Assignment+1+-+Ad+Critique

Online Advertising Critique
__1. Finish Dishwashing Liquid soap __



[]

Finish Dishwashing soap brands themselves as the "#1 brand of Automatic Dishwashing Detergent worldwide." Known by their names, ELECTRASOL® and JET-DRY®, they have existed under the company Reckitt Benckiser for a few years now. Their target market are middle-class mothers, housewives and bachelors who do their own dishes. Because dishwashing soap is an essential part of many homes, there doesn't seem to be an urgent need for advertisements online. Yet, with Cascade Dishwashing soap closely following by with competition, they must resort to new means of media and online advertisements to get their message across.

The advertisement I came upon a few weeks ago was an interactive video while I was about to stream a channel on own3d tv. ([]) This website is a online video streaming website for primarily games such as Starcraft and League of Legends. The first thought I had when this video interrupted my stream was "Why is there a dishwasher advertisement on a gaming website?"

I quickly muted the sound of the ad and flipped to another site and waited 30 seconds for the ad to be over. When I checked back and it was done, I continued watching until this video popped up again. I understand that streamers get money from their streams through these advertisements, but I found it incredibly repetitive, annoying and irrelevant to what I was interested in. The majority of the viewers on the website should be around 13-30 year old men, who probably don't care about the brand of dishwashing soap they buy.

Since I often watch videos on this website, I kept seeing this ad pop up every 30 minutes or so, interrupting my video. At the first sound of "In it's lifetime... 30 kilograms of grease and food..." I would mute it and go on another page while I wait for it to end. After a short while, I was so anxious to just watch my video that I actually sat through the advertisement so I wouldn't miss a second of my video. This became so that after a while I noticed that it had interactive features.



I never noticed these before, so I suppose this was ineffective marketing for the most part. Yet when I finally stopped to look, I actually clicked on it and found it somewhat amusing that a dishwashing liquid ad could think of something like this. It made me remember the product there afterwards. It worked because it made me brand aware, and if I were to go into a store and see it on a shelf, I would recognize it from "that annoying commercial".

Overall, the advertisement has its cons, such as being too interruptive, and being annoying to many. Yet it ingrained the brand into my mind. If I had heard that song anywhere else, I would recognize it as "the dishwasher commercial song". Many people on Youtube agree, as the comments were filled with:

"was just listening to the song epoca and i had a sudden realisation that the song is on this ad. jesus christ this means the ad is actually working because i ended up here. /sigh" "whats the song??????" "yea like the music" And some negative comments such as:

"this is very offensive. to usea this great song for adveertising... disgusting" " This ruined the song for me lol"

__2. Skittles - Touch the Rainbow __

[]

I first discovered the Skittles commercial on Youtube from a friend, almost a year ago. They approached me and showed me this video, and told me to place my finger on where the skittle was. I wasn't sure at first what the video was about, or what could be the big deal, but as the video continued on, I became more and more intrigued. The video was hilarious, unique, creative and memorable. Skittles used an interactive Youtube video to engage the audience in a relevant product. It was a unique way of introducing a candy targeted towards everyone.

The target audience for candy is large, thus it was not easy for Skittles to promote themselves to such a wide variety of people, yet they did it with ease. They have broadcasted the brand of Skittles so that people are sharing it through word of mouth. While many videos, such as the Finish Dishwashing Soap, have interactivity through Flash and special video editing, Skittles does it in a way like no other. It makes the user interact physically with their monitor rather than virtually, which is a hard thing to do.

Not only does it make the user brand aware (the Skittles voice at the end is very memorable), but it allows the consumer to have fun and enjoy the advertisement. I would believe this to be a very effective ad because many people do not realize it is an ad until they reach the end. Yet, even without the realization of it, they still remember it. It is very cheap to produce, as well as to distribute. Since the videos have been put up, one video alone has had 5 million views.



On the Youtube page, is has had more positive comments about it's humour, while a few found it "gross".


 * References:**

[]

[]