In this post I will be analysing and comparing two retro television adverts and two modern television adverts.
First off I will be analysing the vintage Burger King advert advertisement.
This advert is reported to have been created in the 60’s and seems to be a successful advertisement for Burger King, simple enough and I believe it would work in today’s society. The advert starts off with Burger King’s mascot “The Burger King” walking into the establishment with a group of children. It is also significant because the children and The King are drawn as the same height. This is to appeal to the younger audience, to show them the The King is one of them. An interesting observation is that one of the children are drawn as black suggesting the Burger King were advertising to the minorities in a time where segregation was ripe.
The Burger King is seen belittling a magician worker at Burger King, much to the amusement of the children, reinforcing the fact that the Burger King is on the kids side. The magician then turns the The King into various wrong food objects, which would be humorous to small children. The advert then finishes with the slogan “Where kids are king”. This links back in with The King looking like a small child a being relatable to the Burger King audience.
I will be analysing the 70’s Best Friends McDonalds advert.
In this advert McDonalds aren’t really selling anything, but instead are trying to build their brand. The advert is a montage of clips of two girls sharing various best friend moments. There are ups and downs but they are best friends throughout the entirety of the advertisement. Although McDonalds show very little food in the advert, they do not have to as by the 70’s the public were familiar with McDonalds. It is very significant that McDonalds decided to choose to girls instead of two boys. Girls generally show much more affection to one another than boys, also the audience that I believe McDonalds were aiming at were Moms. Almost everyone has had an intimate friendship like that with someone and they are targeting Moms because they are traditionally the ones in charge of taking care of the family’s food. The music in the background keeps the piece light-hearted and so it never feels like we are intruding on the bond between these two children
The first modern advert I will be looking at the Peugeot 208 car advert “Gary’s Cat”.
When I first saw this advert, I thought it was a good advert. Using the technique of humour effectively and getting their unique selling point of 3 years car insurance, warranty, car tax and other things. However this advert has received a large amount of criticism from viewers on Youtube.
The advert is fairly simple, however is extremely effective. The advert starts with a very gloomy man staring at a family playing with a cat. We are then told that this man, Gary, has lost his cat and is looking for it. We are then told “Hang on, you don’t know Gary do you? Well, don’t worry then, you can forget about things that don’t effect you.”, just like their new offer on the Peugeot 208 with 3 years of extras free. It’s this line here that has most people up in arms at the advert.
The advert, uploaded to Youtube on the 20th of December, has generally been received quite badly on the site, claiming that the message of the advert not to care about things that don’t effect you is a “disgusting’ message to send. Although that is a very interesting interpretation of the advert, I don’t believe it is the interpretation of the advert that the director intended. I believe that the message of the advert is that you don’t need to worry about other things with the product, we’ve already done it for you.
Since the backlash that Peugeot received on their advert, they have tweaked the words, removing “You can forget about things that don’t effect you”.
Gary is shown as quite a pathetic man in the advert, which only increases the level of humour found within the advert. Cats are often seen as a pet for lonely women, and that a dog would be more suitable for men, showing Gary as not only having a cat, but having lost a cat, showing a very pathetic middle-aged male. This is funny because it is something that surprises you, something that you are not expecting. Another thing that adds to Gary coming off as pathetic as he does is the fact that it is heavily raining whilst he is searching for his cat. This says to the audience that Gary really doesn’t have anything else to be doing apart from looking out for his cat.
The juxtaposition of the two clips is another comedic device. We cut from the gloomy world of Gary and his cat, to the “sunshine and rainbows” world of the Peugeot 208. The narrator also tells us to forget about Gary and his cat, reaffirming Gary’s insignificance in life. The shot that we cut to after Gary is one of two people laughing, suggesting that they are laughing at Gary. The “sunshine and rainbows” world of the Peugeot 208 is used to suggest to the audience that everything is better when you have a peugeot 208. It’s very hard to find people that don’t like The Sun or rainbows.
The next advert I will be analysing is the “Epic MoneySupermarket” advert featuring Charlie Richmond.
MoneySupermarket is a website dedicated to finding people the best savings on all of their household bills, something that is really difficult to sell. The MoneySupermarket advertising strategy at the moment is showing fictional people who have saved money on their car insurance going on to be cool or feel “epic” as they say. MoneySupermarket are trying to show the immense feeling you get when you save money with them through this series of short stories.
The advert is fairly simple, Alan saves money with MoneySupermarket and then turns into an “epic” astronaut. Although this sounds simple, the way the advert is constructed is highly complex. Firstly, Alan is shown as your everyday Joe Bloggs. He is seen getting out of a normal car, with a normal family, wearing normal clothes, looking like a normal guy. The reason I believe they chose a man is because the male in the household is traditionally the breadwinner, and if the family has little or no cash it is down to him to sort it out. He is also shown as this completely normal person so that MoneySupermarket’s target audience can relate to it.
The advert then transforms into this “epic” portrayal of an astronaut space launch. The advert changes into this very cinematic piece, with letterboxing slowly drifting in and the implementation of some slow-motion editing. This is to give the audience a feeling of “epic”, which is why they used astronauts. The protagonist “Alan” is then seen to be accepted by the astronauts and starts showboating his “epicness”. The narrator then says “Alan, you’re so Money Supermarket”. This is to tie the feeling of epic with Money Supermarket again, suggesting to the audience that Alan does these epic things because of money supermarket.
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