Advertising Portfolio
Foot Locker
The retail ad pictured below is from Foot Locker’s campaign, Horse with Harden. A retail ad is a product advertisement that is placed by retailers. In this case, Foot Locker had a lot of these advertisements in their stores in 2014. The product that they are selling in this ad happens to be a celebrity by the name of James Harden, an NBA player on the Houston Rockets team. In the ad, Harden is holding a basketball and is staring at all of those who view the ad.
At first glance, it is obvious that the ad has an emotional appeal; the ad emphasizes a social satisfaction that will be fulfilled by purchasing the product. As mentioned before, Harden is the product that the viewers want to “purchase.” Essentially, with this ad, there is social satisfaction by getting the chance to “Horse with Harden.” Furthermore, the emotional appeal has a theme of professional success. Getting to meet James Harden and have a chance at being on the court with him is a true honor that should be praised. Not everyone will have that opportunity, so one should be proud of that achievement.
First and foremost, Foot Locker’s advertisement utilizes figurative language to capture the audience’s attention right away. Through the phrase “Horse with Harden,” one can see the usage of repetition of consonant sounds in neighboring words, which is commonly referred to as alliteration. The usage of alliteration is very important because it makes the phrase easier for the viewers to remember. Another form of figurative language that is less noticeable due to the small font is a parallelism. Parallelisms are repetitions in the pattern of phrases. With this ad specifically, Foot Locker repeats the word grab by saying, “Grab a ball. Grab your phone.” These forms of figurative language can be attributed to the concept of puffery, which is elegant but largely meaningless language.
Aside from the figurative language, this ad also exercises the use of puffery by using double meanings. This means that one word simply has two different meanings. For example, the average person might think that “horse” is referring to a phrase known to many, “horsing around.” This might have the reader think that they get a chance to fool around with Harden by playing basketball informally. Now, those who are familiar with basketball terms, seeing as though James Harden is a basketball player, would know that “horse” has a completely opposite meaning. “Horse” is actually a common basketball game that many enjoy playing. This changes the entire dynamic, because “Horse” is a game that constitutes one winner. With that being said, we are left to wonder what one would win if they beat Harden at a game of “Horse.”
On the other hand, this advertisement utilizes another common form of language in advertising, which is disinformation. Disinformation refers to deliberately misleading language that attempts to lead persons to unwarranted conclusions. This advertisement encompasses disinformation by trading on a person’s celebrity or expertise in some field and include celebrity and professional endorsements, or commonly known as an appeal to authority. This is a very powerful choice by Foot Locker because it attracts not only its customers, but
basketball players and fans of James Harden. According to Twitchell (p.213), “You are famous for what you endorse while doing what you did that used to be what made you famous.” Here, Twitchell is referring to Michael Jordan’s role in advertising due to his success as a basketball player. The same concept applies to James Harden. He is famous for being a basketball player and Foot Locker utilizes him as an endorsement, as well as uses him in a way that the consumers can actually interact with him, which is playing a basketball game. These are very clever techniques used by many corporations.
In conclusion, it is the language in this ad that plays a huge role. The alliteration and parallelism helps the viewer remember what the ad is trying to “sell.” Also, the appeal to authority by using James Harden captures the viewer’s attention in hopes of meeting him.