Plastic = Family?

(If you played with Legos, clap your hands!)

(*CLAP-CLAP*)

(Great! Now with the introduction out of the way, watch this video.)

(Awesome, were on track. Time for the analysis.)

So after watching this video, you see that Lego’s advertisements focus a lot on what Lego represents. It isn’t just plastic blocks that snap together so addictlingly satisfyingly. Lego is a medium in which friendship and connection is built. This is a common theme in advertising, where products represent more than they really are. This technique is called Lovemarks.

Lovemarks create loyalty to the product beyond reason. They pretty much draw you into what they try to represent, not actually the utilities of the product. Lego, for example, sells their product for the connections it creates in family, not the plastic blocks. No person would become dedicated to Legos purely because of the plastic, they become dedicated to it because of the ideas the plastic represents.

Now that we’re done with the first analysis, ill move on to the second one because I am not satisfied with the length of this post so far. So here’s another video about a more obscure plastic product.

(This is the product that drew me in. I’ve spent, what, $520, almost $550 on these plastic models.  Well, here’s “Return of the Analysis.”)

                Here, in the case of Gunpla, the advertisers sell the product for its lovemarks again. They sell the ideas of fun with others, or personal achievement. They aren’t a high quality plastic model company, they are a company that sells achievement. They make this clear through their ads as well as a competition they host, to see who can make the best Gunpla model. I was hooked onto this product the first time I built a Gunpla, which was with my dad. So I went for the fact that it built father-son connections, not the fun of building the models.

(Well, I still buy Gunla for the satisfaction they bring. Well, time for this log to come to a stop in 3!...2!...)

So a common technique used in advertising is Lovemarks, where the advertiser makes the consumer dedicated and loyal to the product beyond logical reason. This method is commonly used to exploit people’s desires or wishes to make them dedicated not to the product, but the idea. Because who would say that plastic blocks represent their life?

(Me! And………1!)