HaCKeRz KrOnIcKLeZ 3/HaCKeRz_KrOnIcKLeZ.iso/anarchy/essays/schoolsucks/energ1.txt

Text File | 1996-04-27 | 6KB | 82 lines

       An Analysis of the Energizer Bunny Commercial Sequence

       Energizer batteries have been equated with long-lasting energy in
       your Walkman or other battery-operated appliance. "That damned
       Energizer bunny" is the cause; he's so aggravating. It seems like
       that pink bunny rabbit is running across the television screen
       every other second, it's so annoying. The advertising campaign has
       been so effective that not only did the company (finally) surpass
       Duracell in sales, but the advertising company was awarded an Obie
       (the advertising equivalent of the "Oscar") as best commercial of
       the year. This essay shall attempt to analyze the series of
       "Energizer bunny" advertisements.
       There is a current trend in modern television advertising for a
       series of commercials for the same product. An excellent example
       is the ad sequence for "Taster's Choice" coffee brand, where a man
       and a woman share (cups of) coffee amid alluring looks and sexual
       innuendos. But I digress. The Energizer camp decided to run a
       series, but the ingenuity in the Energizer series is that in every
       commercial in the series, not one begins or ends with suggestions
       or hints that there was, or will be, another ad before or after
       it.
       A brief explanation of the plots of these advertisements is
       warranted. The first in the sequence shows two toy bunnies,
       waddling back and forth across the television screen, and all
       beating bass drums. The one not running on Energizer batteries
       dies out, and the one on Energizer batteries continues. The next
       ad showed the same thing, but with a different ending: the
       Energizer bunny waddled off the television screen, out of camera
       range, and towards the doors of the studio. The last camera shot
       is that of the bunny, headed for the doors amid wires and lights
       and such, and a voice over the intercom says, in an authoritarian
       voice (probably the director of the commercial), "Stop the bunny."
       The humor from this scene stems from the unexpectedness of the
       bunny's actions; it has a life of its own. The voice of the
       director adds to this because his words and tone of voice suggest
       that he, too, was unaware of this happening. We don't know what
       happened to the bunny at this point in time, until they show the
       other ads.
       The other ads can be grouped into two categories: commercials
       which advertise other "fake" products until the bunny comes
       barging in with that damned bass drum, and views of vast,
       wide-open spaces (which sometimes include landmarks around the
       world, like Notre Dame in France, an island in the Bermuda
       Triangle, et cetera) with the sounds which naturally occur at
       these sites, then having one's ears assailed with those @%!#$
       drums! It is now that the viewer subconsciously realizes that yes,
       the bunny has truly "escaped" from the jail called the television
       studio, and is now free to roam the world and do as it pleases
       (which is simply just to follow the beat of his own drummer [being
       himself {this is getting WAY too parenthetical}]). A similar
       correlation can be made from this thought and another scene
       involving toys and freedom/incarceration: in the movie "Toys" with
       Robin Williams (which I truly hated, sans the Magritte style it
       used), a war is declared within the toy factory. To help Robin's
       side towards freedom from the maze the other side created, toys of
       the company became "accessorized", if you will, with various
       military tools. Robin exclaims, "F.A.O. Schwartzkopf!"
       However, a note must be made. Initially, the advertising campaign
       did poorly, and the ad company did not know why, until they
       realized that the public was not looking for Energizer batteries,
       but "the bunny batteries." It was at this time that the ad
       campaign persuaded the company to put the bunny on the packaging.
       It worked. People bought the batteries simply because of one
       thought that ran through their collective head: "That @%!#$ bunny
       won't ever stop, so I'll buy batteries that won't ever stop! I
       need batteries that will last as long as possible!" Furthermore,
       the ads were the first ads in a long time that actually made us
       sit up and take notice. Most couch potatoes sit through
       commercials subconsciously, not even aware that they exist in the
       first place. The Energizer ads put a stop to this in two ways: it
       placed a continuous (therefore, annoying) bass drum beat
       throughout the commercials, and ran ads which interrupted a "fake"
       commercial. These commercials essentially parody other
       commercials, which is why we sit up and take notice. American
       television commercials are so popular and so well-loved, that some
       of us can recite ad jingles or plots on command. To quote H. Ross
       Perot, "this is sad." We don't have anything better or more
       constructive to do with our lives except to be couch potatoes and
       junk-food junkies and screen-staring sillies and wastes of space.
       Wake up, America. If this truly is popular culture, then I don't
       want to be cultured in this population.