Over Spring Break I was enjoying a lovely card game, called Speed, with my mom in the kitchen when a song came into my head. There was no particular reason that this song came into my head, it just, literally, popped into my head. When this song popped into my head I immediately realized it was a song from a mini van commercial and laughed realizing that I remember it being kind of funny. Of course, my mom would ask why I randomly laughed. I then proceeded to tell her that it was partially because I just beat her for the thousandth time in Speed, but mostly because I wanted to show her this commercial. So I walked into the computer room and showed her.
I know that it is not the funniest commercial ever made, but I still find it somewhat entertaining that a man sees a mini van as an attractive vehicle for himself. Usually I think of it as a soccer mom vehicle, but who says I am the one to judge?
Lets get down to the point of the mini van, shall we? There are two forms of media here in this little scenario that I would like to show you. One being the advertisement, and the second being word-of-mouth. Now normally I do not think that word-of-mouth is considered an actual method used by the media to try to get people to buy their product, but it seems to function with every other method in getting the consumer's attention.
So let's start with the first one, the actual advertisement. The advertisers want the consumer's money and will do anything to learn what the consumer wants, and how to get the consumer's attention. In commercials and other advertisements there are many methods to doing this, such as sex appeal, humor, intelligence, and the list goes on. In this particular commercial the advertisers went with a little bit of humor. This gets the consumers' attention, and makes them laugh a little, which is always good. If they can make the consumer happy that is always a plus.
Now, the second point, word-of-mouth, is a big one and is probably the biggest part of an advertisement. I think advertisers know that this will happen when they put out an advertisement. The advertisers' jobs are to put the ad out for the world to see and influence the world to buy their products. Then the job of the people is to spread word about the product. Word-of-mouth could mean telling people that you know how great a product is and that they should buy it, or how horrible the product is and to never waste money on it. In my little scenario with my mom over spring break, the word-of-mouth would be showing her the commercial that had popped in my head, and in return wanting to show her how funny I thought it was.
This whole process happens with all media. It is kind of like the “circle of life” for the media. The media puts something out there for the public to see, the public passes the information on to their neighbor, the person and their neighbor may like the product or they could absolutely hate it, and then that feedback of the consumer goes back to the media where they try to do something with all of that information to make it better for the next round.
It is a never-ending process.
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