Weetabix Rhetorical Analysis

Chuanqi Lan
AAD 251 fall 2016
11/25/2016

WEETABIX CHOCOLATE CEREAL COMMERCIAL
The question often is what makes a good advertisement? The answer is simple, it should be able to grab the attention of the targeted audience, and even better it should be able to make the targeted audience fall in love with the advertisement so that they can be persuaded to achieve the desired results. Of all the forms of advertisement, TV commercials always are the best considered effective way to pass the message to the targets. I believe that the combination of audio-visual effects can engrave the commercial into the hearts and minds of the viewers and that is why I have chosen to analyse a TV commercial by Weetabix: Weetabix Chocolate Dubstep Cereal Commercial.

This can be found on the link below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbEy98llGRU
TV commercials are like going to a masquerade party, you can never know what to expect but still you expect to not be disappointed and therefore creating an effective TV commercial calls for a lot of elements of media brought in together, such as: catchy music, a beautiful woman, loud sounds, sense of humour, and basically anything that would appeal to our human senses.
The TV commercial by Weetabix is surely something that provokes more than sense of sight. The video humbly starts with young girl in her room at her table eating a bowl of Weetabix Chocolate. The room is well lit to give the ambience of the brand which is mainly colour yellow. She gets up from her seat and she walks past her bed suddenly the dolls come to life, and in that minute everything in the room comes to life. Music starts and she is joined by her teddy bears wear they dance to very catchy dubstep music, full of energy. The video is well choreographed that you are actually drawn into believing the dolls are alive. After fifty seconds of enjoying the music and the dance, everything stops and the teddy bears drop dead on the floor. The little girls shyly curtsey to three friends, around her age, who are gawking at her with their jaws dropped. As the video ends, a voice comes on and reading what is on the screen as a teddy bear sits silently next to the box of Weetabix. In this TV commercial therefore there is music, a beautiful girl, words and visual humour.
The message of the TV commercial by Weetabix I believe is mainly aimed at children below ten years of age; this is a case where the commercial is not really aimed at the parents since they are the ones spending but at the children who will fall in love with the commercial and believe that they can be like the girl dancing.

The second reason why I believe that this commercial is aimed at children is the fact there are no any adult characters but children and the teddy bears. This picture is to make children believe that by eating the Weetabix chocolate they will be “FUELED FOR FUN” just like the little girl in the video, who amazes her friends by what she can do with just a spoon of Weetabix chocolate. It is basically the children and the dolls, integrated with energy filled music that provokes the sense of “want” in children who sees the video. The first girl who is dancing represents the child who eats the Weetabix chocolate while the lads sitting amazed represent the collection who do not indulge themselves in Weetabix, they lack the fuel to be amazing and that is why they sit in wonder. The dolls are for positive association as they create a positive feeling of belonging and familiarity to children, as they are children’s favourite and thus I believe by associating the dolls and dancing with Weetabix, every time a child thinks of music or teddy bears the first thought that will come to them is the

product.
This then brings me to the hidden message of the TV commercial.

Any child who sees this TV commercial will end up believing that Weetabix chocolate is their morning coffee and thus will only associate playing time with Weetabix. This also is the part of the commercial that I believe is controversial because if a child has put his or her mind to this mentality it means they will end up believing that they cannot do anything creative without having this product. To the children who see this commercial and live in a family that cannot offer them Weetabix will believe that they are inferior to the other children who consume it on daily basis. Therefore, this commercial only favours the rich type of children but do not consider the under privileged. Yes, even though the target audience in this TV commercial are children, it should have been created to favour all the

classes.
Still, I believe the TV commercial has been very effective in achieving its desired results which is convincing the target audience, the children, which they really need to have this product. Children are not good at reading or listening to too much conversation but they are easily entertained with good music and captivating videos. The elements used in communicating are very clear, concise and focused to the point and very entertaining in deed. The video is very interesting that it sparks interest from the moment the little girl gets up from her seat. Dancing as part of the advertisement is to have the children also get involved when they see the TV commercial coming on, as a number would find themselves leaving whatever they were doing and try to dance and the girl in the video is doing. The artworks in the background is also an element that tries to distract the target from focusing solely on the dance and familiarize that this is their bedroom where they often play with their friends, kind of like showing the territory of children. With all these put well together, this TV commercial has been effective in communicating the message it desired.
In conclusion, I believe creating a TV commercial requires a lot of work as it calls for bring the message to life, and in this TV commercial that I chose, the message has been clearly put without overdoing it. It is created in a manner that it sticks to the memory of the target, especially by involving the music and the teddy bears. These two though separate, at any point that the target audience encounter them separately, they will always be associated with the product that was being advertised in the video. This is how you realize that the message has hit the targeted audience. If the message is not delivered in a way that it sticks in the mind of the consumer, then television advertising would be considered ineffective. This would be a big loss to an organization because; television advertising is expensive. As such, the message must sink in well for there to be an effective return on investment. Otherwise, the advertiser would be better off looking to other forms of advertising that are cheaper and have a higher return on investment.