Advertisement Comparison

Advertising is the chief profitable industry in the United States today. Billboards, signs, magazines, newspapers, radios, televisions, and computers are just some of the places where advertisements are found. At the heart of any one company’s advertising campaign is the consumer. The consumer has complete control of their own money and can choose to buy any product or service they desire. Advertising does not control the consumers on what they buy. It only informs them on what they can buy. This is known as consumer sovereignty. It is the responsibility of the company to develop an advertising campaign that generates a demand for their product or service. A company usually promotes a product or service by means of appealing to a particular group in society. For example, an advertisement’s target audience could be men between the ages of 25 and 40 or children between the ages of 5 and 10. There are basic needs that all of us, as humans, share and the advertisement agencies incorporate them into their ads. The most dominant needs include sex, affiliation, nurture, guidance, aggression, achievement, dominance, prominence, and attention. An advertisement can appeal to one or more of these needs through the use of colors, words, expressions, and statures illustrated in the ad. A comparison of two advertisements for the same product, but different brand names, will allow one to better understand how a company uses different human needs to sell their product. Two coffee ads, one for Café Vienna and one for Millstone, will be compared to determine the dominant strategy that each uses to create a desire to buy. The ad for Café Vienna coffee uses the need for guidance to appeal to middle age coffee drinkers. In contrast, the need for achievement is what attracts middle age coffee drinkers to Millstone brand coffee.

The colors observed in the coffee ads are supportive of the individual needs they appeal to. The Café Vienna ad has a color fade effect to it. It starts with dark black and deep orange and fades to a light yellow almost white in the center. This supports the need for guidance because the use of color gives the person reading it a sense that they are being lead towards the light at the end of a tunnel. On the other hand, the bright reds, blues, whites, and yellows found in the Millstone ad support the need for achievement. The...

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...nd coffees. Although these ads were for the same product, the companies involved used very different strategies to lure consumers to their product. The Café Vienna advertisement appealed to our need for guidance, while the Millstone ad appealed to our need for achievement. Each advertisement appealed to a human need through the use of colors, words, expressions, and illustrations. All advertisements are planned out and target a specific group in society. The target audience for the coffee ads were middle age men or women who drink coffee. Advertisements effect every person everywhere and reflect the attitude of our society. That is why we must understand the concepts behind advertising. No one can predict what new forms advertising may take in the future. But the rapidly increasing cost of acquiring new customers makes one thing certain. Advertisers will seek to hold onto current customers by forming closer relationships with them and by tailoring products, services, and advertising messages to meet their individual needs. So while advertising will continue to encourage people to consume, it will also help provide them with products and services more likely to satisfy their needs.