Video Text Response

Shae Hughes English 100A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crTCgkjX9K0

As America has advanced over the years so have its ways and techniques of influencing those who are a part of it. Since the time of our own birth, we have grown up to media on several levels, each of which have founds ways on reaching out to people and their attention. More importantly, those industries have learned to fine tune those skills and apply more adhesiveness to that ever sticky web of what we call commercials. Being aware of that looming fact that average people don’t need the newest car on the market or the fanciest meal to eat, the commercial industry knows they must come find us. They must search us out, but most importantly they must make us believe that we as Americans need that 2010 SUV. That we are not full until we have eaten an $80.00 meal.
They have become experts in the field of convincing.
It is now time to look at just how they can suck us in and make us believe that we need that certain thing that we never knew existed. Let’s look at a Captain Morgan’s rum commercial that applies to the traditional relationship between a young man and equivalent women. It begins where a man and his friends are having fun in a noisy over crowed bar. He receives a call from his partner who is attending her cousins wedding where the man should have accompanied her. As it is known to the common American this man is now what we would say, “in trouble.” Attempting to avoid the outcome of this surprise situation, he begins to pretend that he is in fact at home sick and those non-mistaking bar sounds are actually the television. His friends then to come to his aid and begin to act as if though they were channels that he is flipping through on the T.V. and the rest of the bar goers chime in to help with this charade. After it all works out and the woman agrees that he is actually at home sick, we see this bottle of Captain Morgan’s rum appear on the screen.
After dissecting this commercial we can begin to see how they were able to reach out and understand us so well. It begins with us knowing that in relationships the female figure is always looking towards time together with their other. Always looking to be emotional and caring and being together. The man on the other hand is perceived as the person that wants to just hang out with his friends instead of spending, “together time.” We know that the man is going to find the excuses to get away and even though women don’t agree with this, they accept it. The alcohol company reaches out to say that even though men have that probing, clinging relationship partner; their friends are there to help them out as team. The commercial even goes as far to say that, “while you drink Captain Morgan’s, even the people you don’t know become your friends.” It is saying that while you drink their brand, you will always have friends there to help you out.
Whether or not we accept this, the fact is that we want friends. We want someone there to stick up for us. Someone to say, “Hey, as long as this guy is here we have his back.” The truth is that we can’t avoid this. We can’t say no. We can’t push them away and try to deal with the problem ourselves. We can’t turn our backs and give them the cold shoulder and just head back to that wedding we were supposed to go to. We can’t say no. We can’t say no, because we don’t want to. Those marketers trying to reach out to us and pull us in know this. They know that we associate a good time with our friends and a good time with drinking. They know that if they were to throw the two together it would be something that we couldn’t resist. This they have convinced us.