“Image is Everything”

“Thirst is Everything, Image is Nothing” we have all seen this slogan slapped on to every one of Sprite’s products for last couple of months. But what does it mean? Does it mean that someone at a Pepsi convention should order a Sprite, a Coke product, just cause they like the taste? Of course not, cause if they did they would get kicked out at the very least. Advertisers use this sort of slogan to catch your attention, and then they have you right where they want. In the most recent Sprite commercials that feature Grant Hill of the Detroit Pistons, they show us that the reason why we would have a Sprite is just for the taste of it. But if this was all they are trying to get across to us wouldn’t it be cheaper and wiser to use a 6 dollar per hour kid rather than a guy that won’t step foot in a place for less that a 100 grand. Why would they make a commercial that contradicts itself? The reason an advertisement would contradict itself like this is for one reason only, to try and fool our wants and desires into becoming our needs.

Our needs are simply something that is a necessity for us to survive, such as food and water. We all know we couldn’t go long without these simple yet essential things. While our wants and desires for things such as five star restaurants and luxury cars. Which by no means are needed to survive, but just make living all the more fun. Advertisers are masters on how to exploit our desires, and to make us believe that they are our needs. And it is by no means is this easy or cheap for a commercial to be able to do. To be able to make us believe that our life would, in some way, be better with this product by our side.

Sprite’s commercial that plays every time you blindly surf the television channels are all about image. The commercial that is shown the most, features Grant Hill drinking a Sprite. While they state in the back round and print on the screen, “Thirst Is Everything, Image Is Nothing”. When I first saw this I was thinking, “cool a great drink that anyone can have and not look out of place”. But the more I thought about it and saw the commercial time and time again a couple things stuck in my head. First of all that only two words are emphasized, and are in all caps on the commercial. Know which ones? Yeah you got it THIRST and IMAGE, for the reason that these are the two that they want you to remember. Thirst so that when you’re thirsty you’ll think of Sprite as the only one that can get the job done. Again going back to your needs, and making you believe that Sprite is a necessity for your survival. And Image so you know you’ll look good while you’re drinking it, but isn’t this going against the “Image is nothing”? I thought it was, so I watched it again, and I noticed something else, when they say those two words on television they increase in the volume, to emphasize them again more than all the others. But it doesn’t end here they still have Hill in the commercial downing a 20 oz. after what we believe to be the hardest game of his life. Why you ask, because he is spose to be the average basketball player, on any given day. But if this were true, and he was an average player, then we would all be on a pro team making more money than we can count. But this isn’t true so we just drink it with the hopes that if it helped Hill it can help us too.

The commercial tries to play towards our masculinity, according to the definition supplied by Diane Barthel. She says that advertisers use “power/ precision/ performance/ runs as a theme throughout advertising to men”(p.123). Now who could deny that Grant Hill is a display of this, entire if not the perfect examples. But why would Sprite use this catchy phrase if what they wanted to say what almost the exact opposite. That image is everything; well the only reason I came up with was that they wanted to play to one of your necessities. You have to drink to survive, if not we all know what happens, we would wither up and die. But if they can make us believe, if only for a second, that we can satisfy that need better over any other drink with Sprite, and that in essence we have to have some in order to survive. Then advertisers have earned their money, because then I can’t possible think of a reason not to go out and buy some.

Sprite has been around for many years and will continue to be only by coming up with these tricky and ingenious commercials to sell their product. Coming up with different ways to play to our need to be excepted in a higher group, to survive or our desire to feel dominance above others. But if the only way they have to go about this is to spend millions in fancy commercial to tells us things that we don’t even realize at first. Then we should be seeing a bunch more of flashy and ingenuous ways to make us want things being shown between our favorite shows. All of them are showing us a better life with a “sprite” or any other product they might be selling. And even if this only gets through to a fraction of the people, their job is done. Because that fraction is still hundreds of thousands of people buying their product.

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