Saturday, September 26, 2009

Where's the WD40?

To Bourdieu, a habitus is a set of dispositions and preferences we share as social subjects that are related to class position, education, and social standing (60). It doesn't take a genius to figure out how and why ad agencies would want to play into such a theory--relating a product to a certain desired status can be incredibly effective. The consumer (ideally) will associate the product, and purchasing it, with whatever positive class, level of education, or social standing (s)he desires.


The recent Svedka vodka campaign has done an excellent job of playing into this theory. Setting the timeline in the future (2033), the "femme bot" Svedka girl is placed next to a series of controversial captions, like: "The Repornification Bill has restored Times Square to its old, sleazy self.", "the choice of the stem-cell baby boomer generation," and as pictured below, "make your next trophy wife 100% titanium."


Finally, in a futuristic font, we see the tagline: "Svedka, voted #1 vodka of 2033." It's not an incredibly highly regarded vodka at present--Svedka is classy booze to people with tiny budgets, but the ad suggests that it will be considered top shelf in the future. Further, the implication is that being a Svedka drinker now means that you're ahead of the times, and that in a number of years, others will join your level of intelligence for being ahead of the curve, and presumably you'll have a high social standing for being awesome before everyone else was merely a follower.


It's an interesting concept, and based on what I've casually observed at bars and parties in the past year, a successful one thus far.


1 comment:

  1. i think this ad is really effective. I think its innovative and creative for a vodka ad. I think that the graphics reflect the tone and the representation they were going for.

    ReplyDelete