Cell phones are everywhere. There are very few people today that have never used, seen, or own one, and one thing that they all come with are bills. Obviously this would be an issue that an ad for a cell phone service provider would focus on in order to attract more potential customers. That is exactly what my advertisement that I’ve chosen does, but in a way that stands out above the rest, a way that I find very clever. Cingular is trying to promote their new “Go Phones,” a pay as you go service, which means no monthly fees for the customer. Cingular does this using a situation that would seem very common for a family with children that have a cell phone.
(This video was gotten from youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GQBABkFI34)
“I can’t believe the price of this bill, how much time do you spend on that phone.” Seem familiar, a parent scolding their child for going over their minutes on the phone resulting in huge overage changes on the bill. What Cingular does is take this moment of anger, yelling, and fighting and completely reverses the words spoken but keeps the same intonations and intensity in the situation that people would use if they were arguing. So instead of the mother saying to the daughter “Do you know how much money this is costing me?” she says, “Do you know how much money that I’m saving?’ or something along those lines. As human beings, we tend to enjoy drama, that is fighting, action, yelling, that is why the news would rather show a ten-car pile-up as front page instead of story about the stock market. The anger entices us to watch and pay attention. It tricks the viewer into watching because they expect to see some action.
The ad is talking to a mother of a middle class family who is paying a fortune in phone bills every month, because ultimately the parents are the ones who are determining what service to buy. The ad shows a family that appears to be middle class, because if they were rich the family wouldn’t have to argue over bills, they’d have money. It gives you this “right at home” feeling because these arguments seem so generic that they could be over anything. Cingular wants to make sure you can see yourself in these commercials. In order to do this they have this family that is exactly what would pop into your head as a picture of an “average” American family. It tries to get people to examine their lives and see if this is an issue in their home. It is saying if you buy this product there won’t be any more fights and most importantly it is going to save money, which is always a good thing. It is giving the audience a familiar situation only with words you aren’t used to hearing in them and that causes you to listen, it makes you want to know what they’re fighting over.
This drew my attention very easily and I continued to listen because I thought, “That sounds so weird to hear the opposites of what people normally yell at each other.” This familiarity that comes from the tone of an argument, but replaced with different words is what is engaging, To hear it can be awkward for us because at first it doesn’t click in our heads, then when it does you realize they’re not arguing. It can be pretty funny to hear which is also drawing because you want to know what they’ll say next, what kind of twist they’ll put in the next sentence. It creates this association between Cingular and these weird conversations that is very memorable because it is so different, which is exactly that point. Cingular wants you to remember them so they make an ad that is very catchy because it is so different then Cingular sticks in your head it is the point of advertising.
The end result of this ad is of course to get you to buy this phone, but it tries to establish this image in your head of how if you purchase this product that everything will be all better. Your family will be so happy that they’re saving money that even when you fight you are going to be saying nice things to each other. One of the commercials of this campaign cleverly ends with the daughter saying to the mother, “I’ll always love you and I never won’t!” and the mother replying, “I raised you to talk that way!” as the daughter runs upstairs and slams the door. Classic.
