Blog Post #3

The Strength of Tide™

This is a Tide™ ad. It was published during the Superbowl LII (Eagles v. Patriots) on February 4, 2018. The author of this ad isn't stated but it is assumably a product by the marketing division of the detergent company Tide™. The main purpose of the advertisement is to persuade people to buy Tide™ through humor, mass media, and mild satire. 

Denotatively, the ad presents a similarity between every standard Superbowl ad: the clean clothes. The main actor, David Harbour, was quite popular at the time as Chief Hopper of Stranger Things. So, Harbour was placed in the ad as a comedic spokesperson for the ad making the claim that every ad is essentially a Tide™ ad. On a surface level, the ad only features extremely common conventions for certain products and inverts them for a Tide approach. For example, a muscular man on a horse is a staple for an Old Spice ad. However, instead of Old Spice coming out of his hand, it's Tide and Harbour turns out to be on the horse too. Harbour simply says "Nice Pants"; Commenting on the effectiveness of Tide™. It goes deeper than this though.

Connotatively, this advertisement was one of the most genius examples of marketing I have ever seen. On the deeper level, the ad was both positively and negatively charged. It took stabs at every single other format of advertisement in the Superbowl. Fabrics, beverages, cars, medicine, technology, and other products were all put to shame. Furthermore, the almighty Tide™ was proclaimed to be all-encompassing and the #1 detergent ever. This fact was only supported by the fact that, after the first part, every other part of the ad provided above was sprinkled throughout the Superbowl ads which made it a bigger surprise when they showed up. This domination of the advertisement market was Pride if I've ever seen it of Tide™ assuming they are the best. If Tide™ is so good, why do they need advertisements? I've never seen a Harris Teeter commercial and they're incredible. However, the fact that the Superbowl is one of the most watched television broadcasts year after year just means that Tide™ is using mass media to get their message far and wide. Their visual style didn't even have to be unique. The color scheme, layout, and overall format was just a replication of templated ads for other products. The originality came mostly from the clumping all of it together and exemplifying the basicity of it all. Then, the inversion of each to apply to Tide™ was interesting as well (usually just pointing out the crisp, clean clothes that each actor was wearing).

The intended audience could be considered literally everyone. Presumably, Tide is looking for middle to upper-class people who own a washing machine and use detergent. When considering gender, their target market is women aged 18+ as Seth Reiss stated after an interview with Tide's Marketing President. However, the ad established a universal market for Tide by advertising for stereotypical men (Old Spice, beer, cars), stereotypical women (fabric, diamonds, odd perfume one), and everywhere in between (medicine one, cowboys, and even Mr. Clean). Thus, Tide is opened up to all people 18+ in America. The ad, although incredibly made, looked exclusively at people in the United States. Tide™ uses mass media intelligently to emphasize their own product while subtly insulting that of others and, through the abstaining from a specific format of advertisement, they shield themselves from ridicule. This is very well calculated but a great example of Pride (self-proclaimed #1 detergent). Thanks for attending TedxTide™.