TOW 17

How can you get someone’s attention in under a minute and make it worth a few million dollars.  That is the question that many companies ask when they make their commercials for the Super Bowl.  As they are investing millions simply for the airtime for a single commercial, companies have to make every second count.  Companies have been making jokes about the commercials themselves and have used multiple coordinated commercials to get the point across.  One example where both of these are used well was in the Wonderful Pistachios commercials.  The commercials by Wonderful Pistachios were a series of two commercials.  The first one was like most of their commercials, a joke by a celebrity endorsing pistachios.  Stephan Colbert was the center figure accompanied by a matching bald eagle in an American looking room.  They then stared out by making a basic joke, “I’m wonderful, they’re wonderful,” and that was about it.  Thirty seconds later however the commercial was vastly different.  The conservative commercial was replaced by a heavily endorsed commercial filled with as many logos as possible including Stephan Colbert wearing a suit that was covered with the brands name and was finished with Colbert splitting his head and having a pistachio inside.  This commercial utilized humor as a hooking factor.  The humor works well for a couple of reasons.  Firstly, the humor causes people to pay attention.  Secondly, because Wonderful Pistachios knows there is no real logos or ethos that they can use to get people to buy their product they have to use pathos.  Because of this they choose humor to get their point across because it is really their only possible method.  They then use a celebrity sponsor because it allows them to have a divers group of jokes.  This utilization of humor works well and captures the audience’s attention and although, “sales of pistachios have not skyrocketed,” the commercial still accomplishes its purpose through humor.