This commercial is designed to give the person or people watching it what is commonly known as "the warm fuzzies". While watching this commercial, one is supposed to be ruminating on how nice it is that the young man was home for Christmas, and how sweet it is that his sister missed him so much that she waited up all night for him to get home. What we are not supposed to be thinking is how Foldgers is using this setting to imply to the viewer that if they only buy Folgers brand coffee, they too can have a happy, warm Christmas morning with the ones they love.
What Folgers is counting on with this commercial is the unconscious assosiation in a viewer's mind of thier coffee with home, love, and waking up to a happy family who are all smiles and ready to face the day, rather than grumpy with too little sleep. The only way to acheive such a thing is through "the best part of waking up": a big cup of delicious Folger's brand coffee.
This seems, if anything, to be a fine example of commodity fetishism; a term coined by Karl Marx to describe the process by which social relationships between people are replaced by the relationships between things, such as the exchange of money for a good (665). In place of regular interaction, this good becomes the recipient of feelings and preferences that would normally be bestowed between people. In this commercial, the young man obviously doesn't feel at home until he has started making his coffee; it is the scent of said coffee that alerts his parents to his presence, and it is around the coffee that the family gathers to express their joy at seeing him...because after the greeting has been taken care of, it's the coffee that this family will be going for.
Works Cited
Marx, Karl. "From Capital, Volume I." The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. By Vincent B. Leitch. New York: W. W. Norton &, 2010. 663-74. Print.
"YouTube - Folgers Christmas Ad 2009 - Peter." YouTube - Broadcast Yourself. Web. 30 Mar. 2011. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOQk_pWmisA>.
No comments:
Post a Comment