In class last
week, we looked at a cartoon character known as Buster Brown. What was
interesting about this was that it was the first instance in which an animation
was used in the marketing of a product. This was a revolutionary way to be able
to get consumers to buy a product. This has since been used to promote what
seems as an infinite amount of products. Everything from cereal all the way to
types of clothing are being advertised nowadays by animated characters, there
are even some characters that are thought up just to market that one product.
This is all fine and dandy, but there is one thing that happened with marketing
and animated characters that was a setback.
This instance that I am referring to is the
character that was created to advertise Camel cigarettes known as Joe Camel.
Throughout the 1990s when I was a kid I could remember seeing this character
always looking as cool as possible with a cigarette sticking out of his mouth.
Now I am not against smoking I know plenty of people that do, but these comics
did look like they had a likeness that could appeal to children. These ads were
in any magazine that an adult would usually read and some of them do in fact
look amusing, but when you are dealing with kids who try and hang on to
everything that they read or see on television it becomes a problem. The
problem that usually generates out of these ads is that the kid wants to look
as “cool” as the character on the ad. Due to this they are convinced that in
order to be “cool” they need to smoke. The point that I am trying to make out
of all this is that things like this should not fall into the hands of kids it
is just another thing for them to try and hold on to. This is why advertisers
need to be a little more careful as to what they use in order to advertise to
people. So, this poses the question is animation marketing always a good thing?
The allure of Joe Camel got me smoking Camel Special Lights when I was a wee kid. Looking at his mug made me think and believe that smoking was cool. The whole goal was to attract teenagers and younger. It worked in my experience. In lookin around I found that Camel actually used animation in advertising before Joe Camel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dp8h8_fjYug. And the Flintstones plugged Winston smokes years prior: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8OFYE5mTcM. Animation appeals to all.
ReplyDeleteI remember that there was an entire animated series created for the sole purpose of selling products. it was a show about video games called "Captain N: The Game Master." This series brought in famous video game characters and the video game systems themselves in order to market them to kids and get people to buy the video games. Eventually they added a character in the show called "Game Boy," obviously marketing their "Game Boy" handheld system that came out at the time. This show didn't even have any real story, direction or any effort. The animation itself and the plot was totally lazy. Just watching 2 minutes of an episode from this show, you can easily tell that it served no other purpose other than to push the products.
ReplyDeleteAs far as the smoking ads go, I do remember there being a Flintstones ad for Winston cigarettes. Now, I also don't have anything against people who smoke, but using a childhood icon to push cigarettes seems pretty slimy. Even the cool cartoon camel left an impression on kids and got them smoking. In this case, I wouldn't say animation marketing is a good thing.
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ReplyDeleteAnimation Marketing Videos