TOW #20 Visual

Reading goal: understand what makes the advertisement effective
Writing goal: effectively analyze examples to show how they contribute to the overall purpose

     This year while watching the winter Olympics, I discovered this advertisement for General Electric, and I think it's probably one of the most effective ads I've seen in a long time. The advertisement is called "Childlike Imagination - What My Mom Does at GE". It features a little girl describing in childlike terms what her mother makes at work, exploring some of what GE does through the eyes of a child. It is also unique as an advertisement because its purpose is slightly different than most; this ad is not trying to get the audience to buy something. Rather, the advertisement serves to promote General Electric to the wider public audience to generate interest in and support for what they are doing. It does this by explaining and emphasizing the imagination of what GE creates.

      The main strategy behind this advertisement is its child's perspective, as the whole premise of the ad is the comparison of "childlike imagination" to the imagination of GE. The voice of the little girl who narrates the video conveys a sense of innocence and wonder, associating those qualities with the company in the minds of the audience. The whimsical images which are simultaneously described by the little girl and pictured on the screen contribute to this childlike view of the technology GE develops. For example, the images of planes with wings like birds and trees that walk around and wave to trains are fantastical and appealing, yet they represent the real technology that GE actually develops. GE's use of the child's view is effective because the audience understands that what the child describes is not literally true but is an imaginative interpretation. Trees are not literally friends with trains and actual hospitals do not fit in your hand as described in the ad, but using this perspective to show how they develop environmentally friendly trains and hand-held medical resource devices is more imaginative and appeals to the audience. 

     Another strategy the ad uses is its environmental message. GE emphasizes their environmentally-friendly work by specifically highlighting their environmentally-friendly trains, but also implicitly by including naturalistic themed images. For example, the scenes of the moon powering the underwater turbines, the planes flying on birds wings through the clouds, and the little girl sitting among the waving trees associate GE technology with nature and help them appear environmentally friendly. This helps boost GE's ethos as a company by showing that it cares about the environment, which would help promote the company to a wider audience. 

     This ad also personally appealed to me and effectively appeals to an audience of mothers and daughters by having a little girl talk about her mom. The ad reinforces the idea that women are just as valuable in the areas of engineering and technology as men, and it helps to promote the company by showing that GE embraces that. 

     Overall the advertisement is artfully crafted and visually appealing. It effectively promotes General Electric to a wider public audience by emphasizing the childlike imagination of the company.