Semiotics

Ads have always been an important form of advertising for many products in the market place. The purpose is to deliver a powerful message with as little words as possible through the use of semiotics. Semiotics at first sounds like a very confusing word that sounds almost like something to do with the earth but in reality, it is a word that connects images, signs, and meaning all together to tell the viewer a message through image recognition.

One of the examples of an ad using semiotics that I found on the world wide web is one of the most commonly advertised products, a car. By trying to advertise a powerful SUV is the car for you, designers and the advertising team would have to deliver a message what many SUV owners would want, and that is horse power. This advertisement for a Mitsubishi SUV took the most easily understood way of letting people know a car has horse power, by suspending the car in mid-air showing what is really "inside" the car pulling it and that is full size grown horses capable of hauling heavy loads. This ad works well using semiotics but over all in appearance in my opinion is too simple and does not deliver the message well.

Another good example of semiotic being used in a ad is from the airline Delta. It uses an ingenious way to advertise on things other than their planes, they choose to advertise their services on making the plane ride more up to date with technology to more convenient and interact better with the newer generation. By having an smart phone along with an arm of a businessman showing its sophisticated and comfortable methods of making traveling easier.

The best ad in my opinion that uses semiotics the best will probably be the ad with McDonald's advertising about their fries. By having the least about of words and setting each image in chronological order, they were able to portray the deliciousness of their fries quickly and efficiently from potato to cooked fries to an empty fries container. This ad targets the general audience because it is a food item that all can eat and each image shows what the food is and what it turns into in the next step of its "life". McDonald's had made something very simple to look very good.

Funny/Interesting Super Bowl Commercials

This past recent week super bowl XLVIII was all the rage for many people, but after the upsetting game it was all about the commercials. Although there were many commercials during the super bowl game there were a few that stood out, I would just be specific in which ones I did like.
The first interesting, not very much that I liked it but it was just weird to see, was the commercial from godaddy. They begin the commercial pretty much like any other with commercial by not giving any clue to the audience of what the commercial is about and just going with it. You first see a bodybuilder running by himself and within three seconds, more and more bodybuilders begin to gather in the center of the camera all running forwards. Pretty much almost ten seconds in you have had a whole mob of bodybuilders and one woman bodybuilder all running forwards but then that is when the camera switches over to a tanning salon. That is where you would begin to put the pieces of clues together to what the commercial is all about. Bodybuilders plus a spray tan salon makes sense together and then the commercial ends with the announcement of advertising with godaddy to get your business going.
The other commercial I really did like. It brought back actors from a popular old television show called "Full House" which I watched very often at a younger age. The company that produce the commercial was Dannon's Oikos Greek Yogurt. They had hired all the main characters, except the twins, from full house to act in the comical commercial of two different sex licking off yogurt off of each other. What made the commercial funny to me was that when the yogurt strategically landed on the guy's pants after the girl has licked it from his mouth, Coulier, and Saget pops up to ruin the moment for Dave. The girl then leaves follow by Coulier and Saget cleaning up a pantless Dave.

What I Don't Know About Advertisement

Hello All, My name is Danny Liang and what I don't know about advertisement and advertising is pretty much everything. What is an advertisement? T.V. commercials on Super Bowl Sundays, giant bill boards on the side of highways to distract people, airplane pulling banners saying the words Geico. All these things just seem like images to me to remind me that there is a company that is out there named something and trying to sell me something, but what I want to know is how? What is in their billboards that makes it so attracting for a person to stare and read the whole board? What is the purpose of a commercial being funny about a man who keep telling you to look at him then you and then back at him? All these things have always intrigued me about advertisement and makes me ponder of it's purpose and what were the mindsets of the creators when making the advertisements. The thing I do like about advertising is the ingenious ideas that they are able to come up with for their product.  Again my name is Danny Liang and I am here to learn what is advertisement all about.