Case Study Research - Advertising Through Physical and Metaphysical Promises

Advertising generally tries to sell things through one of two ways, through promises of making your life physically better such as "this product will help you succeed in your goals", or through making metaphysical promises such as "this product will make you a happier person".

The Citroen C4 dancing car advert is an example of the latter. The contents of the avert is blatantly fictional, so you're not getting any physical promises from the advert. Instead, the advert is saying "this car is fun, it'll make your life more fun", a metaphysical promise. It doesn't actually tell you anything about the car, and so isn't really successful in terms of it's communication with the audience about the cars selling points.



A recent advert for the Toyota Auris is an example of the opposite. It plays on the fact that other car adverts tend to offer metaphysical speculations or subjective thoughts, and instead offers factual positives about the car, making the communication much clearer and more successful. Rather than "this car is fun, it'll make your life more fun", it's saying "this car is practical and will make driving easier for you", which is generally a much more powerful message when trying to sell a car.



This is applicable to most products. Coca-Cola's One World, One Game campaign that ran alongside the 2014 FIFA World Cup is another example of selling through metaphysical promises. The advert communicates very little about the product, instead it says "by buying Coca-Cola, you're helping people in poverty", which while it's a good message, isn't what's in the forefront of most consumers minds when buying a drink. It's also a somewhat hypocritical message given the recent tax problems the Coca-Cola company has had.

When you compare this to Lucozade's Fuel to Rule campaign the differences in the communication are similar to those in the car advert. Rather than selling the product on a metaphysical feeling of 'goodness', it's being sold on self-empowerment, communicating messages like "this drink makes you a more capable athlete", and so gives the consumer a physical reason to buy the drink.



Adverts such as these suggest that the most successful forms of communication are done through physical promises, which align with Danto's suggestion that when considered in the context of the will to power;

"Happiness, as far as it is relevant, is not separable from the struggle for power, for pleasure is simply the conscious reflection of the ascendancy of our strength"

This suggests that adverts that offer something physical like the Lucozade and Toyota ones are not only more successful in their communication, but also more likely to sell a product because happiness is found in physical things like power and success, not metaphysical ones. 

Sources

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dilUbkP-PI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WI9wBrscUQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMed07FEDEg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTNe4pTkg8g
http://www.taxjusticeblog.org/archive/2015/09/its_not_the_real_thing_coca-co.php#.Vjx96K7hB0s
DANTO, A. C. (1980). Nietzsche as Philosopher. Chichester: Columbia University Press.