Commodity

Commodity fetishism is an interesting tactic that can be used in advertising that has become increasingly popular within recent decades. The term is used to define the association between product and consumer that does not actually have to do with the process or performance of the product. An example of this might be the captain crunch TV ads I've constantly seen since I was a young kid, where a bunch of children are transformed into cartoons and taken into the zany world of captain crunch every time they eat a spoonful of the sugar-cereal. Clearly there is no real connection between this animated fantasy-land where crunchy pirate ships sail chocolate oceans, and the existing corn-meal cereal. The connection rather, is the emphasis on the "crunchy, colorful, kid-appealing" aspects of the cereal, and an exaggeration of such aspects.

No doubt this relationship of consumers and brands has been shown in a variety of ways and has changed immensely over the years. As the chapter discussed, since the 60's and the invention of "hip/cool" subcultures advertising has grown to be much more specific as to what sub-group the product is aimed for. In other words, I think over the years the relationship between the consumer and product has become more personnel as the advertisement tries more and more to aim products specifically for you.

Before the 60's it wasn't as cool to be "unique" because the idea of the "hip" person (someone strongly individual, and careless about other's opinions) wasn't around yet. It was thought to be better off to be the average good American citizen. I think this is evident in how ads were pitched back then. In this old coca-cola ad the pitch is simple: "Want something good?". Well who doesn't... literally. "Of course you do." So the pitch is: Buy coke, because everyone wants it, including you.

These days, while ads aimed at a general populous certainly still exist (especially for products like coca-cola, that are generally for everyone) it seems much more common to find ads aimed towards specific groups and sub-cultures (obviously especially in the case of products that are more specifically for subgroups of people). In this cell phone ad, we especially see the target being the youth-rock culture. The advertisement is featuring Samsung's new music capabilities on their cell-phones. Music, which is for everyone is not the specific subject of this ad but rather 'rock-music'. This is probably because the target market for their phones is a younger age-group and so the company uses "rock" as its hook. As advertising has expanded (and we see ads more and more regularly in more and more places) this kind of "specific" advertising has become more and more plausible and effective. Especially with the rapid expansion of internet shopping, specific advertisements relevent to the current items browsing, or website being browsed are becoming more and more easy to create and communicate.

This expansion of advertising also just leads to alot of creativity and experimentation overall. New ways of connecting the viewer to the ad are being tested out every day, especially to the openly-communicative world wide web. Metacommunication is a transaction in which the transaction is the topic of itself. Its difficult to word but easy to understand. This strategy communicates an extremely "obvious" or powerful meaning that can be expressed in more then one way. This is also very effective in getting a viewer "caught" in the act of viewing an ad, which connects the viewer even further. It also can be very eye-catching like how it is used in the example below.