Sunday, December 4, 2011

Unleash Your Fingers

This morning on Facebook, I saw a link of JayFunk, a famous Los Angeles street dancer, fingertutting. Tutting is a style of hip hop street dance that is based off of Egyptian hieroglyphics. It emphasizes beats in the music and almost looks like the dancer is a robot. JayFunk was using this style of dance, but limiting it to just his hands. To see what I'm talking about, watch the video below.


At the end of this epic one minute and fourtey-seven second video, there was a quick zoom out to a Samsung Galaxy SII phone, completely touch screen, and said "unleash your fingers."

First off, I was shocked that this movie was even a commercial. As a dancer, I know that artists constantly throw videos of their repertoire out onto the internet to further publicize their name in the dance community, and fact he chose to further publicize his talent by starring a Samsung commercial blew my mind. The Samsung Galaxy SII has virtually nothing in common with street dancing, but the slogan "unleash your fingers" stated at the end made all the difference by emphasizing the bridge between fingertutting and this new touch screen phone. Customers of Samsung won't want to buy this phone now because it's the cheapest, the fastest, or the most reliable. They will want to buy it because it's "cool." By associating this visually satisfying form of movement with this phone, the consumer believes the Galaxy SII  has equal amounts of "awesome" associated with it.

My question: would this video influence Americans to buy this phone? Americans value success--something JayFunk clearly displays. Despite this, we also value efficiency, low prices, and state-of-the-art technology, something that the ad didn't even bring up once. Despite the lack of those many contributing factors, do you think Americans will still buy the phone?

2 comments:

  1. I don't think that this video alone would influence others to buy the phone. It's not like your going to suddenly have amazing fingertutting skills when you buy it! Maybe I'm expecting too much of the rationalization of consumers, but advertising can only go so far, right? However, I think that it would put the phone on peoples minds, and make them want to learn more about it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I disagree, I think the simplicity of the ad is what draws people in. Ads can by overrun and often forgettable if it's jam-packed with the latest and greatest updates. By using tutting--something I bet many have never witnessed before--makes the phone ad unique from other cell phone commercials. I believe the purpose of this commercial was to catch people's attention, so that once a customer goes to a store to check the phone out they will instantly be won over after hearing the other elements that were not given in the commercial. Which raises the question, which elements of a commercial grabs the audience's attention the most?

    ReplyDelete