DirecTV's "Don't" commercials seem to all have a common focus on people falling into sadness or depression due to the fact that they have ran into issues with their cable televisions. This is to show their customers and potential customers that having cable will make you sad and that DirecTV will come to the rescue and make you a happy person. The commercial titled "Don't Sell Your Hair to a Wig Shop" is a very good showcase of this tactic at play, particularly due to the fact that the word "depressed" is actually used by the voice-over. This commercial is trying to tell the audience will get saddened by cable and that even though they may find temporary happiness with it, they will never be as happy as they would be if they were to switch to DirecTV's services. Sadness is not the only emotion the commercial attempts to discuss, however.
Comedy, as well as humor, is being used in this commercial mainly at the end of it where the scene cuts to the man in the commercial having a very poorly shaved head. The commercial has a comedic tone due to the pure wildness of the situations being portrayed. With that wildness, however, there is a small part of believably. This makes the commercial have somewhat of a fear factor involved with it. This is to cause a glimmer of fear within the audience in order to be afraid of cable TV and to switch to DirecTV. For a thirty second commercial, it seems to try to strike at a lot of emotions: fear, sadness, happiness, and joy. The last scene of the commercial is less of an emotional ploy, but instead it is meant to be more of a shock factor that screams, "Look at this low price!" Unfortunately, this is the only part of the last scene that many people pay attention to. What DirecTV put in small fonts is all the contractual jargon. This is to help maintain the idea that DirecTV is a good thing and that happiness and other good things are the only things to come to their customers.
-Matthew S.
Word-count: 357
Personally, I found the “Don’t Sell Your Hair to a Wig Shop” to be the funniest of the commercials. All of the commercials follow a series of over-exaggerated events, but I found this one to be the most strange. Who would even think of selling their hair to a wig shop? I wanted to use this commercial in my blog but I thought it would be hard to analyze, so I picked a different one. I thought that the only tactic that DirecTV used was humor in this commercial, until I read your analysis. I realized that they sparked a lot of emotions in the audience and I feel like that was a good thing. First the man is depressed then is happy after he goes to the seminar so he goes to Vegas and loses all of his money and gets sad again. It seems that no matter what without DirecTV the poor man will never be happy. I think the people at DirecTV had good intentions but my only problem is the fact that they don’t really tell us what they’re going to do for us when we switch. They do give us a fear factor of what will happen without DirecTV, but what would happen to the man with DirecTV?
ReplyDelete-Breanna H.
(213 Words)
I really like how you discuss how DirectTV tries to appeal to multiple emotions of the customer within a short amount of time. I think just about everyone agrees that the use of humor in all of the commercials works well for the company, but I like how you address how the use of fear does too. By putting some sort of fear into the customer, DirectTV makes their product look even more desirable. I also like how you discuss how the commercial distracts customers from the contractual details in the small font under the subscription price. DirectTV does a good job at keeping the focus on the humor of the commercial and on the large price above all of the details in the fine print. DirectTV does a good job at making cable look like the bad guy too. By doing this, more people should become more interested in subscribing to their products. The idea that cable could lead to multiple problems, and that it is more expensive makes the commercial even more effective. Overall, I agree with you when you talk about DirectTV appealing to multiple emotions of the customer is a good tactic. The use of humor, in particular, in all of the commercials must be working. DirectTV's strategies seem to be very effective.
ReplyDeleteDavid Sacre
(217 words)
I think the commercial "Don't Sell Your Hair to a Wig Shop," is a good example of rhetoric advertising. One of the reasons why it is a good advertisement is because of it's humor. If the commercial lacked humor, then it would lack the viewer's attention. I think the author purposely added the humor in it so that the commercial will stick out to the audience. What you stated about how the commercial was constantly saying "depressed," I personally never noticed that. For the author to include that type of language into their advertisment is a good thing because then it could show the viewers how cable could possibly make them depressed, which could potentially get them more customers to purchase their product. I also agreed with what you stated about how the last scene in the commercial can really grab the audience's attention the most, but we don't know for sure if the price of switching over to DirectTV is really worth it. Even though the commercial contains humor and out of the ordinary events, it could potentially lose some of the audience's interest. Some of the audience might care about the fact that if they could afford it, or what will the outcome be if they do buy DirectTV.
ReplyDeleteEmily Shouse
(211 words).