In my disaster preparedness class my students are tasked with creating a public service announcement (PSA) that promotes individual and household preparedness.  The PSA project is designed to get them thinking about what it takes to sell a message. So far, the folks in my field have not been wildly successful in “selling” citizen preparedness despite sincere efforts.  The ability to think through the marketing piece of “selling” preparedness as a behavior that has value to individuals and households and to produce an end result that actually causes folks to act is something I seek to nurture in my students.

So we have been watching videos and commercials and discussing successful advertising campaigns all with the goal of understanding why they grab our attention and are  successful.  Today we will watch the new Lindt commercial that features Roger Federer.  If you don’t know of Roger Federer he is a  very handsome Swiss tennis star.

This is Roger.  I am not sure what he is selling here, but I am pretty sure I want to buy it.   Of course Lindt likewise knows that good ol’ Roger has an overabundance of sex appeal and knowing his appeal they designed an advertisement for Lindt Truffles that I am calling for lack of a better label, “Chocolate Balls.” This advertisement interlaces a strong undercurrent of power from a female sexuality standpoint and manages in some perverse way to make you long for Lindt Truffles – I suspect for all the wrong reasons – but long nonetheless.

There are two versions of the video the short version that is used in the 30 second advertisement and the longer 60 second version that is unedited.  I will be showing my class both so that they can appreciate how the marketing agency sold their message so succinctly in 30 seconds and also so they can appreciate the subtle differences in the power framework that is evidenced between the two advertisements (in the shorter version the sense of power and control is more absolute based on the cut).

I offer them up here for your perusal. Please do let me know if you have a sudden craving for chocolate balls.  😉

30 second commercial

60 second commercial

Day four hundred and twenty-eight of the new forty – obla di obla da

Ms. C