The commercial I chose to do for my blog post is an old Mentos ad from the early 90’s. In this ad, there are only two real main characters. One is the young guy, who has to solve a problem. The other is the older, upper-class man who unwittingly causes the problem for the younger guy. The setting for this advertisement is in a street crossing in an unknown big city. It starts with the young guy and his friends and they are about to cross the street. However, the young guy gets separated from his pals by a nice car, which is driven by an older gentleman, who appears to be of higher social status. The young man is stuck on the wrong side of the street. Luckily, he has some Mentos with him, which gives him a burst of ingenuity. He decides to go right through the car, instead of taking the extra time just to walk around it. At first, the older man looks confused, as the young gut moves through his car, but the young guy shows his Mentos to the old guy and he seems to understand by his smile. The values that are put up against each other are freethinking, portrayed by the young man, and the standard thought process. Instead of taking the longer way around the car, the young man decides to go through the car. He is trying to make a statement that says he doesn’t need to be grounded by conventional thinking, not when he has got Mentos to help him out. The old man is supposed to represent the old way of doing things, for instance, going around the vehicle. The commercial uses Mentos as a tool that can help someone find a way out of a dilemma. The young man is separated by his friends and isn’t sure what to do. When he eats the Mentos, he receives a great “fresh” idea that will easily solve his problem. This commercial is pretty lame, but shows how ads use a product to make it appear as the savior of our problems
3 comments:
I remember when these commercials came out. They were so lame that I couldn't take my eyes off of screen. They are very effective ads, but I still wonder, were they dorky to be ironic, or did the ad people actually think the commercial was cool at the time?
these commercials were so dumb in their day, and still are. they did however, sell the product, and that's all that matters. now whenever i run into trouble i think about mentos (if i don't have them in my hand) and do exactly what this guy would do. stupid but classic commerical. good blog.
That's interesting, mentos is an international brand, but the commercials were the same cheesy format, just different actors in different languages. They even used the same song.
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