Advertising Techniques Used In The Old Spice Commercial

Your University of Affiliation
Advertising Techniques used in the Old Spice commercial –
Always #LikeAGirl – Keep Going
Your Name
Your Professor’s name
November 7, 2017
Introduction
The commercial of Always entitled #LikeAGirl – Keep Going, is one of the many commercials that they have in the series #LikeAGirl. However, unlike any other commercials this one has taken a lot of critiques and negative feedbacks as apparent from the number of dislikes in their YouTube video. Nevertheless, this commercials is solely directed for girls as well as women of any age and tries to promote the value of “taking risks” and “being determined” in trying to achieve one’s dreams. Particularly, this one-and-a-half minute commercial shows girls, mostly adolescents, who are doing different things such as playing chess, reciting in class, playing the drums, and competing in sports, among others. Although this commercial has garnered more negative opinions and dislikes, I believe that it is indeed effective for reaching out to their consumers via the strategic utilization of both audience specific messages as well as the use of good color contrast. However, in this commercial, I believe that the company has focused more on the content part (association and symbolism), by focusing on their specific niche (girls), instead of simply promoting their product. This is because any of their products were not shown in the video and were simply presented in association with the kinds of emotion that they were trying to elicit. Thus, in this article, I would first discuss the visual elements that were utilized in Always’ commercial. In the succeeding section, I would then focus on the content and the delivery of this message through association and symbolism.
A Niche-specific Approach
As stated earlier, Always’ #LikeAGirl – Keep Going commercial is focused on the specific niche that they are selling to (girls and women). Even though this was the reason why this video has received a lot of negative feedbacks, they were able to send their message to the consumers who matters most, the women. In line with the visual elements of this commercial, it could be seen that one of the things where they focused most was the color contrasts in of the frames. Even though it was not vivid and very lively, it seems that the choice for the colors fills that same palette making the visual experience calmer and easier to watch. It could even be said that they choice for the color and/or the hue of the whole video is “minimalistic”, which then fits the color of the logo of the company, as seen in the last part of the video.
While the visual elements are less emphasized in this video, what is apparent is that the company has focused “advertising” and “selling” by sending a message towards their consumers, which are sex-specific. Particularly, these messages are highly characterized by associations and symbolisms. As according to Hudgins, Association is the process of “Associating a product or company with a famous person, catchy jingle, desirable state of being or powerful emotion creates a strong psychological connection in the customer”. In this...