Following the reading of several of my classmates’ blog posts, I have come to the conclusion that many brands rely on use of notable celebrities and the exploitation of insecurities to interpellate different demographic groups. It seems that these celebrities are chosen to represent certain products when they are at the peaks of their careers or are most prevalent in social media. The advertisers carefully match the demographic groups that follow these celebrities to products that might interest the group. And if that doesn’t work then they exploit the groups desire to be comparable to a celebrity by paying that particular celebrity to use their product in both advertisements and in daily life.
In her blog post (http://britshannon.blogspot.ca) Brittany Shannon describes how the company Neutrogena has used Vanessa Hudgens from High School Musical to endorse the Neutrogena Wave. Brittany explains that Neutrogena released this advertisement at the peak of High School Musical’s popularity. The advertisement was targeted towards young teenaged girls who were also the largest demographic to watch the High School Musical series. This commercial cleverly interpellated a young female age group who wanted nothing more than to be like their idol Vanessa Hudgens, who just so happened to use the Neutrogena Wave to get her skin so soft. This advertisement used the idolization of celebrities in order to pressure a certain age group into buying a particular product.
In her blog (http://inggango.blogspot.ca) Ingga Ngo explains how OPI is using Nicki Minaj to indorse a new line of nail polishes. She states that “Media affects what people think, and what they believe, and after seeing this ad, I was ready to buy all the colours. In fact, I did go out and buy a few of these colours.” This quote proves that OPI’s attempt to interpellate customers, definitely worked on Ingga’s female teenage demographic. She also so mentioned that most teens look up to Niki Minaj as a strong and independent woman who is a talented musical artist as well as an entrepreneur. Young teenage girls want to wear what Nicki Minaj wears and use what Nicki Minaj uses in order to feel some sort of “connection” with her, while OPI is more than happy to provide that demographic with their “desired” products.
Chris Garofalo’s blog (http://chrisgarofalo.wordpress.com) on the other hand, focused on a slightly different form of media interpellation. He chose to focus on an advertisement that targets teenage to adult males who are hailed as merely average individuals with the opportunity to become the ideal ladies man through the use of the given products. Chris discovered that the Axe brand advertisements completely embody this kind of interpellation towards men. Chris states in his blog that “Young people today are very conscious of their appearances, and as a result, Axe takes advantage of this fact to hail young men to sell their products.” The particular Axe commercial that Chris was talking about preys on the heterosexual mans desire for women by implying that those who use Axe brand products will become irresistible to the opposite sex.
Based on the many blogs I have read, as well as my own, I have come to the conclusion that the exploitation of timidities and the use of notable celebrities are two key strategies that the media use in order to interpellate certain demographics towards products.
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