2012年4月8日星期日

Short Essay #2


Dayuan Zhao
WRIT-1133-27 MWF 12-2
Prof. Eric Leake
04/06/12


Food Advertisements’ Compare and analysis
            Admittedly, advertising is the most common way to promote productions; food advertising is not an exception. Every food company want to appeal their specific consumers, so they always use suited design and rhetorical function to “conquer the field”. I want to compare two commercials to explain different audiences who decide commercial’s form.
           First, I want to describe is Subway hot dog’s commercial. Everybody knows Subway’s hot dog is very cheap. Every class of people can eat a big hot dog when they are hungry, and they don’t need to concerns about price. Another characteristic about Subway’s hot dog is the size. Even a one foot long hot dog is just five dollars. In this commercial’s beginning part, a spread hand is appears on the screen, that means five dollars. Then some characters like a traffic police, an airline stewardess, a monster and a weather woman are gesticulate one foot long. That means you can get a one foot long hot dog and just need to pay five dollars. In the end part of this commercial, it show us the process to make a hot dog, some fresh vegetables and meats be putted in to the fresh baked bread and the voice-over say “five dollars, any regular foot-long, limited time only.”
 Obviously, this advertisement’s audience is the lower class and students. The food cultures and values this commercial want to emerge is the typical American food value, which is fast and fresh. But what I want to talk about is this commercial is working very well on the appeal their audiences. The core of this commercial is the price of hot dog. Nobody can resist the low price like five dollars. The group of people who will pay attention to Subway’s commercial cannot own tones of money, so I think this is a good example of catch audience’s point.

The second advertisement I want to talk about is a very tasty seafood restaurant – Red lobster. This restaurant is much more expensive than Subway. Seafood is a kind of upmarket eating material, so the commercial of this restaurant has to show the difference to the fast food advertisement.
In the beginning of this commercial, a fish woman is talking about the white house near the ocean, the rocky shore, and the most importantly is the lobster. The tastiest, the sweetest, and the freshest lobster is only thing she catches. Then some fabulous meals are appearing in the screen. The over-voice is introducing the twelve newest meals in this restaurant, such as “Lobster Lover’s Dream” and “Maine Lobster and Shrimp Trio.” In the last part, the core slogan of this restaurant is appearing – “Sea Food Differently.”
In this commercial, no any prices are being showed; the characteristic they want to show is their foods are the tastiest, sweetest, and freshest. Because the audience is different, the rhetorical situation in this advertisement is totally different with Subway’s advertisement. Subway’s advertisement it trying to tell customers “our price is very low.” Red lobster’s advertisement is trying to tell costumers “we are providing the best sea food.” All the differences are born of the different target of the commercial. Hot dog is kind of like working class’s daily food, but even an upper class family still cannot afford lobster’s price if they eat it every day. Because of this reason, different Emphases in the commercial are exist. Like the article “Class Distinctions in Potato Chip Advertising” (written by Freedman and Jurafsky) saying, “The fact that expensive chip advertising is full of comparison (less fat, finest potatoes) and negation (not, no, never, don’t, won’t) suggests that at least one important goal of the image of upper-class food tastes promulgated by food advertising in contemporary America is to distance the upper classes from lower socioeconomic classes and their tastes.” (53) I think restaurant’s commercial is same as chips’.

In short, those two commercials can reflect two kinds of American life style. First one is fast and cheap first, like the Subway’s value. Another one is make everything to best. Like Red lobster’s value. We cannot say which one is right and which one is wrong, every kind of style have their reason to exist. This diversity make our life more colorful, and gustation more joyful.


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