Thursday, May 20, 2010

Advertisement and me







The type of advertising i find most successful is fast food advertising, I'm a bit of a fast food addict, and find it quite difficult to resist a burger. I like to put this down to the good advertisements these places have. I havn't personally seen the image at the top, but i think it is a good example of a successful add.

I think that these sorts of adds have become such a part of our lives people just tend to become unaware of them. Mcdonalds is everywhere, you just simply can't escape it. It infiltrates your city, your home, your work, your bus, your computer, your everything. The snippet we watched from the film They Live by John Carpenter relates to this concept very well.

I feel like that all the time (minus the glasses). Everything in the city is telling you something or wants something from you. I must have a whole barrage of filters up to prevent my mind from overloading (I get this burning mental image of the guy who put up yellow paper/plastic all over the adds in the city when i think of this, too bad i can't remember his name). I like to think in the movie my filters are his glasses, and this makes me think is that really a good way of advertising? If i'm abel to filter out such things, would less adds be more? would i notice them more if they were harder to see and not so in your face?

One thing that draws me to this add is how good the burgers actually look. No burger looks that good when you receive it, but even if you aren't hungry most people won't find it hard to crave a burger when they see one so made up. Another technique used by Mcdonald's here is their logo, sitting on top of an intense red background the bright golden arches seem inviting and quite happy. People who eat this food will start to associate this image with the good feeling of chowing down on one of these burgers.

The good thing about this day and age is that people are striving to be aware of all the little tricks that are being played on them. So most of us already know about Mcdonalds, add campaigns, and how companies are quite deceptive to get you to have and then want their product.

People who are aware of this quite like to make images and comment about it. Taking an original promo image and changing it to tell a different (most often opposite or truthful) statement is popular for young designers and artists, here is just a gaggle of images iv'e found on google. In return to these sorts of images I think Macas has wizened up, and is probably a little bit sick of being taken the piss out of. The link below is to a website that has a few new and creative adds by Mcdonalds. I actually quite like some of these images and think they are really clever, I also think it will be a lot harder for haters to manipulate these images to put Mcdonalds down.

I don't want it to sound like I am for or against fast food here, I just think it is interesting how add campaigns can change depending on the publics perspective of that company.

http://www.inewidea.com/2010/01/11/17764.html



1 comment:

  1. Thanks Max. In terms of "remembering names" from the lecture, why not just consult your slide list, or look on Emit? You should be taking notes throughout class...

    TX

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