Thanks to the Season

I want to take you on a little memory trip today. You are about six years old and it is early December. Your major goal has nothing to do with school or a sports team, but composing your letter to Santa. Christmas is right around the corner and if you don’t complete your task you may end up with socks. You wake up one morning and are greeted with the most wonderful news; school has been cancelled due to the bucks of snow that fell during the night. Now, the problem with all this is that your mother has forbidden you to go outside because “It’s just too cold.” So, she allows you to watch TV. Morning cartoons easily occupy your time, but they are broken up by a seemingly endless amount of commercials. As they come and go you begin to see items that interest you and then your mind begins to work. If you’re like me you may have composed a large part of your Christmas lists with the help of television commercials. Now, commercials are abundant throughout the year, but it seems that they increase drastically over the holidays. I remember one year, specifically, my whole list was made from watching television. I’ve never doubted the power of a well scripted commercial. Have you ever considered just how influential they are? It really hadn’t fully occurred to me until I was thinking about writing this. Especially as children, if seems that we are putty in the hands of marketers. Even if it was a commercial for a cleaning product, we were more than willing to talk our parents into it. All it took was a snappy jingle, cute puppy, or actor from one of our favorite shows to suck us in. Even now, I think, we’re just as susceptible to marketing gimmicks. Take the Toyota commercial, for example that features scenes of fields and flowers, but all the grass, clouds, sun, and other objects are a made up of groups of people.

It’s probably on of the coolest commercials I’ve seen. There was some definite creativity involved its making. Even if you have absolutely no interest in a Toyota Prius, you’ll remember the commercial. If you’re car shopping, something may trigger you to remember the commercial and, in turn, head to a Toyota dealership to see what other models they offer. And, I’m not even going to talk about the snappy jingles that drive us nuts for days thanks to a TV commercial, which of course pops into your head as you pass the item in the store. So, the power of commercials may have begun in our younger Christmas list days, but it certainly hasn’t faded in the time since.