Pet food

Dog is man's best friend. Apparently so is cat, rabbit, lizard, hermit crab, and ferret. Americans care intensely about their pets, and we treat them almost like humans, especially dogs. Some of us treat our dogs better than we treat some humans. We bathe our animals, we brush them, we cut their fingernails. Many of the things we do are to make them look and smell better, but we also go out of our way to make them happy. My mom lets my dogs eat these hideous pig ear chew toy things. They smell, they get mushy and disintegrate onto our floors, and they're pig ears whose consumption goes against all of our instincts as animal lovers. Yet, the pig ears make my dogs ecstatic. They bark with joy, mostly they yap as they're the size of soccer balls, they wag their tails furiously, and I can sometimes detect the hint of a real live doggy smile on their smushed pug faces. It makes me laugh to see them so happy when my mom pulls out the bag of toys. I will always remember their reaction, and their health and wellness is really important to me and my family. When my dogs get sick they're taken to the vet faster than I'm taken to the doctor when ill. The fact that we can't ever really understand them or know what they're thinking or feeling makes us even more convinced that we must do everything to make sure they're doing well.

We've struggled with making food choices for them. We want the best in food for them, and since one is extremely fat and the other very athletic, we've tried all sorts of discrete foods. There was dry food shaped like dog paws and dried food shaped like bones, because apparently one likes paw shaped food and the other bone shaped food. There was organic wet food with lamb, pork, steak, turkey, chicken, all prepared in different ways. A lot of times my mom follows my vet's recommendation for food based on what crazy doggy diet she has my dogs on, but I'm sure a lot of people buy dog food for their normal dogs and have to make the monthly decision of what brand to buy. Pet food commercials tend to be the cutest ones out there, but animals in general are cute, so different brands must find ways to distinguish themselves from the others.

What's funny is that I can only think of one type of dog food brand, Iams. I can't recall any others, although as soon as I do a google search I'm sure I'll recognize a few. Even though I know the Iams brand, when I'm in the stores I recognize dog foods a lot of times by the dog on the cover. Some brands seem to have stuck with a similar animal or animal breed, and when I recognize the dog from a commercial on a bag of food I immediately recall all the frolicking

with the owner in the park, the wagging tail at meal time, and the general good feelings.

Above are two images of Iams chunks proactive health. Proactive seems to have become a buzz word in food. There are probiotic yogurts out their for humans. I have no idea what the difference between proactive dog food and other dog food is, but the dog is adorable. The two bags are slightly different, as the product is available in different types, but it's the same dog. This same dog appears in a commercial (shown below).

This dog TALKS about how Iams is great for him. If this dog likes Iams wouldn't my dog? I mean it SAYS it likes Iams, and it's voice sounds like what I would imagine that kind of dog would sound like. The next time I'm in the store and see the dog on the Iams package, I will have completely forgotten the health information displayed at the end of the commercial, and if I remember I wull have nothing to compare the ingredients to. I'll mostly recall the talking dog though and his dominance in the commercial. The dog, not the owner, wants Iams dog food. Iams seems to be using images to attract buyers. The images aren't of the dog food, but of the thing that matters much more than the food, the dog itself. It's there, it's cute, it's healthy, and it has a personality so we trust it to make the right decisions for itself and other dogs.

Below are a few Purina dog commercial from the 70s. The first one focuses more on the cleanliness of the food for the owner. It emphasizes it's no-mess dry pieces, and only at the end mentions the flavors a dog might like. However, the second commercial features more talking dogs, raving about the dog food. What's funny though is that to me the talking dogs seem "unrealistic" because of their voices. Iams has perfected the voice to the point where it seems like that of a dog, but carries the authority of a human as it isn't completely ridiculous. By far more ridiculous is that fact that the Iams dog seems to be more trustworthy now to me, because dogs most certainly can not talk, but it's interesting how the dog voices and behaviors have changed. The Iams modern dog seems organic. It seems free to be a dog, to be the healthiest dog it can be, whereas these dogs from the 70s seem less free and dog like. They seem like humans wearing dog suits, trying to sell dog food. I wonder what people in the 70s thought about these talking dogs and Purina Dog food.

The above commercial would not only be considered freaky, since the teacher is letting her student dog sit for her, but the dog has so little personality. It really doesn't develop the dog's personality as much as it does the dog food's reputation of being clean. Also, the use of characters from Leave it to Beaver, a very family-focused All-American show, renders Purina family friendly. Forty years ago the portrayal of companies as family-focused seemed important in advertising just as it is today. I wonder if family focused commercials are more important today, now that families are often broken apart by jobs and the global nature of our society. Were 70s housewives buying dog food interested in knowing that the company was family based, since family was very important and times were changing. Were people scared in the seventies of the break up of the family and an increased focus on independence in kids of much younger ages? Could they see the shift, and were they trying to hold onto surrounding themselves with things that seemed not only interested in the family but important to the well-being and happiness of the family? The commercial below pegs Purina as global and cosmopolitan. Were people in the seventies looking for family oriented products or ones that were cool and hip? Was change welcomed and were people starting to surround themselves with things that linked them to the big wide world? I suppose now there are commercials on both ends of the spectrum. Some products, such as cereal, tend to focus on family values and parent-child relationships whereas perfume companies almost always try to make themselves seem modern and global, a link between good smelling hipsters across the world.

The above commercial makes Purina seem modern. It's like some kind of news program devoted directly to Purina. Also, the dog speaking in a foreign language, spanish I believe, depicts Purina as being cosmopolitan. Another funny little aspect is that it's called dog chow rather than dog food. I'm sure this is just because of the time, but dog chow makes dog food seem more like food for a dog rather than for some equal being to humans, whereas dog food puts dogs on the same level, in that they're eating the same thing, food, just special for dogs. Also, the phrase dog chow seems so old fashioned, so stunningly and wonderfully traditional and simple. Of course, the words don't have much different meaning, but I wonder if the shift represents a shift in the way humans treat their dogs or what they want for their dogs. Were dogs considered less important when dog chow was fed to them? What's funny too is that Purina has multiple dog food types, but they have one called "Dog Chow brand Dog Food." It seems they're trying to maintain the image of being an old, wise company, wholesome and devoted to the well-being of many generations of dogs, while being modern. Purina harkens back to the good old days, but how did the good old days of the seventies feel about Purina then?

Purina Dog Chow The more modern Purina "One"

old fashioned, traditional (above) Still simple and pure, but newer and fancier. (below)

The Ultimate Decision

Even the health nuts among us (myself included) find themselves in front of a vending machine at some point. For me it happens probably once every two months. Hospitals are notoriously replete with vending machines, as well as car garages, malls, airports, gyms, and Andover's own campus. In each vending machine is a wide range of candy varities and within each variety are different brands. Many different brands. Chocolate hosts Hersheys, Milky Way, Snickers, Kit Kat, Reeses, and Crunch. The sticky, chewy, fruity variety has Skittles and Starbursts in many different flavors such as mixed berry and tropical. The selection is endless, so how does one really choose? Often times a vending machine serves as a quick food option, and I'm sure many vending machine users make candy decisions impetuously and quickly, maybe based on subconscious mechanisms inspired by advertisements. Candy advertisements are everywhere, but I'm wondering who each brand tries to appeal to and what values or feelings they hope to conjure in their commercials. Mars brand owns many of the candy bars, but commercials almost always specialize in one candy rather than the whole brand. I wonder why they choose to focus on one candy rather than all the different Mars Candies. Companies like Nike don't advertise just sneakers, but all apparel in one commercial. I suppose a lot of food companies advertise specific things, such as just Special K cereal or just Lucky Charms. Post Cereal owns many brands and advertises them separately. General Mills also owns a variety of cereals. My next post could be about cereal advertisements, but for now back to candy.

Mars owns the m&m brand, Snickers, and Dove. Mars also controls Wrigley which owns Skittles, Altoids, Starburst, Hubba Bubba, Five gum, Orbit, Extra, and all the Wrigley's gums. Tootsie roll owns Charleston Chew, Junior mints, Razzles, Tootsie Pops, Charms Blow Pops. Overall, there are a few candy dynasties that are charged with advertising all of their products in productive ways.

Above is a Kit Kat Commercial. This commercial summons up feelings that Americans working repetitive and low-wage jobs must feel. The guy's working hard, feeling "like a machine," and the Kit Kat is there to make his day a little bit better. If I in some way empathized with this man, I might choose Kit Kat when looking at all the chocolate selections in a vending machine. Also the commercial is kind of funny, so I might remember it and choose a Kit Kat bar over the others.

The above Skittle ad confuses me. I don't understand why it would make people want to buy Skittles. I guess the idea of not having the use of my hands really bums me out, to the point of it might be a phobia of sorts, so maybe the commercial just doesn't appeal to me specifically. But who really doesn't want the use of their hands. Also, at the same time, my friend just asked me why I was laughing so much at a Skittles commercial, and I honestly do find it very funny. The end, when he pounds his fists on the desk and it turns to Skittles leaves me laughing uncontrollably. It's all in the images. Also the slogan, "Taste the Rainbow, feel the Rainbow," sticks in my mind as the commercial links to the idea of the rainbow being everywhere, acknowledged by many of our senses, and in the case of this poor man, his entire tactile sense is Skittles. In general, I think this ad is intended to make us laugh. As unoriginal as the concept of hilarity inspiring buying is, this commercial successfully accomplishes just that.

The above Snicker's accomplishes two things, it renders Snickers a meal-substitute, hunger-ridding food stuff, and also makes us laugh and willing to buy. The guys are total doofuses, but they're lovable and silly. The displaced hunger plaguing the foreign man is also ridiculous, but embeds the Snickers-getting-rid-of-hunger-idea further in our brains.

This Snickers commercial is flat-out ridiculous. The characters are to put it blatantly, total freaks, very lovable, but very freaky. They're funny looking, wearing funny clothes, and have funny voices. The whole thing is actually kind of gross when you think further about the fact that they're regurgitating Snickers bars. However, it links laughter and goofiness to eating Snickers, and the pile of Snickers on the ground at the end makes the viewer (well me) hungry! The "Free refills with a magic mouth," statement at the end is funny, and it drew my attention. I thought it was some sort of promotion or free-giveaway, but it supports the whole ridiculousness of the commercial in that it's promoting a magic mouth that conjures up an endless supply of Snickers bars, as long as the person's able to laugh. It appeals to the money-savers and bargain-searchers within us all. Also, although kids often don't find themselves buying candy with their own money, I bet it appeals greatly to young children. It's easy, visual humor, like the Skittles commercial, and would appeal to a wide range of ages. The hunger banishing Snickers commercial involves less physical humor and more of (this is a stretch) an intellectual humor. It's about the dorky dudes sitting on their couch, probably stoned, thinking about some man constantly hungry in a foreign land. It appeals to older people, as they have to understand how humorous the whole pot head scene can be.

All these commercials raise more questions for me, most of them related to the reasons behind their production. For starters, who comes up with these ideas? I'd love to meet the person who came up with the Snickers Magic Mouth one. Is it a nerdy genius somewhere who has spent hours studying consumer interests? I just finished the section from Ken Auletta's book, and what I recall the most about Page and Brin is their devotion to facts, figures, and math. They make decisions based on calculations. They calculate what consumers look at, what they value, sticking to an entirely quantitative approach. How do the producers of commercials like this know these ads will attract customers? Could they really find at the end of a math equation the conclusion that Snickers eaters would love to see a bunch of dorky dudes spitting out candy bars? Is the candy advertising industry, candy being something that people don't need but do have to choose amongst, more of a qualitative industry, knowing that humor will attract customers. These commercials use blatant hilarity and involve strong images. I can see the man touching the stapler and watching it turn to Skittles. I see the two lovable dorks giggling and spitting out Snicker's Bars in some random park. They involve incredible, powerful imagery. I also wonder why some commercials use one shot or reference to a product, and why others use so many. The first Snicker's commercial showed one shot of a Snicker's bar, and mentioned it really only once. The rest of the dialogue branched off of the intitial, Snicker's banishes hunger idea, but it was about the hunger itself and its disappearance from there. In the Magic Mouth commercial the Snicker's bar was repeatedly shown to the audience. The first commercial was put on YouTube in October of 2009, and the second in August. It's very possible these commercials were put on Youtube months after release, and that they weren't released in August and October, but if they were, does that mean Snickers has decided to use less brand saturation and show the brand less. The Skittle's commercial too didn't show the Skittles name until the end, but instead showed just the candy. I wonder what's more effective, seeing the colorful candy or the branded package?

I looked at some of the comments under the Snicker's regurgitation video, and most of them included words such as "vomit," "blech," "yuck," and "gross." There were also a few "I lost my appetite"s thrown in the mix. I wonder if Snicker's expected a response like that. Were they aiming to engrain the Snicker's name into the subconscious of the viewer, so that when faced with the vending machine decision, they would remember Snickers. They probably didn't expect the commercial to be appetizing, so I suppose they were probably trying to sell the brand memory rather than a direct desire to buy the brand. In general, the world of advertising is big and scary and daunting, but overall it's exciting. It takes some mucking through, but it's rewarding when questions I've had from watching advertisements are answered in readings and class. The adventure continues...

Politicians as Brands

Some politicians seem to have more than just a reputation, they seem to have a brand name. I suppose in order to link brand names to politicians, it's important to have at least a semi-definition of what a brand is and how it's applicable to politics. I think a brand can work to promote a product or an idea. Some politicians seem to fall through the cracks, in that they never develop into a representative of something greater than themselves. Some politicians are also predictable, cookie cutter molds that don't really have the idiosyncratic clout necessary to be a brand. Obama seems to carry a brand name in that he symbolizes change. Another politician that has an interesting brand name is Sarah Palin. Palin definitely seemed to be aiming for something like brand name status from the get go. She tried to develop a unique personality, and promoted herself as an apparent "maverick," someone who represents the overall American, not just a Republican American. She was a working mother, plagued with a host of familial issues that thousands of other families deal with every day. Her brand took a turn for the worse when she started being portrayed as naive and uninformed. Palin and the McCain campaign seemed to believe that Americans were less interested in political action and more interested in appearances. Sarah Palin seemed like a hard-working American woman, but one who would accomplish very little if elected into the white house, and the American public chose the chance for progress over appearances.

Saturday Night Live is sometimes a good program to watch in order to learn of public opinion on certain figures or celebrities. While there are many other stronger parodic news programs out there, such as the Daily Show, SNL succeeds in developing further brand names for some celebrities such as Palin or in her case, transforming their brand name into something much different.

It makes me a little sad how politically incorrect SNL can be, but they did a great job of developing the Palin personality or their take on her personality. A few of my favorite points were when she said there were too many foreigners at the UN conference, and when she called Bono the King of Ireland. These two statements portray Palin as naive, sheltered, and quite unintelligent. They turn her brand from representative of the people to representative of a goofy woman who believed she would go far in politics.

It seems that the Palin brand now works to promote elitist sentiment in the United States. I'd say SNL is probably viewed more by the middle and upper classes. It seems that in order to enjoy SNL a person would probably need to have time to watch late night television shows which makes me think that people working hard to support their families probably don't have time for comedy shows that air in the middle of the night. I suppose SNL might target more to an older demographic rather than a middle class one. Also, some knowledge of politics and what's happening in the news is needed to understand it, so I'm assuming they target people who choose to inform themselves on politics and news stories, something the elderly have time to do. Sadly though, a lot of people who have time to understand politics instead watch SNL and believe what's said without realizing its falsity.

I know little of who SNL is targeting, but from what I can tell, SNL played a large role in shaping how many of us teenagers view Sarah Palin. The video was incredibly popular. I saw the SNL skit before even knowing anything about Sarah Palin, and if I hadn't felt silly and done a little research on her I would have had that SNL image stuck in my head. The SNL skit really isn't as far off as I would hope for a person so close to the vice-presidency, but even so it worked as part of the propaganda against Sarah Palin, in their case slightly inaccurate propaganda. Her brand seems to be working for both Republicans and Democrats alike to make arguments for politicians with higher education and lives in New England based law firms. In general, SNL seems to have pinned Palin as the anti-politician, naive and uneducated, and a lot of people "jokingly" link her unintelligence to her upbringing in rural Alaska.

Sarah Palin probably wouldn't have been a great vice president. She really didn't seem creative or particularly intelligent, but I think that has little to do with her life in Alaska. It's naive of people who pin Palin as a hick from Alaska to think that someone's upbringing can really detract from their ability to lead. Upbringing might subtract from an understand of politics, but with study and work, politics can be understood. Politicians often have inherent traits that contribute to their success. I learned today in my history textbook that Teddy Roosevelt was loved for his charisma and speech giving ability. Those things are specific to him not his education. If Sarah Palin had those qualities and studied hard in law school or on her own, she would probably have made a decent politician. Skits like SNL contribute to this image that the puffed-hair ex-beauty queen from Alaska was never meant to be in the White House, that she just didn't have the background, the education or the intelligence, detract from our understanding of what makes a good politician. It also restricts progress. I'm sure there are plenty of wealthy people out there who look at Palin and say, you know she just wasn't naturally intelligent, but there are a lot that say she's too sheltered to understand politics. They look at her coal-mining husband and pregnant teen and call her something similar to white trash. As someone who loves the environment and wants to study environmental studies, her environmental policies as a governor appall me. She seems to have a disregard for the natural world, and I shutter to think of her in the White House, but at the same time good for her for getting so far. She was a governor one day, and a step away from the White House the next day. Had Obama not been such a strong candidate or had American sentiments been in favor of everything All-American the results of the election could have been in her and McCain's favor. Obama represents cosmopolitanism and change in a time when Americans want something knew, they want a better standing in the world. During the times of the Monroe Doctrine or during its extension in the late 1800s, Sarah Palin might have seemed like the perfect representative for the people. She probably understands the average American middle-class better than a lot of other politicians, but in today Americans want help from the outside world, they want a change in economics and job status, and Obama represents change. Palin wouldn't have been a good vice-president for a variety of reasons, but to blame it on her life in Alaska is the opposite of change and progress. To be happy Obama's in the White House and then glad that middle-of-nowhere-Russia-viewing-uneducated Palin isn't, doesn't function to promote the ideals of change and progress. It creates a brand name for her that's based on false advertising. SNL is a hilarious program and it often represents general sentiment accurately, but it can lead us to making false conclusions. We see someone doing something on SNL and assume that the subject of the joke does the same, and then we look for answers and come up with Alaska doesn't support intelligence and beauty pageant queens can't be anything more but housewives.

Here I am chastising people for making assumptions about Palin while I make assumptions about them. I've taken all of the conclusions I've made about Palin from conversations I've had with friends and family. My friends and family represent a very small section of the American population though, so it's very possible that I've found the select few people who label, based on her appearance and the media's response to her, Sarah Palin as a sheltered small town girl with no hopes for political success. I'm hoping to work further on supporting my claims in this blog. Videos and photos work to bring up ideas, but the claims I make sometimes feel unfounded or unsupported by evidence. I wonder how journalists strike a balance between presenting their opinion or their spin on events and proving their claims. It's one thing to report just the facts or the facts one might hear, sometimes "facts" are false, but often journalists are called on to process, explain, and make conclusions from the facts. I hope to practice further finding a balance between presenting my own opinions and thoughts and including proof as to why my conclusions feel correct.