I would like to start off by saying as a child television (TV) was considered a privilege in my household. We had a strict routine and were lucky to get at least an hour of TV time during the week. After reading the overview for this week - I counted the commercials in between segments while watching Scandal - the actual one hour show is 35 minutes and their were at least 15-20 commercials - some were repeats...apparently I was unaware of how many commercials their were in between takes for the show. To know that children are exposed to at least 40,000 television commercials every year is disturbing....most of those hours spent staring at the television could be used for reading books.
Ironically, the November issue of Essence Magazine has Kerry Washington on the cover so I decided to deconstruct the digital issue that I have on my ipad. The ad was natural, vibrant, attractive, dazzling and modern. There are three females, who are Caucasian, Hispanic and light skinned African American - the ad is designed to catch the attention of woman of all races...consumers like seeing someone that looks like them (I happen to be one of them). In this up close capture - these woman have been photo shopped to look flawless and its very well needed to sell skin tone correction serum. The beginning text are all in low white caps, with the title of the product in a bigger font than the rest. Interestingly enough minor details at the bottom of the page are all in small caps.
I did not find this DREAMTONE product appealing at all - those featured in the ad has lighter skin than me and the percentage rate at the bottom of the page in small caps...didn't convince me that its something that I should try. Everything doesn't work for everyone and this product did not jump out at me as something that I could benefit from.
I have had DVR on my cable for a long time. In fact I owned a Replay (TiVO type thing) before DVR became the norm. While I would say my kids watch too much TV (some days it is just easier) they like me hate commercials. My son gets annoyed when he has to watch a commercial and I guess that is a good thing. However with the increasing popularity of DVR I am seeing more and more product placement in the shows I watch.
ReplyDeleteI think the amount of hours spent watching commercials in my household must be lower than the norm because we DVR almost everything, and the feature we love most about the DVR is being able to fast forward through the commercials. None of us seem to have enough time to spend watch the full span of a program so we appreciate how much the DVR allows us to reduce the amount of time required. I hope they never override the fast forward function in regards to skipping commercials.
ReplyDeleteIn regards to the DREAMTONE product, Tikeshia, it seems you are more of what Jean Kilbourne refers to as an educated, aware citizen than a consumer.