In the global era, retaining a competitive edge over the competition and trying to wrest market share away from competitors remains difficult for firms, especially ones in mature markets. Using television advertising is one method marketers use to try and achieve these goals, even though some question the ability of TV advertising to affect consumer brand choice. Nonetheless, corporate advertisers continue to spend heavily on television advertising, according to the Journal of Advertising, “Marketers continue to spend large amounts of money on advertising, which is one of the most important and visible marketing tools” (Tellis and Weiss 1). However, advertisers use different types of psychological appeals to hopefully persuade consumers to choose their products. Fear, guilt, humor and promises of self-enhancement or an enhanced life are all routinely used to prompt consumers to buy everything from deodorant to luxury automobiles. In this analysis we will compare two TV advertisements which use self-enhancement and the promise of an enhanced life to pitch their products. Both commercials were aired during my viewing of them during the T.N.T. original movie, Pirates of Silicon Valley. The first advertisement was marketed by Mercedes Benz, for their new convertible. The second advertisement was marketed by the company that manufactures Nizoral AD, a dandruff shampoo.
The Mercedes commercial opens with a middle-class looking couple and environment. The couple are soundly asleep in bed. Suddenly, outside a moonlit window, an apparition begins to materialize from smoke. The apparition appears to be a woman who flies to the chandelier in the middle of the bedroom and speaks to the man named Michael. She tells him it is Peter Pan and flies up to him and hovers over his body in the bed. Peter Pan asks him if he remembers when he was eight and they used to fly. He says he remembers, but states that “he cannot fly any more...