eTrade baby makes us laugh again

Super bowl commercials are most definitely a highlight of the new year. I’m sure there’s some people out there that watch the super bowl simply for the new commercials! One commercial that stood out for me in particular was the eTrade baby and cat. In general, the rhetorical situation for all commercials or ads is to simply sell a product. The particular product eTrade is trying to sell is the fact that they have good rates for buying investments of stock online. The super bowl audience is most likely sports fans, families, and party people. However, the audience for this commercial is people planning to invest in stocks, but wish to do it online. The context for this commercial is light-hearted and humorous because the super bowl, for the most part, is not a serious matter. The premise of super bowl is having a good time with friends and family, and being able to laugh and smile about the good things. This is a very important aspect for the advertisers to take into consideration because light-hearted commercials make people want to watch it. The humor concept is more powerful because it makes people want to watch and listen. Therefore, the people will watch the baby give advice about the eTrade online products. It was very smart for the writers of the commercial to use a baby again to depict the information about eTrade because babies are almost always considered cute and adorable. These aspects make the public stop to watch the baby “talk.” Also, the eTrade baby is known for saying humorous things, so that will make the people want to watch it. This time however, there is a cat in the commercial; a cute cat at that! What makes this commercial even funnier is the fact that the cat keeps interrupting the eTrade baby with its sneezes. For some reason, people seem to laugh at the silly things cats do. It must be a human thing to laugh when animals do things that we find human (such as sneezing). Don’t get me wrong, I laughed at the commercial too! I love the eTrade baby because the commercials are always entertaining. I realized however that I didn’t really realize what the eTrade baby was pressing to sell until I looked up what eTrade actually was. If an advertisement has either animals or babies in it, people will stop to listen because they are aesthetically pleasing. This commercial also appeals to people’s needs in Maslow’s heiarchy of needs in the esteem needs portion because buying stocks can lead to power and wealth. There was little text in this commercial, but text wasn’t needed because this was a complete visual ad. I really enjoyed this commercial!