The Super Bowl is notorious for being the "it" show to watch for the newest, best, and worst commercials on TV because every company/product wants to have their ads displayed during Super Bowl Sunday. The fact that so many people tune into watch this game is every marketer's dream aside from the fact that it costs millions to get a spot for one's ad during the game. One of the commercials that I found to be interesting was the Doritos "Casket" Commercial. I watched this ad online because I missed it during last night's game and found it to be a bit strange to promote one's brand & product with the main focus of the commercial centering around a man in a casket. Previous to receiving this assignment I wanted to check out this commercial because it was brought up in another class today that I take called "Death & Dying", which is an Anthropology course. My professor asked us if we had seen the commercial and a good number of my classmates had seen it and related it to the class because we had been talking about how death is portrayed in popular culture and how many people have become desensitized to it.
Now, this commercial is a bit humorous but I don't understand why Doritos would want to have its product associated with death. Are Doritos that good that one would die for or subject themselves to being put in a casket full of the chips as a dying wish? The guy in the casket was pretending to be dead while watching football in his casket full of Doritos. It's a lot different from the popular and successful commercial of the 90s where they used Miss USA, Ali Landry, "the Doritos Girl" to promote Doritos, which made her and the product synonymous. I may only be looking critiquing the ad from this perspective because I am studying the subject matter of "death" in another class. I honestly probably wouldn't have even thought twice about the peculiarity of the commercial but after watching it three to four times I still think that it is pretty bad. The only part that I found to be amusing was after the guy falls out of the casket and the one man stands up in the audience and sings and says "It's a miracle".
It seems like Doritos was trying to target men (the All-American man who watches football & likes to snack) more so than women. I feel like the commercial targets men so that they'd eat Doritos while watching a football. There are no signs that this ad was intended for anyone of a specific class or geographic setting just a regular man who likes to watch sports.Just from looking at this specific commercial, the general audience seems to be men in their late twenties, early thirties(+) that like to eat inexpensive snacks with the loud crunch of Doritos. But I don't get the casket full of Doritos part, I think it's very strange. I understand that it was intended to be comical but I don't see how that was the best way to promote the product, surely it got my attention and raised some eyebrows but it played off of an issue that is sensitive to many people. Then again, advertising in American popular culture differs from that of others; I doubt that people from another culture would find this commercial amusing.
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1960734_1960750_1960747,00.html
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Domino's Pizza Change Article
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/food/2009-12-16-dominos16_ST_N.htm
The only difference that I tasted when eating a slice of the "new" Domino's Pepperoni Pizza was that the crust tasted more like garlic than before. I did not notice a major change in the pizza whatsoever, maybe it's just my taste buds but I am not quite sure as to what this better pizza was supposed to accomplish when it tastes basically the same as the old one. Needless to say, I did enjoy eating a slice for lunch as opposed to the cafeteria food on campus so kudos.
3 = Decent analysis
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