| Term Paper Title | Consumer Appeal |
| # of Words | 855 |
| # of Pages (250 words per page double spaced) | 3.42 |
Consumer Appeal
Advertisers of today have strategically combined commercials and
television shows in order to sell products. Gloria Steinem discusses a similar
idea in her article, "Sex, Lies, and Advertising." She repeatedly demonstrates
how advertisements, particularly in magazines, are complementary to the articles
around them. In the same manner, so are commercials to television programs.
They are both aimed at the same groups or types of people, such as sex, age,
gender, etc.
Many times, the time of day or day of the week a show is aired has a lot
to do with the types of viewers the program will attract. Thus, the types of
commercials will also differ. On Saturday nights at 10:00 p.m., the program
"Profiler" airs, a mystery-thriller series. The story line is of a young,
beautiful white female trying to capture a serial killer/stalker, who killed her
husband and continues to stalk her. The show is very detail oriented, in the
sense that the viewers need to pay close attention to what is going on to be
able to follow along with the mystery. It tends to "suck you in", so to say,
because it causes the viewers to become involved and engrossed in solving the
mystery.
The assumed target of this series is mainly adults over the age of
twenty-five, with the exceptions of those viewers that do not watch it at the
time it actually airs, but they tape it to watch later. Because of the time it
airs, the viewers are very select: children under the age of ten are presumably
in bed, junior and senior high schoolers are out, and anyone out of high school
and under the age of twenty-five is either out or working. This leaves a
majority of the older crowds watching the program.
According to Gloria Steinem, the target of the television show will be
the same as that of the commercials. This proved to be true with "Profiler" and
its commercials. There were a total of twenty commercials aired. They included
and Allstate Insurance ad, a number of car dealers and promotions, chewing gum,
beauty products, medicine, food, and television satellites. Most of them had
female voice-overs with predominantly white actors and/or actresses. The actors
and/or actresses were also good-looking, thin, and of high- to medium-status.
In Steinem's terms, and as mentioned by Cayo Gamber, an advertisement is
generally linked to the article, or in this case, the program. The show is
seen as a "complementary copy" for the commercials; because it included certain
accessories to a person in the same life-style as the characters in the program.
The cars advertisements, in particular, were at times found in the show.
However, the other prod...Read entire document
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