However, the consumer’s decisions as to what to buy are equally, if not slightly more influenced by the opinions of their friends rather than by what is advertised. Many companies use humour in their adverts to try and get people to talk about their product. If the product is a conversation topic, the consumers will be reminded of it by their friends.
Budweiser uses this in its “Whassup!” campaign, which shows Americans screaming at each other on the telephone. Rap music and the black American youth culture are currently very popular in Britain. They are especially popular with the target audience of this advert: males in their twenties and thirties. Because the advert’s humour is quite memorable, it is satirised by many comedians and gains free advertising as a consequence. It also appears in the playground, at university or even in the office: again flooding the consumer’s life.
Controversial issues, opinions and images are used in the same way and follow the idea that “all publicity is good publicity”. An example of this is the 1991 United Colours of Benetton newspaper and billboard campaign that depicted a new-born baby with its umbilical cord still attached. It was probably the most controversial campaign ever, but gained a huge amount of publicity for the United Colours of Benetton. With this controversy, the campaign may have even enhanced the company’s reputation with many youths who saw it as an advance in freedom of expression.
Therefore, each time someone says the Budweiser catch-phrase or mentions the new-born baby campaign, the consumer automatically makes an association with the company and becomes more familiar with it.
In order to make the audience familiar with a product, it is often useful to advertisers to make the audience familiar with a person. They usually choose a person similar to that of the target audience; a person who represents the aspirations of the target audience; or a person who is well known within the target audience. Any of these are people with whom the target audience can easily identify. If the audience knows the person, it is more likely that they will get to know the product.
Black and Decker advertises its new product: the “Mouse”, which is a multi-functional DIY tool. The advertisement is kept simple and practical: much like the image of the product being advertised. The target audience is mid-twenties to mid-forties males on an income that probably cannot afford to employ a labourer to do general maintenance. This stereotype is taken to the extreme when Black and Decker use a man with an accent that is identifiably from the north of England to narrate the advert. The ‘North’ is not as economically developed as the ‘South’ and has an image of doing hard-working, manual labouring jobs such as Sheffield steel or the Lancashire cotton mills. Since DIY is an essentially manual job, the stereotype assumes that the man narrating knows what he is talking about. The male voice is another stereotype that assumes it will be mostly men interested in the product and doing DIY. A female in her fifties with received pronunciation is unlikely to convince the target audience because she is of a different socio-economic group.
The slogan used says that “every house should have a mouse” which is a rhyming, memorable and ironic phrase that cleverly claims the necessity of the tool. When stated by the narrator, men from the northern parts of the country trust him because he is part of their community, and men from more southern parts of the country trust him believing he is knowledgeable about the subject.
The audience is not just made familiar with person nor just made familiar with the product, but is actually lured into a false trust of the person and company advertising the product. However, the trust invoked in the audience is not really present at all in the advertiser. The advert only creates an illusion of trust reciprocation and blinds the audience with colours, music, humour and the familiarity of the people depicted. In essence, the laboratory of an advert does not conduct a fair test and the audience is left with an opinion distorted in favour of the advertiser. This opinion is what the advertisers rely on to sell their product.
