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For this analysis, I chose to take a different route and not use a specific product advertisement. I have chosen to analyze a commercial from the TH!NK campaign in the United Kingdom. This campaign is to target the issue of speeding while driving. The big idea with this advertisement is that speeding can kill and if it does, you have to live with it. Following in this paper, I will be discussing the advertisement’s target audience, the main overall message of the advertisement, and the message portrayed through media such as music, pictures and specific scenes.
Target Audience
The target audience for this advertisement is aimed at the average every day person who owns a car and drive. You can tell that this is the target audience because the man in the advertisement seems like a normal working class male just trying to go through his every day routine and do his work, but he cannot because he keeps envisioning a child that he apparently killed with his car and the child is haunting him in a sense, and he cannot let go of it.
I believe this advertisement is trying to get across how badly killing someone in a car accident can affect a person, and that it can happen to any every day average person like this average male in the ad. Specifically, this advertisement is targeted towards people in the United Kingdom, where this ad was originally presented on television. The UK has been having an issue with drivers speeding in the years around this advertisement. “The equivalent of four people per minute were caught speeding last year…In 2016 a total of 1.97 million fixed penalty notices were issued for speed limit offenses…” (Scott; Kempster, 2017)
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Main Message
This advertisement is trying to warn the viewers of the dangers of a car accident and how it doesn’t only affect the person who gets hit by the car, but the driver of the car as well and how difficult it is to live with knowing you killed or seriously injured a person. The ad gives plenty of examples of day to day activities that have been ruined by the car accident because the man’s mind can’t get over the gravity of the situation and what he’s done and now he is haunted by the child. The main message of this advertisement is “kill your speed, or live with it”, basically saying to not speed while driving or else you may have to live with your decision of potentially killing somebody.
Message Through Media
Throughout the advertisement, there are many scenes that portray the same message. In the scene that the man is walking down the escalator, the man can’t even bear to look at the child and the way he looks away from the child helps get across the message of how unbearable his life has become because of killing the child. In the scene that the man is at his computer, his computer is apparently not working correctly so he slides his chair back to look at the wire and sees the dead child laying under his desk, at this point he signs and almost bursts into tears which clearly shows how distraught this accident has made him.
I believe that the biggest way that the advertisement communicates the message is the way they portray the child when the man sees him. The child is always in the same position with his eyes open just staring at the man, which seems to be the last position that the man saw this child in at the time of the accident, and he cannot get that picture out of his mind. Throughout the advertisement the sounds and music are all very dull and gloomy which adds to the effect of what this man’s life has become because of his decision to speed and now he has to live with that decision.
Throughout the advertisement, the weather is always gloomy and rainy which helps get across the way that the man feels and shows how depressed his life has become because of the accident. Also, when it shows the child in public places such as; the office, the sidewalk, and a soccer game, nobody else in the scene is able to see the child, just the man who killed him is able to. I think this represents the struggle that this man goes through on an everyday basis and he is alone in his consequences, also it kind of shows that the child’s death is all his fault and scaring the viewer by showing them what they could potentially have to suffer with.
