Antenna 1 – Using the stereotypes

As a beginning, I would like to introduce to you a quite famous ad. This “Anti-boredom campaign” for a Romanian TV channel has been shared a lot and seen more than 333.000 times on YouTube since 2005. It is really funny, and to my mind, this is the kind of commercial which embodies the term “advertaining”.

They used the stereotype of an aging couple boring life: in their old car, the husband is driving while his wife seems to be tired of this routine. They are not smiling. Just oldies like others.

But the aim of this campaign is to break the stereotypes. The first thing that can surprise us is the fact that the woman takes a second wheel and begins to “drive”, next to her husband. At this point, she becomes a child playing, what makes her much more younger to us.

Then we see the couple passing another car, and as the woman is still “driving”, she turns the wheel sharply so that the man in the other car believes that they are going to have an accident and tries to avoid them.

The couple laugh out loud in their car, they seem to be proud of their joke. Here we can see on their faces that they are happy in their life, which is not boring at all.

This antithesis between the starting situation and the final one makes the ad funny by the play on stereotypes. The commercial is efficient since we all want to become funny oldies in the future, and the channel uses the emotional transfer between the couple and its programmes.

Have a look !

Say hello to your seniors !

The elderly, old people, seniors, oldies, olders, grandparents, … Many words can describe these white-haired and wrinkled people, between 50 and 80-year-old that we all know well.

They are very important in our lives, and as life expectancy has increased dramatically since the 20^th century, they are now very important in the economy.

So that marketers target them more and more, but also give them a place in their ads. But what place ? In the past, there was a typical image of the senior in advertising: senile, passive, unresponsive.

My question is: What image does the modern advertising give us of the oldies and how can it use it in order to sell commodities or services?

Some recent adverts representing the figure of the senior are very creative, I like them and want to share them with you. Maybe we can try to describe this mediagenic figure, the “senior”, and talk about its characteristics together?

Don't hesitate, please comment !

In the 1950's the oldies were mostly represented in medication or services to individuals adverts.