Hockey Essay, Research Paper

Companies extend to great lengths to push their products. Advertising is a multi-billion dollar a year industry. Most companies are willing to put up millions of dollars in advertising to wager that their cleverness will sell their product. Nike has taken an unusual approach to this in the attached ad.

This Nike ad does not take advantage of celebrities that Nike pays millions of dollars per year to endorse. Nor does it make a claim that this particular product will increase strength or performance. This ad is meant to be a humorous ad as well as a visually appealing one.

Of the two pages the advertisement is displayed over, the first page contains an explanation of the game tag. This is a favorite childhood game played by almost everyone in his or her youth. It is extremely simple to understand, yet the text of the ad begins Tag is a complex game with many complexities. Anyone who can remember his childhood would know that such a statement could not be farther from the truth. Towards the end of this long paragraph, which explains the rules of tag, the text gives a scenario for which only two people are left on earth. The humorous statement is absurd because in such a situation the remaining humans would have a lot more on their minds that the game of tag. Adding to the farce, the ad says that those two people left on earth could procreate and tag the offspring so as to continue the game. These people would be procreating for other such reasons at that point rather than just to continue a simple game played as a child.

Another aspect of the ad is the coloring. Almost all of the advertisement, including the shoe pictured and the background are in a cool gray-blue color. There is one space in the ad that is not in this color scheme and that is the fancy part of the shoe. The vibrant colors around the shocks in the rear sole of the shoe draw the consumer to this incredible feature. This use of color is to attract the readers to the flair of the shoe.

Overall the ad provides humor yet displays the competitive nature of the shoe by attracting the consumer to its main feature. The advertisement in its entirety suggest to the reader mockingly that these shoes can help you play this game to the best of your ability. I think the use of humor to sell products is often an effect way because as humans we love to smile. And most often we will give anything we have to be happy: incuding $100 for a pair of sneakers.