VU University Amsterdam Faculty of Economics and Business Administration

Title: Course: Academic Year: Date: Name: Student Number: Email:

AD Analysis International Marketing 2011-2012 12.04.2011 Aleksandr Karev 2120763 akarev@me.com

Contents:
Introduction: .............................................................................1 Target audience: .......................................................................1 Intended effect of the commercial: .........................................1 SUCCESS criteria .....................................................................2
Simplicity: .............................................................................................2 Unexpectedness: .................................................................................2 Concreteness: ......................................................................................2 Credibility: ............................................................................................3 Emotional: ............................................................................................3 Storytelling: ..........................................................................................3

Improvements: ..........................................................................4 Bibliography: ............................................................................5

Introduction: According to a recent study by Ball State University on the media consumption habits of average Americans, despite the Internet's steady rise in popularity over the last few years, television remains the dominant medium in most U.S. households. On average, the general population spends over four and a half hours a day in front of the tube, making TV watching one of the most common modern leisure activities (allbusiness.com, 2009). If you have a product to sell and money to make, it is the perfect way to promote your product to a large audience of potential buyers. However, to make an effective and successful TV commercial is without a doubt not an easy task. The commercial must be new and original so that it does not bore the viewers or make them want to change a TV channel. It must hold their attention and make the viewer associate the uniqueness of the advert with the product. The purpose of this assignment is to carry out an extensive analysis of PSP Go commercial, assessing it against the SUCCESS (simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional, stories) criteria mentioned in Made To Stick book (Dan Heath, 2007) and suggesting how this commercial can be further improved. For this assignment I have chosen to analyse PSP Go commercial1, which was first introduced in October 2009, selling the idea that PSP GO is a new and stylish way of gaming. This commercial is divided into four unrelated parts. The first part of the commercial starts by showing a party with a person sitting by the swimming pool and playing a car racing game on his PSP Go. Than it smoothly follows to the next scene where a person passes his PSP Go to one of his friends sitting on the front seat of the car. After that it continues with the next scene, which features a model sitting and playing her PSP Go, while the hairdresser makes her hair. Apart from the camera shots another visual devise used to communicate the message of the commercial is text. The slogan and the logo of the PSP Go campaign are used at the end of the video. The slogan for this campaign is Everywhere just got better and the logo for the campaign says, Its GO time. Target audience: It is clear that PSP Go commercial is targeted towards young people as it features very dynamic camera shots supported with electronic style Malente Move Your Body2 background track. This background track correlates very well with todays fast paste life style of younger generation. The following evidence supports my statement: PSP Go is a portable gaming device aimed at young lifestylers and people really into their technology between the ages of 18 to 34. Were targeting those who are already familiar with downloading content, such as iPhone users." (SCEE product manager Claire Backhouse). Intended effect of the commercial: Evidence suggests that Apple is taking part of Sonys share in portable gaming device market with both its iPod and iPhone. In my personal opinion Sony launched PSP Go console to win back its customers from Apple and therefore in this commercial they tried to position their PSP Go console as a sleek, stylish portable device, much like iPod and iPhone is. In addition, it is crystal clear that Sony placed a lot of emphasis on showing its customers how portable their new device is and that it can be taken everywhere with them.
1 2

PSP Go commercial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWNCD1M0xQE Malente - Move Your Body: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvVGFSifxbI

SUCCESS criteria Simplicity: As mentioned above, the success criteria introduced by Chip and Dan Heath in their Made To Stick book is divided into six elements. The first element is (s) simplicity. In their book Chip and Dan Heath explain that it is very hard and at the same time very important to make your commercial simple and easy to understand. But what exactly is simple? A simple commercial is the one where there is nothing left to take away, while still being able to deliver the core message to the audience. In PSP Go commercial, instead of presenting device specifications, Sony chose to keep it simple and give viewers a taste of how PSP Go can make their everyday life more fun and exciting than ever. As discussed above the core idea of this commercial is to show audience that PSP Go console is a sleek, stylish portable device, which you can use whenever and wherever you choose. In my personal opinion, this commercial scores high on simplicity criteria because it is easy to understand the core message of this commercial while still being entertained by it. Unexpectedness: Sticky advertisements generate interest and curiosity when they deviate from audience expectations (Shimp, 2008). Today it is very difficult for marketing communicators to capture consumers attention because the marketplace is cluttered with commercial messages. This is where unexpectedness factor comes into play. Unexpectedness of the message captures audience attention and makes it stand out from the crowd. In my opinion in terms of the unexpectedness factor PSP Go commercial scores very low. There is no break in the pattern of this commercial, it does not violate our schema for portable electronic device commercials. In other words, we know how high-tech commercials are supposed to behave and this particular commercial is similar to many others in this market sector. Therefore, this suggests that further improvements can be made to this factor. Concreteness: Concreteness-abstractness is one of the central topics in psychology and has recently emerged as an area of interest in marketing. According to (Paivio,1969), the abstractness-concreteness of a stimulus is mediated by the stimulus' ability to arouse imagery, which in turn determines its ability to affect learning. Therefore, the higher the concreteness of a stimulus, the more likely it is to evoke imagery and to subsequently have an effect on learning. Consistent with this view, concreteness has been found to be correlated with free recall, recognition and paired-associate learning (Paivio, 1968). In my opinion the slogan, logo and the phrase, which are used at the end of this commercial, are not very concrete. The reason for this is because all of these cues can be interpreted very differently from one person to another. The logo: Its GO time does not give me any concrete details about the product or how it should be used. In fact, one could ask, what is Go time anyway? In other words it is really hard to get any meaning from this logo. The slogan for this commercial is Everywhere just got better, which in my opinion is a very creative and catchy slogan. I think what marketers were trying to emphasize with this slogan is that the new PSP Go became even more portable than its original

model. But than again someone could interpret this slogan differently or not understand it at all. It leaves us with the phrase: Its all new, pocket size, download only PSP Go, which is mentioned at the end of the commercial. From one point of view this phrase is relatively concrete, since it explains that it is a brand new product, that fits in your pocket and it only supports downloadable content. However, it might not be the case for the person who does not have any background knowledge of the previous PSP version. Credibility: Today everyone wants proof to know if product works. In order to make your customers to believe in your idea it must be credible. It takes a lot of effort to persuade a person to believe in your commercial. One way of doing so is to introduce celebrities that match your audience morales. A good example of this is Oprah and her book club. Once Oprah has your novel on her list, its a best seller a week later (Dan Heath, 2007). In PSP Go commercial SONY chose not to use any celebrities to promote their new product, instead they are relying on their strong brand image to talk for itself. Sony is a world well known company for making customer electronic goods, therefore it is fair to say that people who see this commercial will most probably be influenced by their strong brand image and thus will perceive this commercial as credible. Emotional: For an idea to stick, it needs to tap into something people care about. To make people care about your commercial, you can use the power of association thats what many ads do, by associating products with sex appeal or status. Another way to make people care is to appeal to their self-interest. You can tell your audience about the WIIFY (Whats In It For You). As far as I can see, in this commercial SONY tried to associate their product with fun, energetic, fast, sexy and stylish way of living. My personal opinion goes in line with many other bloggers on the Internet, who say that in this commercial SONY tried to position their PSP Go in the same way Apple positioned their iPod and iPhones e.g. stylish, sleek, portable devices. Storytelling: The final element of SUCCESS concept is to convey it with storytelling. Everyone loves a good story! Research shows that when people swap stories, they arent just entertaining their peers, theyre providing mental training (Dan Heath, 2007). The ability to visualise yourself in the situation is next best thing to actually experiencing it. By definition, stories have plots, characters and setting. In case of PSP Go commercial, none of this is present. There is no storytelling in this commercial, therefore it can be suggested to add a story in their future commercials. However, once again, it is important to remember that for the commercial to be sticky it is not necessary to satisfy all six elements of SUCCESs concept. Most commercials do not, in fact. The use of stories for example is relatively rare in advertising, and most advertisements make no special effort to establish credibility other than relying on reputation of the advertiser (Shimp, 2008).

Improvements: After an extensive analysis of all six elements of the SUCCESs concept I have decided to choose (U) Unexpectedness element for the further improvement. The reason why I have chosen it is because my personal experience shows me that people tend to remember commercials better when they deviate from their expectations. As I mentioned above, throughout this commercial we can observe young and stylish people using their PSP Go. This is the case because SONY wants to portrait their device as a stylish and sleek portable product. It is hard to add unexpectedness factor to this commercial without changing it all, however, one way of doing this is to show a person, who does not fit in the setting of this commercial. For example, additional scene could be added to the end of this commercial, where a wall painter smeared with paint would play PSP Go while waiting for the paint to dry. This should break viewers expectations for this commercial and therefore lead to a better recall. It could not only improve the recall of the commercial, but it may also lead people to talk about it and share it with their friends on the social websites. In addition, this commercial can be improved further by putting more emphasis on the concreteness factor. As discussed above, both the logo and the slogan for this commercial do not score very high in terms of the concreteness of the message that they are trying to convey. Both, the logo and the slogan for this commercial should be short, yet powerful and must be able to deliver the core message of the commercial to the audience. This device was developed to make it even easier for people to carry it around and use it when they need. Therefore, the logo and the message should emphasise it more, letting customer know that the new device became even more portable than its previous edition.

Bibliography: Chip Heath, Dan Heath, 2007. Made To Stick. United States: Random House. Michael D. Johnson, Jolita Kisielius (1985), "CONCRETENESS-ABSTRACT - NESS AND THE FEATURE-DIMENSION DISTINCTION", in Advances in Consumer Research Volume 12, eds. Elizabeth C. Hirschman and Moris B. Holbrook, Provo, UT : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 325-328. Terence A. Shimp, 2008. Advertising, Promotion, and other aspects of Integrated Marketing Communications. 8th edition. South-Western, Division of Thomson Learning.

Other resources: Allbusiness.com, 2011. Television Advertising Pros and Cons. [Online] Available at: http://www.allbusiness.com/marketing/advertising-television-advertising/2592-1.html [Accessed 7 April, 2011]. Slideshare.net, 2011. TV Advert Analysis. [Online] Available at: http:// www.slideshare.net/danniellejayne/tv-advert-analysis [Accessed 5 April, 2011].