Blog Post About "The Persuaders"

In the video titled, "The Persuaders" that I watched along with all of my classmates, I found topics such as, the techniques of creating an ethos in advertisements, and narrow casting, interesting. In the video, they used Cheerios as an example for the ethos that companies create. The advertisement that they showed portrayed a baby and a grandma telling it a story with Cheerios. By using this heartwarming moment along with Cheerios, people associate Cheerios with cute moments like this. Cheerios really has nothing to do with a grandma telling her grandchild stories, but since the brand name was put in the video, people think of this when they buy their cereal. In the video, they also talked about how some advertisements are unclear about the product their selling and the risk that this can be to companies. They made an example out of the airline "Song" and the confusion that their advertisements created. When trying to create an ethos, companies sometimes try too hard to add meaning to their product, that the advertisement has little o no correlation with what it is trying to sell. According to Mr. Maxwell, "Song" ended up going out of business. This further proves that companies take huge risks, especially when they are advertising a new product that people don't already know about, when they don't explicitly state what the product is that they are selling. I found it interesting that companies can make it seem as if consumers are part of a special tribe if they have products from specific name brands. If you think about it, all the "hip" teens that wear Nike or Adidas, are kind of like a tribe because they all wear the same kinds of things. Because these products are so desirable in order for people to fit into tribes, name brands like Nike can hike up their prices and make their products sell for much more money than generic brands. In the video, they also talk about narrow casting and how companies use data about individuals to sell products to specific demographics. I found it especially interesting that companies can find ways to hide advertisements from some demographics while explicitly displaying them to others. They use voting season as an example of this. Potential voters are shown statistics and advertisement about the candidates based on what demographic that they fit into. Overall, the video, "The persuaders" was very insightful about advertising techniques.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/persuaders/