In the first class, Dr. Strangelove talked about many interesting things about erotic advertising. He used terms that are not usually used in a regular classroom. It was interesting to see people’s reaction to these languages especially from the Chinese friends who sat beside me. We were giggling, and blushing. In China, sex is rarely discussed in public and erotic posters are rare. It was shocking when I came to Canada where the use of sex to sell product was so common. I tried to compare two different commercials for the similar product but targets at two different cultures.
The first commercial is the average western culture beer commercial. The woman is nude and shaking as if she is having sex. Then we can see men grabbing the beer. Finally the slogan comes up, “Share One With a Friend, Or Two.” The commercial implies that woman is like a beer. By having the beer, the man will have a good time with woman. There are a lot of sexual connotations in the commercial.
While the second commercial is very conservative. This is the first North Korean beer commercial. Instead of using sex to appeal to the audiences, it uses scientific facts to educate the audiences. The commercial shows the formula to make a beer. It also says beer is nutritious.
Yung Kyun Choi and Gordon E. Miracle argue that national culture has a significant effects on advertising techniques in the Journal of Advertising. They said that the US and North Korea has two different cultures. In the individualist culture, individual goals are emphasized over groups goals, social ties between individuals tend to be loose and communication is relatively direct. Members of the individualist culture are relatively more concerned with the clarity in conversation. In contrast, in collectivist cultures, people are relatively more concerned with issues of face management, and this concern leads to their relatively greater use of indirect communication compared with people from individualistic cultures. This is why the two advertisements use two different techniques in ads.
