Remember when..?
Using the
ad of a sliced tomato shaped as a ketchup bottle can be trying to sell the
illusion of pure happiness and nostalgia to people of all shapes and sizes. I think this is true because of how the ad is
set up more than anything else.
By looking at the ad shown, only the tomatoes that Heinz uses in their
ketchup are fresh enough to use in their ketchup and that is what makes Heinz
the best brand of ketchup to use. In the ad, it shows a tomato sliced up and
shaped like a bottle. This is an obvious way to tell the person looking at the
ad that they are either trying to sell the tomatoes or that they are trying to
sell the ketchup that comes from these tomatoes. Since the ad is for Heinz, we
automatically assume they are trying to sell us the ketchup. The ad literally
shows a sliced up tomato shaped as a bottle of ketchup. It even still has the
green leaves and a stem on the top of it as if it was freshly picked from the
vines.
An emotion in the ad is humor. I think this because of how the tomato is
portrayed as a bottle and how it is made up of sliced up tomatoes. If someone
were to look at this picture in a magazine or something along those lines, it
would first make them take a double take because of how weird the ad looks at
first glance. After looking at the image for a short time, I think that the
person looking at it would realize that it is humorous because of what it is. Another
thing that ads humor to the picture is that at the top of the bottle, there are
leaves and a stem from the tomato which relates back to the fact that Heinz is
trying to make their product seem like the best brand of ketchup to use.
This also proves the theory that they believe that their tomatoes are
the freshest. To me, the story behind this ad is someone, whether it be someone
who works with Heinz or just another person who grows tomatoes, decided to grow
a tomato garden and they ended up being so fresh someone didn’t even have to
make the ketchup, the tomatoes could stand for themselves. On the picture, the
words say, “No one grows ketchup like Heinz.” This quote at the bottom makes
everything fit together. It proves that they think that Heinz ketchup is made
with the best and the freshest tomatoes and that they are the best ketchup
brand.
The quote at the bottom of the ad
strikes me as odd. It says that no one grows
ketchup like Heinz. We all know that ketchup has to be made and that you can’t
grow bottles of ketchup. So, why did they choose this quote? I believe that
they carefully picked this quote over anything else because it shows that they
believe in their ketchup product. It also shows that they think their brand
reigns over all the other ketchup brands making Heinz ketchup the freshest and
best tasting as if it were grown from a vine by the bottle.
The audience that this ad appeals
to, I believe, is a younger group of people. The simple fact that it looks like
a cartoon could appeal to children who would then ask their mothers or fathers
to buy them the “cool ketchup”. It could appeal to older people because they
have used this product for a long time and they could think that the ad is
refreshing and humorous or it could make them remember that they used to enjoy
the specific brand “Heinz” when they were little.
Another audience that this ad could appeal to is people who eat organic
foods. The ad doesn’t specifically say that their ketchup is organic but the
fact that the ad shows a picture of a ketchup bottle made out of slices
tomatoes and the writing on the ad says, “No one grows ketchup like Heinz.” If
a person who only ate organic food saw this, they might take the time out of
their day to look more into the ketchup to see if it really is an organic
choice or not. Even if they decide that it’s not, they can still use their
research to promote this product to other people they know that may not only
eat organic foods.
I think that this ad is trying to
sell happiness as an emotion. Like I said before, it could make an older person
reminisce about their life when they were younger and it could bring back happy
memories for them. For younger children, it could bring them happiness from
laughter if they were to see this ad posted somewhere in a magazine that their
parent reads. I think that children would find that this ad makes them happy
because it’s weird and out of the norm of what they usually see in
advertisements.
