Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Ad Spots in Class--Nov. 8th

After watching a number of Spanish ad spots in class yesterday, I knew it was what my next blog would be about. It was very interesting to me to see how Spanish advertising is similar as well as contrasting to American advertising. Although I could not understand a lot of the messages well due to the language/culture barrier, there were a few common trends I noticed among the advertisements.

For one, the sound/music scoring seemed pretty consistent. I wasn't sure if I thought this just because, in my perspective, most Spanish music sounds the same to me. In watching the commercials, I felt like they weren't very diverse as far as scoring, it seemed they just picked a random Spanish tune to stick in the background, and then did their production over it. Although I am not familiar with the themes or meanings of the songs, it seemed that it could have used a little work in some cases.

Also, a lot of the messages weren't very direct. Sometimes the point they were trying to make, or joke even, took too long for me to think about, or I didn't have the prior knowledge to understand it. With ads, I have found that most are marketed at a very simple understanding, as to not go over the consumer's head and completely miss their interest.

My favorite ad that I saw was the Aquarius ad. It really provoked a mood and feeling in me, the production, sound and photography were fitting, and it overall had a great message. It was the type of ad I could picture seeing in the U.S., where as some others seemed a little spotty, like they had somewhat low production costs, which sort of made them look like home videos.

Overall, Spanish advertising was still similar in basics, as far as production and the way they try to capture an audience. From my perspective, although it was difficult if I didn't have prior knowledge of Spanish culture (i.e. recognizing popular show or cartoon references), I realize that a Spanish person would probably have the same issues in recognizing our advertisements.

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