In American Studies class on Friday, we talked about romanticizing, or making things seem better than they actually are. During our discussion, a commercial immediatly came to mind for me. It's an advertisement for a towel called the shamwow, and after watching it I was pretty tempted to call the number on the screen and buy one.
If you strip away the colorful commercial, the towels are really just extra-absorbant and let you cut them into pieces. However, the over-enthusiastic spokesperson goes on and on for about 10 minutes with a ridiculous microphone, and convinces everyone that the shamwow will be the only cleaning item you ever need. The commercial used lines like "The item pretty much sells itself", making it seem like some undiscovered magic item.
Even though towel choice never seemed that important to me, by romanticizing this item, I was tricked into believing something was much better than it was. It's so interesting that before learning about romanticizing, I was so much more suspectible to falling victim to clever advertisers.
2 comments:
I like your comment/analysis: "strip away the colorful commercial." Nice description.
And those commercials are pretty funny -- the guy is just too enthusiastic.
Even though this seems like a small example (paper towels) there are larger things we entice consumers with (cars, etc.) that use similar strategies. Can you think of any?
I did a blog on a similar item that was overly romanticized, the snuggie. Besides the fact that they are both infomercials and are both ridiculous in a sense, the two infomercials seem very similar. You could almost put a snuggie in a shamwow commercial and vice versa and not only not notice the difference, but also maybe even be convinced it is a miracle product through the very 'romantic' and exagerated terms and phrases. It seems like in todays market, everyone is resorting to similar tactics to convince people to buy. Ive seen car commercials that were set against a vast and stunning mountain background and set to dramatic music, as one example. I think that we as Americans are just more susceptible to romanticism than our counterparts, and adverisments take advantage of that.
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