I am a frequent web surfer…looking for new and exciting things. These things can range from products and services to marketing mediums such as video ads, audio ads, even text ads.

As you may already know, I enjoy letting others know my feelings for commercials and promotional videos. If you didn’t already know this, now you do! Since I have a marketing background my comments are usually done from a marketing standpoint.

Yesterday, while I was doing some online surfing, I found an ad that was very well thought out. There area some areas I would have suggested be changed but overall it was a well made ad. Appealing to a widespread audience due to it’s “adultesque” humor (I may have just made that word up, not too sure!). By it I mean it is based towards a more mature audience of college students and up who are of age to drink. It is a viral advertisement for the AMP energy drink, I don’t know if it was ever a commercial on the mainstream tv, or if it is just viral, but here it is:

What did you think of the ad? Did you find it as being humorous?

I would expect a very large amount of people would enjoy the ad itself but many people may not know that it is actually marketing an energy drink. It is not directly sexual in nature as it is about the morning “walk of shame”, but as you may have noticed, everyone would get an AMP energy drink when they were on their “walk of shame” early in the morning to give themselves an energy boost (because they would have lost most of their energy the night before..wink, wink, nudge, nudge). This direct product placement can be an effective way to get a product in the thoughts and minds of consumers.

Now even though I did like the ad, there was something I didn’t like about it. The products themselves, AMP energy drinks, were tough to distinguish. Only people who were familiar with the product would most likely be able to associate themselves with it. Now this is fine if the meaning of the ad was to refresh the current image of the energy drink in consumers minds, but I highly doubt this is the case as I for one have never heard of the AMP energy drink until now.

I am unsure if this specific ad was cut back a few seconds or not, but they should have had a final scene showing just the AMP energy drink itself. Doing this in an ad solidifies in the consumers mind, what the ad was about (Energy drink) and allows them to place it visually in their minds (because they will be able to clearly see the product). Doing this will make them more familiar with it and this simple familiarity can easily be the distinguishing factor between purchasing the AMP energy drink itself or one of its competitors. With fierce competition in the Energy drink market, personally thinking about such drinks as the always popular (in this area anyway) Red Bull, Monster, SoBe, or Full Throttle, something distinguishing has to be done…and this is a great start!

So what is special about this ad?

Well it’s a good example of how to market using a comedic video. Obviously, this ad is a funny or comedic energy drink ad and as such is humorous throughout the entire ad quite well. I thought the song was both written well and was played out well with the scenes throughout the ad, making it a interest keeping and entertaining ad to watch.

The ad tells a story instead of clearly just promoting a product. It’s theme doesn’t normally make you think of an energy drink either. When you think of “the walk of shame” you probably don’t think about energy drinks being associated with it. But now after watching the ad…it could be a possibility in some people minds.

And now for your educational aspect of this post:

You see, part of marketing is associating your product with what you want it to be associated with. But another part is just actually getting it into the evoked set of consumers. Your evoked set is the initial products that come to your mind you think about using in a situation. For example, my evoked set for energy drinks are are ones I can think of directly (as listed above) Red Bull, Monster, SoBe, Full Throttle and now AMP energy drink. This is in my opinion one of the biggest benefits of advertising…getting the product into the evoked set of a consumer for as specific use or time. This is beneficial in the long term for a company!

I hope you enjoyed this post, any comments would be appreciated!

To Your Success!

Mark Garland

P.S. Have you checked out my marketing training program yet? It is a training program that will help you take your current business to new heights on the Internet or help you create a profitable business for yourself from literally scratch. Thorough training materials are included on many of the most critical aspects of a successful online business. You can even learn how to create such an advertisement as above and add it to your site and to your business marketing tactics. Check it out by advancing to the complete online business training.

Tags: advertising, AMP Energy Drink, comedy energy drink ad, Energy Drink, Energy Drink Marketing, energy drink walk of shame, evoked set, Full Throttle, funny energy drink ad, humor ads, humorous ads, marketing association, Marketing the energy drink, Monster, Red Bull, SoBe, the walk of shame, walk of shame, walk of shame ad, walk of shame energy drink

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 5th, 2008 at 5:22 pm and is filed under viral ad/commercial critiques. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.