It’s more than just batteries

The Duracell battery company created a powerful commercial telling the story of a father who was deployed and how he used a teddy bear to stay close to his daughter. The commercial starts out by showing a clip of the dad recording his voice into the bear, but we do not know what he recorded until the daughter receives the bear. She opens the box, squeezes it, and her dads voice says, “ I love you baby girl”. The next few clips show the daughter taking the bear everywhere: to school, to play with her in the backyard, and she even takes it to bed with her at night. She squeezes the bear to hear her dads voice several times throughout the commercial. She then hears her dads voice coming from the kitchen and she grabs her bear and runs to it, only to realize that her dad is not there, but is video messaging in on the computer. The daughter gets sad and walks away but throws her bear in the garbage, realizing that the message inside the bear is now almost meaningless because her dad is not there. The final scene shows her sitting at a table with the bear across from her and she hears the “ I love you baby girl” from behind her. She turns around and her dad is finally home from deployment.

The commercial focuses not on the product, but more on telling an emotional story that includes sadness and joy while reeling in the customer with their choice of music, visual elements, and audience. This commercial used emotion to a strong advantage in their commercial. From seeing the sadness of the girl missing her dad, getting false hope and anger of the fact that he is not home, to them finally being reunited at the end. The emotions come into play also in the parent’s side. The pain of the dad not being able to see his family or the sadness of the mom who misses her husband. The emotion was present in this advertisement to an extent to where you were not only watching them going through their feelings, but the viewers were also tied in and feeling their pain as well. This commercial is effective in appealing to the emotions of the viewer by pulling them into the story of this family and getting them involved in it. Although the focus of the commercial was not directly showing the batteries, the emotional appeal of the story creates a positive view for the company and shows the consumers that Duracell cares about military families.

Another important aspect of making good commercials and pulling in customers is the music and sounds that are evident in the commercial. In this specific ad, “ Waiting” by Alice Boman is playing and throughout the commercial it is repeating the phrases “ I want you more than I need you” and “ I need you so bad…are you coming back?” The song is slow paced and works well with the flow of the advertisement while fading in and out at times to either hear the music or to hear the people speaking. The song was chosen to work directly with the daughter in the commercial and her emotions with her dad being gone. The song fades in and out at important parts of the advertisement to bring emotion to key parts such as when she’s playing or bringing the bear with her everywhere or realizes that her dad is not actually home.

The bear that the daughter received was her dad’s voice saying, “ I love you baby girl”, which are words that are very prominent throughout this commercial. The “ I love you baby girl” phrase is powerful for any dad to say to his kids. The voice inside the teddy bear was a successful coping mechanism for her, and with the help of Duracell batteries, she can still hear her dad’s voice even if he isn’t there. However, saying it repeatedly and not actually demonstrating it is what becomes frustrating, but adding these small details such as repeating the “ I love you baby girl” draws people in to the commercial. The repetition places a big factor also by drawing attention to smaller details and draw interest in the advertisement. Another key audio aspect of this advertisement is the beginning when the dad is recording his voice on the bear, you can hear the helicopters and noises of the people around the area that he is in. It shows you that he is deployed and turning the setting into some place where there is an active war happening.

Along with the audio effects, the writers of this commercial fit in visual effects. There are times during the clips where the video is slowed down to show importance or meaning behind it. For example, the scene where the little girl is jumping on the trampoline with the new teddy bear she just got, is a way to show how important the bear just became to the daughter. When the dad comes home at the end of the ad, the video shows her running up to him slower than normal, just to hang on to the effect and the emotion a little longer.

This commercial has a very large target audience, which includes just about everyone who watches it: parents, children, but also brings in the connection with army families who have loved ones who are deployed. The advertisement made a connection with those people and showed others what it is like to have deployed family members. The creators of this advertisement are trying to bring out the emotional side of the audience and trying to get them tied in so that they will ultimately buy Duracell’s batteries, which it ended up being very effective. They did not show their batteries in every scene or telling us to go buy their batteries, but instead they preyed on our emotions while hinting at their batteries at the beginning and the end of the commercial. They gave us a story to get us involved and wreck our hearts while convincing us to buy their batteries and support army families.

At the very end of the advertisement, Duracell puts there logo up on the screen and it say’s “ The ones you trust are always there”. This family trusted these batteries in this teddy bear to relay the dads message to the daughter, so why can’t we trust them to power our television remote? They showed us an ongoing problem and asked people to help by buying batteries to support families with deployed loved ones.

This advertisement is by far one of my favorite commercials I’ve seen, and it makes it even more emotional knowing this it is based off a true story of a family who has a dad who is deployed. It did an amazing job of convincing me to dig deeper than the fact that it’s just batteries, but also the fact that buying them from Duracell will support local military families. They are making a connection between you, your emotions, and the batteries. Their slogan, “ The ones you trust are always there”, represent the batteries and the family all together by bridging that connection between trusting something as simple as batteries to help keep the family together.