I'd like to take a moment now to talk about a commercial I've seen a lot of lately that I actually consider to be fairly impressive. Of course, since the goal of any commercial is to manipulate the audience, some may think that deeming one "impressive" is not exactly a compliment. But please, work with me.
The commercial in question is for 'Tempur-Pedic' mattresses and pillows. Supposedly they're made out of some highly advanced material that was original created for NASA but somehow made its way to Sweden.
You can find some of their commercials
here, specifically the videos marked '60 second TV', but unfortunately, they don't have the one I'm discussing. The commercial that actually caught my eye is about twice as long as their normal commercials. Fortunately, they all follow basically the same pattern: a woman with a soothing voice discusses the benefits of sleeping on a Tempur-Pedic mattress, while 'relaxing' footage (featuring such images as a rainforest, a beach, and a woman doing yoga) plays.
Let's talk about all the great stuff in this commercial:
1. The woman's voice. When I hear her talking, I think of those 'relaxation' CDs you can buy. Most of them are made up of gentle sounds of nature, but I know there are at least a few that contain the sound of a person instructing you in the ways of peaceful meditation/nap-taking. This is a key part of the commercial's soothing atmosphere.
2. The images. All the things we are shown (ranging from flower petals on a calm pond to... well, other things taking place in some mystical forest) are very peaceful, natural things. And much like the technique used in The Matrix, all of the scenes demonstrating the qualities of Tempur-Pedic are tinted green, whereas anytime an inferior spring mattress is shown, the scene has more of a blue-ish quality.
3. The music. This is the part that really gets me. Sometimes, in commercials, if a company wants to contrast their product with someone else's, they show two contrasting scenes with different music. Like, say, an advertisement for an amusement park might include shots of people having a good time on roller coasters and whatnot to a blaring rock-and-roll soundtrack, contrasted with footage of similar people spending their time in a boring shopping mall, accompanied by typical low-key mall music. The commercial would shift between the two scenes multiple times, each time bringing a sudden and jarring change in the music.
This commercial, however, avoids that. The entire commercial is backed by what appears to be one continuous musical piece. Whenever a Tempur-Pedic bed is shown, or even discussed, the music is bright and uplifting. When a person is shown suffering due to their non-Tempur-Pedic bed, the music shifts to a more elegiac melody, without all the sudden bursts of passion from earlier scenes. The result is noticeable, but not so much as to be shocking, which would go against the commercial's main theme of peacefulness.
4. The different voice at the end. I don't think any of the commercials on their website have this, but the extended version that I see pretty much every day includes a little something at the end that I think is just great. After the woman is finished speaking, a different voice, belonging to a man, is suddenly heard. His tone is calm like the woman's, but it commands a sense of authority that wasn't present before. He speaks of the bed in less general terms, inviting the audience to visit their website and investigate more into their goal of providing an unbelievably peaceful sleep.
The implication, of course, is that this voice is the owner of Tempur-Pedic, or a scientist that worked on, or someone who is more involved in the whole process than, say, someone who loans their voice to the commercial. This is a common move by other commercials, who also begin with an unknown narrator, and then bring in someone resembling an expert at the end to lend and air of respectability to the whole thing. However, the male narrator in the Tempur-Pedic commercial is never identified as anyone aside from another anonymous actor. In this way, the commercial plays off the expectations we've built up from viewing other commercials. Fantastic.
5. The narration itself focuses on things that most viewers have experienced at some point: stress, discomfort, the need to a get a good night's sleep because of work tomorrow, all that. It's such an obvious tactic that I almost forgot to point it out.
Anyway, if you ever see this commercial, look at it with all this stuff in mind. If you think I'm way off the mark, let me know, but I think it's a fairly intelligent use of typical audience manipulation.
LOL. Great submission!