PEPSI Advertisement - A Lot More Than You Think - Essay Example

 “PEPSI - A Lot More Than You Think” Living as a lower-middle Hispanic child must be tough, so why not drink a Pepsi? It is the drink of rock stars. This is the impression that viewers are supposed to walk away with after watching an advertisement made by Pepsi meant to target Hispanic youth, and it is the ideal example of “The Parable of the Democracy of Goods,” coined by Roland Marchand in his article “The Great Parables.” This parable is often adapted by many advertisements to promote the fact that their product will create an egalitarian society where you can be as good as higher-class people by purchasing the same products as them. Pepsi takes this parable a step further with their commercial. Before drinking the Pepsi, the boy is uninspired and most likely tired of the life he is currently living. After drinking the Pepsi, he is filled with energy and uses this energy to practice drumming around town. He does not have a drum set, probably because of his family’s economic status and capital, and he does not need one because he drank Pepsi and now he can achieve the once-thought-of-as impossible. A young Hispanic boy starts off in by an apartment complex in this commercial, and by using an urban Hispanic setting with a monotone color scheme, a sense of confinement is instilled and something must be done about it. With this set-up, Pepsi comes in to “save the day” or, in this case, this boy’s life from normality. Pepsi’s product promises to lift this particular Hispanic youth out of a lower-middle class inner-city barrio environment into a drummer for a popular band. Once the boy has tried the product, he becomes inspired giving him confidence and motivation to follow his dream of becoming a drummer. And while everyone else is still living their mundane lives, he has transcended this barrio environment to pursue his dream. He ascends to the high-class stardom status instantaneously in the commercial. He is suddenly taken out of the boring lifestyle he was living in, ages about ten years older, and is put in a rock band on stage entertaining a massive crowd of fans most likely with his professional drumming. The boy’s younger years are portrayed in the sunlight, but not necessarily in a cheerful, happy way. The sun just seems to be part of the whole monotonous picture. When the boy’s dream is finally reached, the whole set-up is changed. Instead of it being day, it is night (or at least in an indoor stadium or concert hall). The only light is the light coming from the stage lights, which represent the fact that he is now the only one being focused on whereas before everyone was under the sunlight. No one would seem to have any fortune in the boy’s town, and there are a lot of “mom and pop shops” or “bodegas” as the production notes in the video Production Notes state. This would imply that when the children are old enough, they end up taking over the family shop or store, which represses the child’s dreams of becoming rich and famous. Since they will have to spend so much time and have so much responsibility over their bodega, they will never have enough time to pursue their dream, but drinking Pepsi will put them on par with the rest of the rock stars and celebrities because they drink it too. And when you drink Pepsi, you are a rock star too, metaphorically or in the instance of this commercial realistically as well. The main Hispanic boy of the commercial purposefully does not look like a rock star until he grows up into one after drinking the Pepsi, and neither does anyone else in the town. Everyone is meant to just be an average, stereotypical, Hispanic person living their daily lives kind of mindlessly. The boy however has been energized, motivated, and inspired by the Pepsi-cola he drank and he shows this in his every movement. The effects of Pepsi are immediately seen as he moves around town air drumming his way out of that mindless lifestyle. Even though his peers and neighbors acknowledge him, they continue to do their own things while he breaks free of this sterile lifestyle. At the end of the commercial, when his dream comes true, a burst of even more energy comes out of him as he starts to drum actual drums at his concert. Before he used to imitate being a rock star and now he is one. Through a series of cuts of the Hispanic boy air drumming around town, the impression that he has traveled from the center of the city to the outer rim of the city is given. He is portrayed to start in the center because that is the spot furthest from leaving and being able to follow his dream. He has to travel quite a ways to get to where he wants to go, but nothing is stopping him, not even any of the friendly faces he has grown up with. At one point, he is crossing a bridge, and that bridge is a subliminal message that represents his crossing over from mediocrity to celebrity status that he could only dream of before. By cutting fairly quickly, the commercial is able to show the Hispanic boy traveling pretty fast and far. After taking a sip from the Pepsi can, they show a close shot of the boy’s face to show his newfound inspiration that will guide him in pursuing his dream. Then there are a bunch of medium and a couple of long shots to show him moving toward his dream by physically pursuing his dream of becoming a drummer via air drumming. And of course there are also the establishing long and extreme long shots that are there to show that he is indeed moving throughout the town to different areas and to show the enthusiasm for his dream in the environment that he is in. This environment being the lower-middle class Hispanic urban city that people living there cannot seem to escape. The sound and mainly music is probably the most significant portion of this commercial considering the Hispanic boy wants to be a drummer. The music, a drum sounding melody, begins to play in the background as soon as the boy drinks the Pepsi. This represents the actual moment when he “starts to hear the music” and he knows what he must do, go out and achieve his dream to become a famous and popular drummer. Pepsi, which is a product that is available to everyone, is shown to be a gateway to lifting you out of the mundane and helping you achieve celebrity status. Work Cited Marchand, Roland “The Great Parables” Advertising the American Dream Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. p206-234 Production Notes: Fast Food for Thought. VHS. Prod. Video Data Bank. Dir. Jason Simon. School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 1987. 23 min. Read More