May 3, 2012
Terry Tate Office Linebacker
So I watched the best commercial ever this past week. It uses humor name-calling and testimonial through the use of Lester Speight who is famous in the movies of Norbit and the character of Cole train in a popular video game series Gears of War. The humor part kicks in when Lester known as Terry Tate brings the pain with his tackles to correct workers in the office. The camera usually tracks Terry and sometime pans. In the one scene Terry is shown screaming and getting ready to attack a worker. The camera zooms in on the worker then cuts to his face. Slight music is heard as Terry gets ready to go in for the tackle. After the tackle Terry usually uses name-calling at the employees and uses his muscles to intimidiate the workers. All during this one of many commercials aired during the super bowl a montage will occur after the boss usually explains a fact about Terry. The montage is created when the boss states Terry hasn't lost his game side and it shows Terry laying out a women, a man, and another man into a wall. For other shots medium shots are used to show the surroundings. It kind of foreshadows in some scenes where they will get hit, like a cabinet is shown or a desk. (mis en scene) Overall just this three minute commercial has multiple techniques used in it.
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I also have recently watched this commercial and thought that reeboks use of humor in this commercial was very well done. They usually don’t uses that much humor in their ads I usually see the ads where they use transfer by showing a bunch of men and women working out using reebok clothes and shoes and reebok tries to make you think that you will become better faster and stronger at sports if you use their products they try and show you all these people training when in reality they had to work for years to become that strong and agile. In the terry Tate commercial though they do uses a lot of humor they also use testimonial and montages throughout the commercial there is one part when there is irony and this big nfl player gets tapped with a mail cart and gets injured and they cut to a montage of him getting back in shape so he can keep the office in line. The testimonial that they uses is very well done too because you start to feel that Terry Tate is a real nfl player and you start to idolize the person and want to be more like him and they also have Terry Tate wear a lot of reebok clothes and a chain around his neck and if you idolize him you start to want to wear the same things he does to be more like him.
ReplyDeleteBecause it is a 3-minute commercial, the advertisement contains many visual techniques and propaganda. The camera work has lots of different length and angle shots, always hiding where “Terry Tate” is coming from. The viewer expects he is coming but is not always sure from when. Visual close up are used to show what is going on. For example, before terry tackles the man who didn’t refill the coffee, it shows a close up on the sign. An interesting propaganda technique used is subliminal advertising. I would say it is subliminal because through the three minute commercial you don’t find out it is Reebok until the very end. But, if you pay close attention you can see Reebok items all over the commercial prior to actually showing the name. I think the subliminal advertising works to add to another technique, humor. Because you don’t know it specifically advertising for this product, the viewer is just watching the commercial and enjoying it. Humor is especially useful here because even though this commercial aired 9 years ago, when I saw kyle post “Terry Tate” I knew exactly what he was talking about.
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