Friday, September 25, 2009

Proactiv Solutions

If you want to get rid of acne, you need to use Proactiv Solutions--everybody knows that. Why? Because Proactiv advertisements are pure genius. A key to their advertisement is an effective appeal to the right audience.

Getting on the Proactiv website is like diving into pool beautiful people. You are graced with endless pictures of actresses, of dancers, and of Miss America. These bombshells are there to say "You can look like me if you use Proactiv!" The advertisement is appealing not to beautiful people, but people who want to be beautiful. Proactiv realizes that they can appeal to these people's emotions more than those of others. Realizing this increases their productivity because they draw the interest of the right people. All someone has to do is use the three step treatment and they will be beautiful.

Another interesting point is that the advertisement seems to focus more on females. Four out of the five celebrity endorsements on the home page are females. Girls tend to care about how they look more than boys, therefore, they are the ones that will spend more money on skin care. Studies have also shown that women also tend to have acne longer in their life as well. In their 40's, over 26% of women and only 12% of men had acne. By focusing their advertisement on women Proactiv is appealing to a bigger market and increasing their profit.

Lastly, Proactiv is clearly focusing their advertisement on white people. Every celebrity endorsement, and all but one of the "before and after" examples are Caucasian. In the United States the average white has a higher income than the average African-American or Hispanic. Proactiv appeals mainly to whites because they are the people with the most money. Once again, they are focusing on the audience that will give them the highest profit.

Proactiv Solutions has success because they capture the right audience in their advertisement. Specifically, they appeal to white females that want to be beautiful. Although they capture many other audiences who benefit from the product, they have pinpointed the key users of Proactiv. This appeal makes their advertisements successful.

2 comments:

  1. This is a really good analysis of the audiences of Proactiv Solutions. You looked at it from lots of different perspectives like gender appeals and cultural appeals. You not only explained who the audiences are of Proactiv, but also why it appeals and captures the attention of those particular groups. I was wondering though if you think Proactive is directed to a specific age group of people or if it is just directed to those groups as a whole. Are the advertisements more focused to teenagers or just to all female caucasians?

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  2. Great job! You had great word choice and figurative language in describing the effects of Proactiv's advertisements. I really liked the second paragraph (i.e. "diving into a pool of beautiful people"). And interesting observations, especially in referring to other sources, like the study on acne in older people. Nice job in analyzing the multifaceted aspects of an argument's audience.

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