American Greetings: “Toughest Job in the World” Commercial
The first time I saw this ad was on television several
months ago. A news channel was doing a
story on it. I remember immediately
being drawn to it because I’ve been a Human Resource professional for the past
ten years and interviewing has always been a solid seventy percent of my job
scoop and daily duties. Needless to say,
I am always fascinated by how others conduct interviews and the applicant’s overall
thought process. This commercial was
made by a Boston advertising agency for American Greetings. If you watch the commercial, you would never
think that it is an advertisement for the American Greetings company because
it’s based on a fake job posting which was posted on real newspaper and
online. They were looking for an
Operations Director. The job requirements
seemed pretty intense to say the least; and still there were twenty-four
applicants. Some of the requirements
included one hundred and thirty five hours per week, and the work load would
increase on special holidays like Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years. It didn’t offer any paid time off such as
vacation etc. Again, pretty brutal
right? The ad displays Ethos in that the
person conducting the interview seemed pretty adamant with his requests and
certainly came across as professional.
So while the expectations for the job seemed unreasonable, viewers and
interviewers believed him. We can
definitely see pathos in the advertisement when the interviewer tells the
interviewees “what would you do if I told you there is someone that already does
this job, in fact there are billions of people that currently have this
job”. The reaction that everyone had was
mutual when learning that he was referring to moms all over the world. That’s where us as consumers could
relate. Such a great commercial, only to
remind us to say thank you to mom and send mom a card. I don’t believe that logos was displayed as
obvious as pathos. It didn’t include any
hard-core statistics other than the ones we are all familiar with; moms do a
lot.
Hallmark: “Proud Mom” Commercial
It just so happens that American Greetings is a competitor
of Hallmark as Hallmark is the largest manufacturer of greeting cards in the
United States. Before researching for
this blog assignment, I don’t remember ever seeing an ad for Hallmark; however,
when I think of a card for a special occasion, I always think Hallmark. Clearly they’ve made their mark, even if
covertly . Like American Greetings, they
have a common theme in their ads; Moms.
The Hallmark ad tells you the story of a daughter who gets accepted to
college and excitedly tells her mother but there’s the question of “how can we
afford this?” They go on to show that a
mother does whatever she has to do for her child and in this case it means having
two jobs and still coming home to attend to normal day-to-day house
duties. The daughter shows her gratitude
by giving her mom a card from Hallmark and it reads “I love you” on the
inside. At that moment, all of the
sacrifices that mom has been doing for her daughter all become worth it. A lot like the American Greetings commercial,
ethos and pathos were clearly displayed.
A mom with two jobs who’s determined to get her daughter into the best
college is pretty believable (ethos) and of course the emotional aspect of the
commercial doesn’t go unnoticed. Once
again, I did not really catch logos in this ad.
But let me ask you this … How many of you want to call your mom to thank
her for all that she’s done?
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