Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Berlitz (Germany)

The advertisement tells the story of a guy who works for the coast guard. His superior wants him to take over the control panel in order to watch out for any kind of threat or dangerous situation. Then, all of a sudden, a submarine calls out for help but the subordinate of the watch tower doesn’t even know where the voice is coming from and he acts like someone who’s totally lost. Then he starts communicating with the submarine that is in need of assistance, but the guy has poor English and can’t communicate properly with the submarine that’s in distress. The whole advertisement is somewhat humorous from all points of view, but for the guy who was in danger, it wasn’t funny at all. There’s also a song at the end which hides a meaning of some kind. It shows us that when speaking with someone else, you need to be at the same level of understanding and speaking to be able to act properly with the situation. There are words in the advertisement but they are only shown at the end by being synchronized with the song. Not only do they give meaning to the advertisement but they also provide the viewers answers on how to resolve the matter occuring in this video. The target audience is people who need good English to do their work properly or simply people who need to improve their English. It’s pretty obvious that they are showing a message to learn English, but personnally we didn’t get affected by it because we’re already pretty good in English. People weak in English would certainly be affected by the advertisement because they probably wouldn't want to be in the same situation.

Alexandre
Michaël

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