National Stereotypes in Advertising

This is one of my personal favorite ads ever and I believe one of the most influential and unique in recent years. It is an ad for Nike Basketball, yet there is no specific mentioning of Nike basketball in the commercial other than the discrete flashes of the Nike logo on some of the clothing [...]

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Rt-98ObwFmA
In case the clip didn’t work the first time (it wasn’t working for me for a few days), I had to repost this. It’s just too relevant to our class and German stereotypes.

Clearly, these catchy songs have some sort of other-worldly power because some songs just WON’T leave my brain! Sometimes I catch myself actually *singing* the Manwich song. And now that Office Depot commerical that has blocked my brain with their stupid-but-catchy lyrics.
Perhaps, though, the most damaging one ever is that Gap ad from 1999, that [...]

Just thought that this was an interesting form of advertising on Fox’s behalf. ironically, they are going to get more attention because of the attack on Anderson rather than Greta’s show. So talk about capitalizing on another network’s image. Not to mention, its sad that they are resorting to name calling…Paris Hilton? Are we in [...]

I know this is a little late, but I wanted to post about the trading cards article we read last week. I thought it was very interesting when the article talked about how the cards reflected the self righteous and isolated attitudes of Americans. The isolation and distance from other cultures and lands caused American’s [...]

I really liked how Berger analyzed and approached advertisements in such a literary criticism vain. By describing so many different groups of thought it really highlighted the fact that advertisements penetrate and influence so many facets of life. Since I’m a psych major I found it really interesting to read the psychoanalytic apprach to advertisements [...]

I thought “Docoding Advertisements” was excellent, even though at times it was a little hard to follow. I liked how she approached ads in a scientific way without passing personal judgments; instead she examined ads as “transparent vehicles for the messages behind them.” She decoded ads to reveal many human behavors, making connections that [...]

This is a very short article but I just thought an interesting point was made here about Judith Williamson’s book Decoding Advertisements. http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2006/02/decoding_advertiseme.html

This is also a very informative explanation of the book, with an overview and reasoning behind the author’s methods. https://www8.georgetown.edu/centers/cndls/applications/posterTool/index

I was just reading part of Decoding Advertisment and was struck by her assertion that ads try to appeal to us as “unique” individuals while at the same time appealing to everyone as a “unique” individual.  It’s interesting to think about how we respond to ads that are designed to make everyone who looks at [...]

okay…so this is fairly unrelated but i saw it and felt like i needed to share. and who better to share it with than my national stereotypes in advertising class, right? anyway, we can disect this if you want…i just think its funny. which i guess…is why they made it.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=262951e369