Be Bold

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pX5YsU8sir4

                While searching Youtube for a commercial to scrutinize and pass off as a blog, I found this commercial for the new Blackberry phone. The commercial alone is somewhat worthy of analysis I suppose, but that wasn’t what made the commercial rhetorically interesting for me. So first, the basics.

The commercial has an ethical appeal through the hip young people doing something offbeat and “rebellious,” like riding a glowing bicycle at night in the city. This could appeal to a younger audience by possibly associating with them, or it could even appeal to an older crowd that wants to feel younger, so they’ll buy that phone. The pathos of the commercial is a little primitive if you think about it; a bunch of pretty lights and colors that catch the eye and excite the viewer in a base manner. The logos comes in where the product is actually shown performing one of its functions: texting. It’s not a very ambitious attempt on the part of the commercial, but let’s face it: how are you going to have a Glowing Night-Bike Fleet In The City Party without this Blackberry? Also included under the logos-umbrella was the use of the Blackberry logo in the end, with a pleasing baritone voice introducing the product by name. Seems like a pretty standard commercial, no?

Truth be told, what really caught my eye was the comments section of the video. Out of the ten most recent comments, nine were about the bikes and not about the phone. The two top-rated comments were as well about the bikes, with one of them even saying “all I want now is a glowing bike… not some phone from a failing company.” Ouch. So to put this in perspective, this commercial, albeit cool, really did not seem to reach this audience. So what was the problem? Were the glowing bikes too distracting? Are Blackberrys just not popular enough? Was it just a shitty advertisement? Is it just Youtube? What do YOU think, Reader???