Want a Screaming Goat? ...Buy Doritos!

Today, when we were asked to consider how we interact with things and people around us, and how we are influenced and manipulated by others, I first thought of how many advertisements have used effective techniques to not only convince me to buy their products, but to also share their advertisements with other people. Some of the funniest videos shared today are advertisements like these.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qy8v1ghy38

oops apparently this link no longer works. Here are the individual ads: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HY4L1ihRkaY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EI4elilUj8g

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_eXdpr8zKQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AVN-mI2DPg

These advertisements attract large audiences not because the advertisements provide extensive amounts of information and portray accurate representations of the products, but instead, because they target a specific audience and know how to manipulate them. In the first advertisement, as unrealistic as it is, I think it is extremely funny and I am very encouraged to watch it and share it. I mean, who doesn’t love the screaming goat?!. While this add tells us nothing about the product being advertised (Doritos), we have now associated Doritos with screaming goats. Oh look how that worked out. In the second advertisement, this comedic approach continues with an additional musical component. This draws the audience in and then they use very creative ways to communicate that M&Ms are tasty and useful for baking etc etc. In the 4^th advertisement, the sketchers company uses great exaggeration techniques and word play to trick us into believing that buying a pair of sketchers will improve our athletic performance. By hinting that sketchers make us run faster, some people will think that this is true. But think about it…. If you’re slow, you’re slow- that’s not because you wear Nike or Converse- its just because you’re slow. In the 6^th advertisement, nothing in the advertisement actually convinces me to buy the car- there is no substantial information to prove the quality of the car. However, in keeping with the comedy and cuteness factor, more and more people will be inclined to watch this ad. Similarly, each of the other advertisements coheres to one or all of these techniques in order to broaden their audience and get the word out about their product.

While these are only a few basic examples of how we are manipulated into believing things, I think it is a great place to start. All throughout life, other people, objects, and sometimes even you can trick you into believing something or conforming to some reality. One major example that we have discussed in class, is that of the college experience it self. Throughout our lives, we are bombarded with people and situations that enforce the importance of going to college for the sole purpose of “it helps you get a better job” or “it’s the only way to be successful”. While college does increase your chances of getting jobs, it is not to say that it is the only way to be successful. Because our family members and friends and gone to college or support the idea of college, they have worked through methods to persuade us that college is the way to go. Not only do people do this, but also the idea of society on a whole. When watching a movie or television show or reading a book, it is often an important detail as to where the characters have gone to college, what they studied etc. For example, in the movie “21 and Over” (as stupid as it is), it showed that the friend who dropped out of college now holds a low level job and is looked down upon by his friends, while the friend attending college and pursuing medicine is praised and is seen to be ‘going places’. This happens quite often where the character that has dropped out of college or doesn’t go to college is portrayed as a ‘joke’.

This is just one example of how we are largely manipulated by other people and the media.