Blog #2

My initial reaction to this ad was that it was a joke. If Reebok was really going to only sell these shoes to runners and not joggers, they wouldn't make ANY money. The elements that stood out to me the most were the tone and the interesting examples used to make the point. The tone was condescending, sarcastic and rather patronizing. 

I do run, I'm not sure if I'm a jogger or a runner in these standards, but I consider myself a runner because I push myself very hard when I go for a run. I hate the treadmill, and I refuse to do cardio inside. I played travel soccer for a good portion of my adolescence and that taught me to be a runner. I had a very mixed feeling about the ad because I wasn't taking it seriously. The ad didn't really affect me at all because it seemed like it was just for fun and to get people's attention. 

The first thing I noticed after going through both chapters of the page was that it makes a lot of references to contemporary ideas and modern living styles. For instance, it talks about plasma t.v.'s and cars that know how to parallel park themselves. The ad uses comedy as one way of grabbing the audience's attention. The layout was very different and unique for a running site and I felt that the dark colors complimented the tone of the ad. 

 The values that are promoted are pushing yourself, working hard, not giving up, and doing what most people cannot and will not. The values that are discouraged are laziness, taking your body for granted and not staying in shape. 

I don't think Izumi alienates the jogging population or even marketing advantages in dividing the running population from the jogging population because I don't think the line between the two is clearly drawn. The examples he cites can be discredited. I think if anything it makes people want to try harder and reach the intensity described by Izumi as running. 

The ad appeals to the logos because it is true that a lot of the time you hear on the news that bodies are being found by runners. It can be discredited because you can always say that a runner is going for a jog, so once again the line is not clearly drawn. It appeals to the ethos because at the end it jokingly guilts you into finding the people who are going missing, as if it were more of the runners duty than the police themselves, referring to it as your civic duty. It appeals to Pathos by citing the beginning of the t.v. crime show where someone stumbles upon a dead body, putting emotional images into your head. The type of appeal strongest to me is ethos. 

I think the most effective ad in selling the product would be the first one with the we are not joggers campaign. I think it is much more motivating and inspires more people to get out and run instead of promoting a relaxed, less aggressive style of running(wouldn't he call that jogging, anyways?). The second ad makes me feel like putting on my old running shoes instead of going out and buying a brand new pair to wear while I'm out finding dead bodies!