Funny Business
(Paper
#2)
Another day, another mind numbing
topic that really grinds my gears. I’ll be honest, when I was told I had to do
a thorough analysis on a few advertisements of my choice, I was dreading it
wholeheartedly. Therefore I had to ponder for a while with the almost
frustrating question of “What on god’s green earth is my topic going to cover?”
To that question I searched endlessly through Google images for advertisements until I
struck gold with something funny
enough to catch my interest. There were a few
insurance ads I saw from companies like Progressive with their quirky
spokesperson Flo, and how I laughed whenever I thought of the commercials
with her sponsoring the product. Usually the topic of insurance would bore an
individual like myself, but while these ads encompassed easier, and cheaper
ways to save on money, they also did it through comical methods that had me
smiling. So I decided to find another ad that revolved around this method, and this
time asked myself “how
does comical advertising persuade the audience to buy their product/service?”
To my surprise when I compared two
humorous ads involving insurance, I found a few unique similarities. Right away I saw in several Progressive and Geico ads they had used
the color blue to express their company logo, but why does this matter? Usually
insurance companies want customers/the audience to know they’re serious about their work, and
will help you when you call them which is why they choose the color blue to
label their logo because it typically means loyalty, and
professionalism. Another fun fact is that blue makes you feel more awake
because it fills you with endorphins. Windows used blue originally to do this,
so does Google and many other businesses. If
they were to use another color like green it would instead be associated with
greed or jealousy, and wouldn’t get the same point across, sending the audience away instead.
Moving
forward to the image in the Geico ad… If you saw some crazed professional Laker’s
basketball player (who looks somewhat like a caveman, keep this in mind) with
his mouth agape in wild surprise, it would probably fill you with a case of the
giggles too. I believe they used a basketball player opposed to say, a lawyer
because it would come out as sort of odd. Anything but a basketball
player/athlete would be less brutish and less caveman-ish. It’s more humorous. With an athlete a person would expect strange faces while shouting cheers of joy, but with a lawyer (or professional business man) instead
it might come across as an angry expression. Their idea was to draw a lot of attention to the man’s appearance,
so the viewer would shift there gaze to the text describing what their company
is trying to offer. In this case there is text saying that it’s “so easy even a
caveman can do it.” This is a funny way of saying that there insurance procedure is
so easy that even a man (or woman) millions of years ago without the slightest
idea of how to use technology could “(easily) save hundreds on
car insurance.” Of course once they called, or went to the company’s site to
get a “free quote,” that is. The purpose of this ad is to enlighten the heavy
subject of insurance with laughter, and thus in catching the audience’s
attention and diverting
it to the text they may understand that there
is an easier way of going about saving money.
Let’s
look back first to when I was mentioning Progressive’s ad involving there
spokesperson Flo. Aside from the contagious red-lipped smile on her
face the viewer would probably wonder why this particular printed ad would
attract them. The idea is that you’ve already seen the TV advertisements
involving her spreading the word of Progressive’s insurance rates in bizarre ways.
And I mean really bizarre such as smashing an electric guitar, or
spinning a basketball. As well as setting
a metaphor that states that they (Progressive) save the individual more money
than other businesses by having two men from those corporation spy on Flo, and
several other scenes that try to grab the viewer's’ attention (like the Geico
ad). It’s with Flo’s
enthusiastic expressions about the greatness of Progressive in these scenes
that grabs a person’s attention. Hypothetically though, let’s say that the
person watching these commercials were too distracted by the plot of events
that they didn’t get the full idea of how it was trying to persuade you. In
this case the printed ad I stumbled upon would inform a person who is familiar
with the character Flo to shift their gaze to the ad, and inform themselves
with the text hovering to the side of her. They would see that “you could save
$550 on your car insurance,” and would result exciting the viewer who needs
better coverage. Better yet, it would thrill them once they learned that it
would only take about “6 minutes” to start. Thus convincing the audience that
there policy is a quick, easy process that will leave you as content as the
lovely Flo.
In conclusion these ads use comedy
for what they're trying to
convey to the
audience. By using odd expressions, contagious smiles, and memorable scenes as
reminders I was able to infer that such aspects provide a more positive
exposure of the product of insurance. So while at first I found this paper to
be rather aggravating, I’ll admit that it highlighted certain aspects I didn’t
put into deep thought before as to why a color could show-off a type of theme, how
a basketball player over a lawyer in an ad could shape a persons perspective,
or how a whimsical character could make an ad become frequently more familiar.
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