring close-ups of injuries suffered by both elite and so-called 'everyday'; athletes. It closes with the 'Just Do It'; message followed by the Nike Swoosh.
Nike's point of the commercial is that athletes at all levels of competition at one time or another feel the pain of injury. For some, damage can be severe to the point of disfigurement. Many give up the game they love for safer persist. Others overcome seemingly insurmountable injuries to compete again, proudly bearing the surgical scars that urge them onward. What this commercial shows are somewhat disturbing shots of a shark bite, a missing fingertip, missing teeth, scars from a surgically repaired knee and a shattered eye socket. The main question is what does this have to do with Nike products and services.
Nike's ads, like many other businesses, require interpretation. Some of their commercials go on at the conscious level, some unconsciously. I have a constructive point of view in that I view meaning as interplay between text and the reader. Texts are full of indeterminacy, which require the reader's active interpretation. Thus, readers of advertisements bring with them a surface knowledge of the language as well as a set of preconceived ideas about how to relate the ads to themselves.
Advertisements are constructed to be compelling; nonetheless, not all of them reach their objective and are efficient. It is not always easy to sway your audience unless your ad has a reliable appeal. Ads often use rhetoric to form an appeal, but the appeals can be either strong or weak. When you say an ad has a strong rhetorical appeal, it consists of ethos, pathos, logos, and Kairos. Advertisers use these appeals to cohere with their audience. Nike is known to be one of the leading brands of the sports shoes and apparel. It holds a very wide sector of followers around the world. In the Nike ad, Nike uses a little boy watching other basketball players play, and as the kid keeps growing, his love for basketball keeps growing. Eventually, he
Under Armour uses pathos as well to sell their product. The way Under Armour’s ad sells is almost the same as Adidas. Under Armour’s ad creates a message that all of the greatest athletes had to work hard to get where they are now. The ad is also trying to convince the audiences that their product is what will help to be a better athlete. They also use the famous athlete to convince the audience that their products will make them become great, as well as, get their money.
Advertisements are one of many things that Americans cannot get away from. Every American sees an average of 3,000 advertisements a day; whether it’s on the television, radio, while surfing the internet, or while driving around town. Advertisements try to get consumers to buy their products by getting their attention. Most advertisements don’t have anything to do with the product itself. Every company has a different way of getting the public’s attention, but every advertisement has the same goal - to sell the product. Every advertisement tries to appeal to the audience by using ethos, pathos, and logos, while also focusing on who their audience is and the purpose of the ad. An example of this is a Charmin commercial where there is a bear who gets excited when he gets to use the toilet paper because it is so soft.
Creators want their commercials, tv shows, movies or articles to draw the audience in. They strive to get your attention using ethos, pathos and logos. A Nike commercial with LeBron James as the star did just that. The commercial about following through with your dreams and becoming big out of nowhere is spine chilling and inspiring.
This technique is commonly broken into three categories: pathos, ethos, and logos. The multi-billion-dollar company, Nike, is one of many companies that utilizes these techniques to not only sell their products, but present their values and morals as an athletic company. Nike’s, “If you let me play,” ad is a perfect example of a print advertisement that encompasses all three persuasion techniques. The ad has emotional appeal, using pathos to evoke feelings of strength and positivity in young girls and their parents urging them to embrace sports and physical activities. Ethos is a fairly simple persuasive technique for Nike to utilize due to their overwhelming success and popularity. With such a large company, it is easy to establish unspoken credibility. In order to establish further credibility, there are statistics and claims based on logical reasoning that exemplify an advertisement using logos to help the target audience understand exactly what Nike is striving to communicate. Through capitalizing on these persuasive techniques, Nike not only successfully promoted their female athletic apparel, but also educated the public on the importance of empowering young girls and encouraging them to participate in sports and physical activities for the overall betterment of their lives mentally, physically, and
This advertisement shows us logos by making people think about domestic violence. When you look at the big boot, obviously worn by a man is stepping on top of a small women’s shoe, it automatically makes you think about domestic violence. As quoted, “When he controls your life, it’s no longer your life.” This quote is powerful and directly speaks to the women who are in controlling abusive relationships. It also speaks to people who know someone who is being abused and that they should speak out. It pulls you into the sad scene with the dark lighting all around almost making it seem suffocating, which causes the small woman’s shoe to seem unimportant, compared to the big muddy boot that is trapping it. It logically makes someone
The developmental stages of a successful campaign help to establish the product in the audience’s mind or consciousness. The stages of the Nike campaign can be described by using the Yale Five-Stage Developmental Model. Yale researchers developed this model while observing the growth of national identity. The first stage of this model is identification. Our text states that “Many products and causes develop a graphic symbol or logotype to create identification in the audience’s mind” (p. 264, Larson). The logo Nike is most famous for is “The Swoosh.” This is the term given to the symbol of winged victory that appears on Nike products. “The design of the swoosh logo was inspired by the wing from the Greek goddess Nike” (p. 3, http://shrike.depaul.edu /~mcoscino/word.html). The Nike logo’s presence can be noted in almost every aspect of the athletic world.
The Jordan Brand attempts to communicate to its audience that to become legendary they need to understand that it is not about the shoes, but what it is you do in them. They do this by showing a number of star athletes performing when they were in college and high school to the narrator’s (Michael Jordan) words. This paper hypothesizes how it is the Jordan Brand attempts to bring their audience to the shared rhetorical vision of becoming legendary, through fantasy themes in their ad "It’s Not About the Shoes".
“Worth the Wait” is a very emotional advertisement produced by Nike. The advertisement shows the excitement behind Cleveland sports fans when they are finally able to see their team win a championship. The fans knew being able to see this happen would be worth the wait, and it was. Many of them had been waiting their whole life to see what they only thought was a dream finally come
Research can be defined as a systematic method through which new knowledge is discovered. No matter what topic is being studied or analyzed, the value of research lies in how well it is designed and carried out. There are several types of research which include: surveys, interviews, content analysis and focus groups. As an advertiser it is important not only to be aware of your surroundings, but what goes on in people’s minds. Individuals’ needs and wants are not only essential but the base of an advertisement’s success. The purpose of this essay is to conduct my own research about a company that has transcended barriers such as race, disabilities, and gender with a phrase that has sparked interest, innovation and motivation all over the world: “Just Do It”. Since the 1980’s Nike has not only become one of the leading sports brands, but a corporation that learned just how to convey a message and reach their target consumers through successful advertisement. The question is: What is portrayed through Nike’s advertisement and slogans? How has this helped sales, and how far has advertisement pushed its success? The objective of this research paper is to find and understand in-depth answers to these questions that bring a
They attempt to choose athletes who they want to reflect their brand, they are achievers, winner, determined and accomplishment orientated, which is what they also encourage their consumer to be. Another important source for brand equity from Nike is the high perceived quality of their products not only by athletes but the public as well. Although most consumers won’t be using their Nike products for high level athletic performance, Nike products are always designed to be able to be used with that
Nike attempts to convey themselves as an ethical and loyal company within their print advertising, by contributing multiple factors to appeal to their customer base by using tactics such as sexual appeal and tugging at people’s hearts with emotion. While Nike does not appear to be unethical, some of the techniques they use are questionable to the media and the public. When it comes down to how Nike evaluates their print advertising, they should think more so about who is endorsing their products and showing a value in character and overall community leader, then how athletic the athlete is to the public. Nike is not an unethically advertiser, but a questionable judge of character with the athletes they plan to endorse their products.
This is the best way by which Nike has used to convey its significance, because the target audience appreciates and relates to their idols. Nike uses inspirational stories that are related to sports and fitness to build its communication. They use pictures or verbally transmitted to deliver their story. Nike main aim is to broadcast as excitement and affection. For this sometimes Nike provides advertisements that are related to emotion that will reach the target audience. Nike use to print advertisement which performs the individualism of women, which helps them to convey
In order to generate sales, marketers often promote aggressively and uniquely, unfortunately, not all marketing advertisements are done ethically. Companies around the globe spend billions of dollars to promote new products and services and advertising is one of the key tools to communicate with consumers. Conversely, some methods that marketers use to produce advertisements and to generate sales is deceptive and unethical. Ethical issues concern in marketing has always been noted in marketing practice. According to Prothero (2008), ethics itself has a profound, varied and rich past. It emphasizes on questions of right and wrong or good and bad.
In order to successfully grasp women’s attention, they shifted their branding and narrative process to targeting “feminine sensitivity” in order to gain a better appeal to women. In 1990, Nike executives created a team of employees together with Wieden and Kennedy, Nike’s advertising agency and revolutionised its strategy by focusing on the issues that “really matter to women”. What they did was shifting the way they appeal to women’s bodily consciousness through guilt to presenting the products not as commodity, but as concepts; the brand as experience and lifestyle. In the case of Nike’s advertisement, it referred to the “empathy/dialogue” campaign. By doing this, Nike “addressed athletics as a personal experience of growth rather than a path to glory and physical power” (Lucas 152) and eventually managed to corner the women’s market. Later in the late 1990s which is the rise of second-wave feminism, the movement sought to liberate women from constraining gender roles and gender discrimination of the patriarchal culture in which they lived and also railed for images, especially in advertising, that portrayed women as more than housewives and positioned them as equals to men. This is because “feminists had identified advertising as one of the key sites for the production of sexist imagery. Throughout the subsequent decades women voiced their anger about being treated like objects to be visually consumed.” (Gill 83) Hence, marketers have acknowledged that simply empathise with women is not enough and as a result, according to Cole and Hribar, Nike had to transform its image to a “good public citizen” (347-369). Nike’s co-founder, Bill Knight, specifies that he wants Nike to be thought of as a company with a “soul that recognises the value in human beings” and this idea of kindness gave birth the ad campaign “If you let me play”. The ad campaign