What excites and disgusts me about advertising?

January 27th, 2013

What excites and disgusts me about advertising?

Usually the first thing that comes to people’s minds when talking about advertising is television commercials. Many people cannot stand them, cannot wait to get back to the show he or she was watching. I will admit that I am the same way, with an exception. I love commercials that make me laugh. If a company’s commercial makes me laugh I am ten times more likely to buy their product. I am majoring in sports management, but my second choice would have been advertising. There are actually quite a few exciting aspects of advertising. For example, I believe there is a lot of strategy and planning that has to go into an advertisement. A company has to know what their product is and who will be interested in it, and they have to plan their advertisements accordingly. One ad in particular sticks out to me. Dr. Pepper has come out with a soda called Dr. Pepper 10. The slogan for the soda is, “Dr. Pepper 10 - it’s not for women.” The television commercial is like it came straight from an action movie, to appeal more to a male demographic. The thing is, I just do not understand how a soda can be marketed for one specific gender. Both genders drink soda, so why target just one? Dr. Pepper wants to sell as much soda as they possibly can, but I think they are going about it the wrong way. That’s the fun thing about advertising, though. I am not sure how successful the Dr. Pepper 10 soda actually is. It may be flying off the shelves. I haven’t bought a Dr. Pepper 10, though, and I was who they were targeting.

-Nathan Brown