Hannah Livernois

Jared Grogan

English 1020

October 2, 2011

Hamsters versus Robots

     In a recent study done by A.C. Nielsen Company, Americans watch 250 billion hours of TV a year; Americans spend nine years of their lives watching television, which is four hours of television a day. Naturally, companies want to be a part of that chunk in their day. However, young adults tend to mute the television during commercials, thus being a waste of money for the company. Commercials need to be trendy and eye catching to attract television watchers to turn the volume up. Trendiness or fads are popular with young adults and for a company to be able to relate to such cultural forces is a strong marketing tool.

     For example, with the Kia Soul commercial, the company uses other popular trends to show that their car is the one to buy. In this commercial, Kia Motors implies that the popular thing to do is buy the Soul and demonstrate such through rhetorical strategies.

     When first watching the commercial, you are under the impression that you are watching a video game commercial, such as a possible new Halo game with the use of robots. The male audience is immediately drawn in, following the robots in their natural habitat. You see nothing more than a Kia Soul, the product being advertised. But driving the car, the audience sees Hamsters.  They are, however, not just your ordinary everyday hamsters.  The furry hamsters are dressed up like humans. Finally, the commercial concludes with both hamsters and robots doing the shuffle from the popular LMFAO song “Party Rock Anthem”.

     With the use of Ethos, Kia motors appeals to the young adults sense of style or the constant drive to always have the latest fads. The use of the halo type situations is provided for the male audience. Halo is a popular video among the young adult crowd these days. Often people wait days in line until a midnight sale to obtain the latest copy of the game and usually race home to have it beaten by sunrise. Logically, Kia motors will do almost anything to draw the male crowd in, even reference one of the current generations favorite past-times, video games.

     With the introduction of the car, you are watching cute, furry hamsters driving it. A common interest for the female crowd of this age bracket is cute furry animals completing normal tasks such that a human would do. The personification of hamsters translates to the women population as cute and adorable, and thus associating that with the car, because the average female car buyer wants a cute, adorable car.

     Kia motors also uses exigence to convey its claim of the need to purchase the Soul. They already appeal to the emotions with the use of other trendy items, such as video games and music as mentioned earlier, so naturally they have the consumer hooked, thus the addition of exigence into the ad. Exigence is a pressing problem in the world that is waiting to be fixed.  Kia Motors shows a common problem among young adults, which is having a reliable car to get them to and from work in a timely manner. But Kia chooses to solve this problem with introducing a trendy vehicle. The Kia Soul is a square vehicle that is presented at an affordable cost for the new college graduates.  

     However, when cross comparing car ads, why does it seem that Kia Motors is strictly targeting young adults? Why doesn’t Ford Motor Company use this approach? The Ford Motor Company targets growing families as their prime audience. Almost every commercial produced by the Ford Motor Company has a family featured. A typical commercial starts out with a mother driving her children to soccer practice, a common task that you find the all American mother doing. Ford’s pitch is to show that all American moms drive Fords.  Recently, they have been using the testimonial approach to bring in consumers with real customers saying this was the best car they have ever purchased. But the question rises as to why Kia Motors is strictly targeting young adults?  Some argue that Kia Motors targets a general audience, but the commercial is only seen on MTV or TeenNick, which are young adult channels. Kia Motors provides affordable cars, ideal for the recent college graduate.

     Kia uses a prime market considering the other car companies target people at different stages in their lives. Ford targets the growing family, Chrysler targets the parents whose kids are all out of the house and in need of change. Kia targets the young adults to grow their consumer base because in the American society it is common to see people drive one company their whole lives because they don’t like change.  Therefore, theoretically once you drive a Kia, you will drive nothing else.

     With the use of rhetorical strategies, such as ethos and exigence, Kia Motors attempts to lure in a whole new group of people looking for the next cutting edge item. With the young adults in mind, they use everything from popular music to popular video games to bait new consumers into their company to buy their product, the Kia Soul.

Works Cited:

Kia Motors: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zJWA3Vo6TU

Ford Motor Company: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frzwyS-rM2I