Viral Ad analysis

In this assignment I shall be discussing two advertisements that have been promoted virally. My analysis shall include the comparisons between both of the advertisements with their advantages, disadvantages as well as the advertising techniques they use to appeal to the target audience. The two advertisements I have chosen to analyse are ‘Barclaycard Waterslide’ and ‘Evian Baby&Me’. These two advertisements have both been intended and created to go viral. The Barclaycard advert currently has 107,787 views and the Evian advert currently has 92,753,441 views.  

The Barclaycard advertisement target audience is predominately the A, B demographic because it’s advertising a credit card. The narrative of the advert is men and women that have a job in an office. It is humorous because it involves a normal man who works in an office and goes to London on a Waterslide, buying products using his credit card.

The advert follows the man all around central London and shows different work places and professions where the customers can use the product, this makes the audience think about the product and how they could use it, satisfying their need for information and escapism.

This promotes the product because it shows how he uses the credit card on the go. In addition to this advert, there is a game that lets the audience be the same as the character and ride the waterslide just like the character in the advert. The advert has the diegetic sound of men and women working in the office, and also non-diegetic sound with a song playing over the voices of the characters. This advert has gone viral because it is fun and humorous and when people see the Barclay shop they think of the advert and they know how easy and quick the product is to use and they will want to go and buy it.

This Evian baby & me target audience is mainly for middle class (B demographics) adults because the advert has a short story when adults turn into babies in a mirror, the babies include different races, ages and adults from different backgrounds and jobs. The advertisers of Evian water want to represent their water as one that can keep adults young at heart. This appeals to the target audience because it suggests how adults can be happy, healthy and young if they drink the water. This advert has gone viral because the advert is very humorous, it also makes you want to go and buy the product because it doesn’t really have anything to do with water. In addition to this advert there is a game that lets you turn into a baby like the characters on the advert which also helps the company promote their product. The audience will see ‘Evian’ and think of the mad, funny advert and how they can be like the characters and use the app to turn into babies themselves. The audience are more familiar with the product because of the pun line 'Evian live young' because the characters are acting young again. This also suggests how the product can make you happy and young again because when the adults turn into babies they are happy and start dancing.

They were adults at the start of the advert and at the end of the advert they ‘live young’ and turn into babies. There is diegetic sound at the start of the advert because you can hear the horns of cars and you can also hear sirens and people talking in the background. During the advert there is non-diegetic sound because there is a fast song playing through the advert when the characters are dancing. . In my opinion the Evian advertisement is a better example of a good, promotional advertisement because it uses good graphics and visual effects, it also includes enjoyable music for the audience. It uses good advertising techniques such as humour. This is also true because it has so many more views (92,753,441) than other successful advertisements.

In conclusion they have both been successful because they attend to the needs of the target audience because they both use comedy which interacts with the audience. They use escapism to make the audience want to watch it and think of a completely different life and let them escape from their daily routine and lifestyle.