Sunday, December 15, 2019

HP Print The Holidays Ad 12/15/19

I get super weird vibes from this commercial. The message that they're trying to send is pretty obvious, that during the holiday season, everyone is increasingly spending more time on technology than with family. The ad itself is pretty cool. They have interesting transitions, angles, and effects. The first half of the commercial isn't totally dark, but the lighting is mostly artificial and compared to the second half, where the phone runs out of battery and everyone is doing something that doesn't include technology, it is overall much brighter with natural light. Actually, a lot about the first half is just unnatural. The proportions are all off and in some shots the background scenery of nature is noticeably fake.

It's clear that they believe that technology usage is bad, because they use it negatively and show that it leads to bad things, like when all the sledders crashed into each other. However, one thing that I don't really understand is how with the main little girl, her eyes are really dark throughout the whole thing. When everything else gets brighter, more chaotic, and fast paced, she kind of stays the same. Also, at the end, it shows them printing out their holiday cards, all smiling, but then it goes back to the family taking a picture. The parents are smiling, but the kids aren't really. This could just be showing how in general I guess younger people are thought to be more attached to their phones, but I would think that if the whole thing was about screens making everything all disconnected and gloomy, why would the commercial keep a little bit of that in when its all supposed to be bright and happy? Below is the last shot that I'm talking about. The parents are smiling while singing, but not so much the kids.



In the comments of the video, which is linked here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvlnCaMEg0Y, everyone is saying "ok boomer." I honestly didn't totally look at it that way, but people can get pretty annoyed when others say that you're spending too much time on your phone. I think that the commercial did kind of over exaggerate what the family time looked like with phones, at least for my family. We find a way to incorporate technology, but it includes everyone. Theres video games, but we compete with each other. And every year there's a movie that everyone goes to watch. Yes, there are some times where people just chill on their phone, but it a lot more of it is chaos. I don't think that it is as bad as in the commercial, and that's probably what everyone in the comments thought. But then again, I think that it really is all exaggerated for the ad. All of the scenes shown were really interesting,  mainly because the people were able to play around with a basic idea and make it weird. If they didn't really make the two different sides of the commercial as opposite as possible,  people might not have gotten the message as clearly. I wouldn't say that I liked the commercial, maybe because I can see how sometimes it is like the first half of it, but what the company did was different and interesting. It caught my eye because it has some sort of surreal effect to it.

Something that I don't really get is how the actual product is supposed to be connected to this. They do use it as the "5 printed things" part of the song, but the actual printing is not really connected to the concept for me. I know that like what we have been talking about in class is that people are selling their products by emotionally connecting instead of selling what they can do. But, HP is a printing company and it just prints a card. Ok, actually I just realized that they can sell what the company is about. It has all the family stuff in it, so I guess it's connected in the sense that this is what the company wants you to see that they are about. Thats pretty good, because I'm guessing that the parents like what they see, with the family all together. They can print their holiday card and get that feeling.

1 comment:

  1. I can understand and relate. Sometimes, it feels that a commercial doesn't fully bring out or accurately convey what they were attempting to. It is kind of sad how common the examples presented in the commercial are relevant in real life. After watching this video, I can see what you mean about the awkward way they carried the video out. Over all, good analysis!

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