How Does an Advertisement Encourage You to Buy a Product?

Minh Ha

English 151B Sec-06        

Mike Taguchi        

April 4, 2016

How does an advertisement encourage you to buy a product? Advertising’s main goal is to convince consumers of the functions and miracles of products or services. Many ads encourage a majority of people to buy the products. Some do not arouse much fascination from consumers. In fact, a Nabisco’s ad promoting cheese spread is an example of an ineffective ad. Nabisco’s “Snack mate” cheese spread ad has three turn-offs: unattractive visual, poor contents, and vague implication.

First of all, the ad’s visual is not appealing. Obviously, the more an advertisement is remarkable, the more desire to buy the product people have. However, in the Nabisco’s ad, they use a plain font. Hence, people will lose interest in reading what the ad is trying to promote. More than that, the angle of the photograph makes their main products, cheese bottles, looking tiny compared to a giant wheel of cheese. Those cheese bottles should be more in the spotlight since the first thing catching people’s attention is the wheel of cheese, not the “Snack mate” cheese bottles.          

Its contents are another unsuccessful consumer seductions. Clearly enough, every advertisement is trying to inform people of their product and captive consumers’ interests, and a solid phrase is the best way to do so. Meanwhile, “Snack mate” cheese spread ad has a long text below the image. Most people will not have a lot of time and patience to read all of those words. Not only the ad’s content is too wordy but also, it mentions another product’s name making people puzzled. If Nabisco wants to sell “Snack mate” cheese spread, they should concentrate only on that instead of bringing up “RITZ Crackers”. The ad’s indefinite content makes people unsure of which product is actually being sold. Then people will forget and not purchase anything in the ad.

Last but not least, the ad conveys an unclear implication. Good advertising implies a certain message. In this ad, it does not convey any lucid messages. Even though “Snack mate” cheese spread’s slogan is “It’s uncanny” – it’s mysterious, customers rather are confused than astonished, as they do not find anything notable or striking enough to match the very first message they just had. Only if Nabisco shows people more about how good the cheese spreads taste by illustrations or images will the ad deliver a message with a better implication. An illustration is that a family eating “Snack mate” and smiling to depict that the cheese is scrumptious, and therefore, it persuades more people to buy “Snack mate”.

To conclude, Nabisco’s “Snack mate” cheese spread ad is not provocative due to its unattractive visual, defective contents, and nebulous implication. The ad can get more customers to buy “Snack mate” by upgrading the visual, updating the contents, and applying a meaningful implication. Consumers have numerous options, so companies must have their ads be as effective as possible to gain a large number of consumers.