The Local Business

In this course we have discussed advertising by enormous corporations that have a high stake in the media Americans consume on a daily basis. However, I want to focus this post on commercials on a more local, insulated level. Ultimately commercials all have the same goal: to cause consumers to buy their products. In all scales of advertising, companies want to create brand loyalty for their consumers. In the 21st century, advertising giants tend to pursue this by promoting a lifestyle or a set of emotions rather than a product. As a result of huge advertising budgets and extensive market reach, these companies have the ability to target particular subsets of the population and create ads that will jive mesh with the lifestyle that demographic idealizes. Thus, these ads do not necessarily have to be as informative as they need to be clever or carefully planned. What, then, about local companies, whose markets reach a small, geographically predetermined section of the population? Because of their limited advertising budget and their limited audience, these companies often focus more on down to earth, informative presentations of their businesses. The small size of the companies also means they are more concerned about spreading information about their companies, rather than spreading feelings like already established corporate giants try to do. However, this informational style utilized out of necessity by many small businesses also promotes a way of life: simple, homey, old-fashioned, small-town American. 

     One of my favorite youtube channels is the Rhett and Link channel. Rhett and Link are two comedians from North Carolina who began on youtube by making commercials for local businesses recommended to them by people across the country. While Rhett and Link intentionally make the commercials ridiculous, the youtube community has greeted them with almost unanimous praise. Here are a couple of their commercials: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnOyMSEWNTs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3v4nC3iuMo&feature=relmfu

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3HnFfS9iSI&feature=relmfu

These commercials were clearly very low budget. They are all shot on facility at the stores. They are all rather quirky and unorthodox. Yet they all have more than 100,000 views on youtube, and the Red House commercial has over 2.5 millions views. All of these stores are now internet celebrities and have benefited greatly from the publicity (here is an article talking about the sudden celebrity status of the Red House after the commercial was released: http://www.furnituretoday.com/article/529177-Red_House_Furniture_goes_viral.php). Personally, I find all of them really entertaining, and they all make me want to go to those stores. Why are they so successful as local commercials? First and foremost, Rhett and Link give all these businesses identities. The Red House is the place where people of all races get along. The Discount Seafood Warehouse is where you can find clean, fresh, cheap seafood variety. Bobby Denning furniture is where you can say goodbye to high prices. These commercials are also funny. They do a really effective job at keeping the watcher entertained, and however much their intention is to poke fun at the traditional local commercial and to poke fun at the businesses themselves, these commercials generate immense amounts of (good) publicity for the target businesses. And while they fall into the more "informative" category versus the more "thematic"category often used by bigger businesses, they still manage to produce a brand identity. If I were a local businesses, I would pray Rhett and Link chose me for my next local commercial.