Alex Tayler's Blog

After taking a look at Tylor’s blog post I’ve come to agree with his points regarding Nike’s recent advertisement campaign. The commercial is excellent because of the use of anonymous athletes. It helps other people relate more easily to the athlete’s in the commercial and therefore Nike as a brand. Additionally, it’s inclusion of mainstream sports and obscure sports helps broaden the target market of athletes Nike is trying to appeal to.

Another important message Nike is trying to get across with it’s commercial is a sense of community amongst it’s consumers. This trait is embodied with the transitions between athletes. After performing their specific talent, the athletes are shown giving a friendly taunt or nod to the next athlete. This connection between all the athletes encourages comradeship and friendly competition, which are two positive themes Nike, and many other sporting brands, would like to be associated with. The diversity of the cast of athletes is also a representation of the diversity of their demographic environment that includes, both genders, many different ethnicities, and physically handicapped.

The ending scene in particular ties together this sense of togetherness despite the diversity as it shows a massive crowd of athletes all shapes and sizes ready to run a marathon together. Despite their differences, including those in ridiculous costumes, they are brought together with the Nike brand as it shows the athletes are all wearing colorful shoes with the signature checkmark.

Nike’s light humor, inclusion of amazing athletic feats, and prominent sense of community is what makes this commercial one of their most interesting and inspiring yet.

https://blogs.ubc.ca/tylormacdonald/

Over the past few decades the Internet has become one of the most popular forms of media in the world, and with the advances in technology people have begun to share information in many different fashions. One of the more popular trends is video sharing, particularly on YouTube. YouTube is a website where users can watch and upload there own video content. Established in 2005, it has garnered a major following and marketers have taken advantage of this new group of Internet viewers. A vast array of different companies such as Tide, Olay, Venus, Cascade, and Covergirl has begun to piggyback off of YouTube’s popularity and heavily advertise their products. There are two different ways for companies to advertise. They can either have a short commercial played before the video starts or they can have an advertisement placed on the side of the video above the recommended videos. Depending on how much the company pays, they can have their commercials played on the more popular, or “viral”, videos of that week and with more frequency. This is a good technique as it exposes the product to millions of potential customers, however there is a key point they do not seem to be addressing. Certain commercials don’t seem to match the demography of the viewers for the videos being watched. Despite the fact the video is popular it is not appealing to those watching that video, therefore the company is not promoting there product as affectively as they could be. Perhaps with further research companies could start aiming their advertisement in a more productive direction. Instead of Covergirl putting their commercial before a video of how to take an Xbox 360 apart they could put them before videos that appeal more to women, like makeup tutorials.