Amazon's Big Game Commercial: Mind Reader Analysis Essay
Amazon produced an ad, “Mind Reader” starring Scarlett Johansson and Coin Jost. The add is a story of everyday life activities of the actors and how “Alexa” can read their minds. As each activity is acted out, Alexa noticed certain words or phrases, then speaks to the couple as if she reads minds. The commercial is targeted towards a broad audience but uses difference scenarios to capture the attention of the older generation who would benefit from having a device that can read their mind and assist with daily activities. This ad uses ethos, logos and pathos but tends to use pathos more as it focuses on the viewers emotions. Creating scenes that demonstrate how Alexa reads minds gives the commercial credibility. Both the music and different scenes uses ethos by capturing the audience feeling with humor and love. Overall, this commercial was effective by keeping the attention of a broad audience and providing credibility for the product it is promoting.
One way the commercial play on the emotions is in the first scene when the commercial starts off with a middle-aged couple and Alexa immediately knows what to do when the husband mentions, “It’s Game Day” (0:00 – 0:03). Alexa notices that one phrase and begins to read the mind of the couple to know what should be done. Without the request of the couple, Alexa starts to make changes in the home to stream the game, close the blinds, and chilling Rose (0:4 – 0:10). The wife questions the chilling of Rose when the husband responds, well, it’s an afternoon game (0:11 – 0:13). The beginning scene of this commercial makes a bold statement by supporting the message that Alexa can read minds. The ethos used to create credibility is the audience watching Alexa in action without the stating what to do. The shocking events that took place in this commercial, during the biggest game of the year, kept the attention of the audience. The commercial
The commercial also captures the audience attention and emotions with humor. When the couple rolls over early in the morning, and began talking to each other, Alexa quickly says, “ordering extra strength mouthwash” (0:20 –0:39). This scene things brings humor to the commercial to keep the audience attention. The credibility in the first scene followed by humor keeps the audience entertained and curious as to what will happen next.
The commercial continues to expand to the emotions of the audience by bringing a love scene in with humor. The wife begins to act out a move to her husband that is romantic and sweet, but Alexa quickly reverts to humor with the way she reads the mind of the husband. The skit that is acted out in this scene is from a move that the audience may have seen before. The suspense of what this skit and the commercial have in common keep the audience attention. The wife speaks in a soft voice, relaxing music is playing, and birds are in the background. The husband says to his wife, “I love the eye patch” and creating credibility, Alexa reads hears those ones and says, “setting a reminder to mark your own death on March 8th” (0:51 – 0:59). This turns the scene from a love story to humor and laughter of the audience.
The commercial continues to use ethos by reaching the emotions of the audience with love and humor as the couple sit in a dark living room, watching a love story, and the husband asking the wife questions about acting (1:02 – 1:04). The commercial then again turns into back into humor as Alexa plays music in the background indicating what the wife had just said to the husband was lies by playing the song by playing lyrics of a song, tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies (1:05 – 1:09). Being romantic, comical, and continuing to provide credibility to Alexa reading minds is pushing the message the Amazon is trying to present.
This commercial is extremely effective as it used real life scenes to demonstrate how Alexa could read minds. The scenes of this commercial continued to go back and forth between love and humor as well as providing creditability along the way. With each scene the audience was drawn in emotionally, whether through love or laughter, then was able to see how Alexa read the minds in each scene. As the audience watched this commercial, it is evident through each scene, that Alexa can read the minds of its audience by conversations had between a couple or group of people. Commercials should continue to bring love, humor, and credibility to remain effective and reach the audience intended. This commercial organized and presented its message in a way that capture a broad audience. Amazon did an excellent job incorporating all of those with this commercial.
