For this blog post, I decided to look at an ad that just recently started airing. The ad serves a dual purpose, it is advertising for American Express using Conan O'Brien as a spokesperson while also promoting Conan's new show which airs tomorrow. In the ad, Conan is shown traveling around India, looking for fine silk, buying the silk, dying it, and then hanging it up. Conan speaks perfect (to the common English-speaking viewer) Hindi throughout the commercial. It is not known what the silk is for until the very end, when it is shown that it is for curtains for a show Conan is doing. A narrator then says "If you're really serious about your entertainment, every detail counts."
Here is the ad:
This ad uses the appeal of autonomy/escape. This appeal is designed to capitalize on the viewer's design to be an individual and to "escape" from the drudgery and monotony of the world around them. Advertisements use it by showing the viewer that by doing or buying the thing that is advertised, they will become autonomous and escape.
In the case of this ad, it focuses on the refinement of taste. Conan is portrayed as having really particular, refined, fancy tastes in his silk for the curtains. He goes to great lengths to create them in the narrative of the ad, and the final product is marveled on by many, many people. With the bit of narration at the end it really emphasizes that those with refined, individual tastes use the American Express card and watch Conan's show. This makes people feel like to become autonomous and escape from the lower ranks, they too should use American Express cards.
