CHOSEN ADVERT - Coca-cola Christmas Commercial.
Firstly, the Coca-Cola Corporation is one of the driving
forces of consumerism, with an extensive multi-national advertising campaign
the company influences a huge worldwide audience on a daily basis. The
extensive communication networks Coke have established help promote their
products to audiences across the globe, especially appealing to families and
young children. This target audience is especially shocking when you look at
the unhealthy contents of the product and the associated health disadvantages,
which can include in some serious cases diabetes and heart problems. Despite
this, you never see this information advertised with the same coverage and
importance as the TV commercials and billboard advertisements promoting the
products, as this could affect the most important thing of all, the company
profit.
The Coca-Cola Corporation has been using clever advertising
techniques to create a false desire for their products since as early as the
1800’s. Above is a more recent example, the renowned Coke Christmas TV
commercial. Despite the fact that a large window of time has passed the company
still utilizes classic means of manipulation to promote their products to
modern consumer society. The following passage dissects the definitive seasonal
coke advertisement, highlighting the publicity methods used to create the
desire for the products consumption.
In the 1920’s Coca-Cola started their Christmas advertising
campaign by placing illustrations of Santa-clause in magazines such as ‘The
Saturday Evening Post’. Essentially the company started using Christmas, one the
most globally celebrated holidays, as a method to help sell their product. Cokes
campaign had tremendous effect on Christmas as we know it today; their
rendition of Santa-clause illustrated him as a large, happy male, with a big long
white beard clad in red, black and white. Before Coke portrayed him this way, images
of Santa-clause often varied in detail, his build differed and he was often portrayed
wearing green and black. Due to Coke’s historical influence on Santa’s image
many people now have an instant association between Coca-Cola and Christmas. Additionally,
Coke cleverly decided to utilize imagery of Santa as he is a figure that people
from across the globe can relate to, people are much more likely to take notice
of an advertisement if it relates to an interest they have.
“A person may notice a particular image or piece of information
because it corresponds to some particular interest he has.”
Additionally, the advert also plays on the target audience’s
upmost respect for Santa-Clause, a figure who is seen as happy, good willed and
selfless. As Santa has been used to endorse the product people associate his good
natured values with the Coca-Cola Corporation, this causes the audience to
trust the company and purchase its products. The advertising campaign is one of
the cleverest around, it uses the audience’s established knowledge of Santa to
create a feeling of security amongst its audience. Moreover, as Santa-clause is
a fictional figure Coke pay no royalties for one of the biggest product
endorsements in modern advertising.
“Publicity needs to
turn to its own advantage, the traditional education of the average spectator-buyer.”
Both the audience’s memory and expectations are stimulated
by the classic coke advertisement, which is shown annually a few weeks before Christmas.
The commercials content is rarely changed and therefore, upon first seeing the advert
the viewer’s memories are instantly triggered, they are reminded of Christmas,
the Coke product and the festive times that are to come. Unfortunately, this
has caused many people to associate the start of Christmas with the first
showing of the advert, causing an expectation of its broadcast every year. This
is some very clever advertising on Cokes behalf, as they have managed to get
people to directly associate one of the biggest holidays of the year with their
product, despite the fact that traditionally they have nothing to do with each other.
“One may remember or forget these messages but briefly one
takes them in, and for a moment they stimulate the imagination by way of either
memory or expectation.”
Furthermore, not only has the commercial cleverly adapted an
association with Christmas, but it also sells viewers the idea of a perfect family
orientated holiday. Throughout the duration of the advert images of overly
excited children and joyous families are presented to the audience, all can be
seen running out of their houses to catch their first glimpse of the extravagantly
decorated coke trucks. The accumulation of jubilant family emotion has been
caused by the arrival of the coke product, which not only symbolises the beginning
of Christmas, but also the strong bond shared between family members during the
festive season, or so they would like us to think.
“Publicity is always
about the future buyer. It offers him an image of himself made glamorous by the
product or opportunity it is trying to sell.”
By showing the audience images of a perfect Christmas they
feel that to achieve the same standard of happiness the advertised product must
be bought. In this case, for families to attain festive happiness they must buy
Coca-Cola.
To conclude, a like the examples of consumerist publicity
given is John Berger’s ‘Ways of Seeing’, the Coca-Cola Corporation have
cleverly created an association between their product and the globally recognised
Christmas celebration. Utilizing methods of manipulation the TV commercial successfully
communicates manufactured glamour to all members of the family, tying in notions
that all people aim to attain such as; a cheerful family, excited festive children
and the idea of a perfect white Christmas. By relating their product to these ideas
the concept of Christmas and Santa clause become an advertisement in
themselves, promoting the product through the established association between
the festive holiday and the Coke beverage.
Harvard Referencing
Berger, J. (1972) 'Ways of Seeing', 1st
Edition, Penguin Books.
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