Dissecting Commercials v.1

If you're going to get stuck watching TV here in the Philippines, I think you're going be quite surprised to find out that commercials would usually be much longer than the actual TV show that you're watching. But for us, it is now an acceptable fact of our daily TV viewing pleasure here - especially when there's a Pacquiao fight. On free TV, Pacmans fight are fully loaded with commercials from hog feeds to shampoos to energy drinks to politicians who uses public funds for their commercials to build up their images.

It could be also true to say that some of the commercials are much worth watching than the TV programs where it had appeared. I guess that's why some commercials are being actually embedded into the script of some primetime telenovelas. I bet you have noticed that one too especially that popular coffee brand.

In fact, our generation today is heavily bombarded with commercials. or advertisements. The billboards along our major thoroughfares are just one of the proof that businesses and companies are doing everything just to get hold of our precious pesos.

That is why more than ever, in this highly-commercialized world, we need to be vigilant and critical of what we see and hear from them. No matter how flashy or grandiose these commercials, we should always see whether there is still some truth in their ads and if there's an underlying message that is too dangerous for young minds to capture.

That's why I feel the need to have a special once in a blue moon segment here in my blog that I'm calling as Dissecting Commercials. A special segment that would try to look deeper in today's commercials - whether print, TV, radio or the internet.

And for my first offering, we're going to dissect the latest TVC of Globe.

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The first time I saw their ad, I knew that there's something wrong about it but I just cannot comprehend on that during that time. As you can see, that guy in blue jacket (well, blue is the 'official hue' of Globe) is being chased by what seems to me as a group of gangsters. Maybe that guy had passed by the gangsters' territory so they want to lay their hands on him.

Then he decided to 'make pa-Globe' (natawa ako sa isang ito, haha.. :D) at Aling Geena's store. I'm quite surprised that after a few seconds, lo and behold (my favorite phrase), more than 200 of his friends had suddenly appeared for help and they all retaliated by now chasing the 'guys in black' who had threatened their friend.

Then as the commercial ends, their 'leader' (I supposed it was their leader) had decided to 'make pa-Globe' too.

What's wrong with that? It kinda promotes more riots on the streets.

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This commercial had depicted a grim picture of most of us youth today: most of us are involved in riots. Lately, we have seen lots of news about teenagers engaged in deadly riots because of 'masamang tingin' or they had just passed by a gang's territory. Riots had never ended because they would always revenge against the other group for what they did.

Now through this latest commercial, we have found a new way to gather all our 'barkadas' to defend us or fight in another riot. The commercial never showed any scene where there's a riot going on. But the commercial is so suggestive. Come to think of it: how would a scene like that where hundreds of teenagers are chasing another group of teenagers end up and where the now chased teenagers have called for reinforcements?

But I guess, the catchy background music played throughout the commercial have toned down and make most of the viewers of this commercial desensitized from the underlying message it had shown. It made the whole commercial look like as something fun and cool. That's why we just accept as just one of the ordinary deceptive commercials we see everyday.

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Photo taken from here.