2021 superbowl ad - Rocket Mortgage - Zoe Lemos

                                                                                                                                      Lemos

  The ad I chose was for Rocket Mortgage Super Bowl 2021 commercial. Before looking at the colors and the placement of everything in the ad, you can tell that it’s promoting having security. When I was watching the commercial I realized that I didn't actually know what they were offering. This makes me assume that the people who are buying what they are offering have a problem that they need to solve. Which makes it so that they are aware of what they need which also makes me have assumptions about age.They show a problem and then show how to solve the problem. This makes me assume that their customers are within a certain age bracket but I’m going to touch on that later. Aside from the direct meaning of the ad I first noticed that the ad is full of very dull and muted colors. Then the second time I watched I noticed that there were red accents in almost every shot. The bright red also corresponds with their logo. As they go through the scenarios of him showing why “being pretty sure” isn’t good enough there is almost always pop or red in the scene, for example, the strawberries, the mushroom, the backpack or parachute, the gate that the car broke, the accents on their app at the end and on the NFL logo, the sold house sign. I think that the muted colors with the red color also showed stability and maturity. While brighter colors are more associated with childlikeness and youthfulness the ad wanted to showcase that they are mature. The more muted colors throughout the ad also made the bright screen of the phone pop at the end. It quite literally lit up their little world within the ad. The color red provided an overall aesthetic that was carried out throughout the ad which attached all of the scenarios back to the main point. I’m assuming that Rocket Mortgage has something to do with Financial security when going into homeownership, the color red is also associated with the big SOLD sticker that gets stuck on the sign outside of houses for sale. The big red SOLD letters I think offer a sense of stability and security which they hope will be associated with what they are offering.The muted colors were also being worn by the customers, which I found interesting. There were vocational colors that popped a little but no primary colors were bright. The customers in the ad were wearing very plain and average clothing, nothing was overly fashionable and nothing stood out. I think the reason for this is because the “customers” aren’t technically customers yet. They were showing the before you’re a customer. The muted colors also signify the “average-ness” of the customers. They look like the typical middle-class family, they’re straight, they have two kids which is the cookie-cutter appearance for a suburban household. I think that this could target two audiences. The first being other families who are similar or people who strictly aren’t. I think they want to say “hey, if this family trusts us, so can you”. They might have decided on an African American family because their target audience is African Americans and/or to say “we’re not just for suburban white people” and show that they have progressive thinking. This is assuming that every decision was done with a purpose. Going back to the fact that this is a super bowl ad for 2021 and it is Kansas and Florida which are both red states. I think might have been one of the reasons to use a straight couple and to use such a picture-perfect suburban family (as well as using to get their target audience) I also think that people are aware that a lot of Republicans (not all) tend to idealize suburban families. This ad also uses a fair amount of celebrity pop-ups. Because this ad is in the Superbowl this makes a lot of sense as Superbowl ads are known to be quite expensive, have celebrities, and be a bit longer than the normal ad. They used one actor/athlete and another wrestler/actor. Adding the athlete makes sense based on the people watching were watching a football game. however, I also got another assumption based on the famous people they picked to feature in this ad. I think that their audience is probably older millennials and the generation above them. Both of the main celebrities that were featured were born in the 1960s which means that the younger generation probably won’t know who they are beside someone with a familiar face. The other celebrity that was featured was Liza Koshy, she was featured for the shortest amount of time and I think that also signifies that millennials are part of their audience but not their main target audience. I think they might have added her in the ad for younger millennials to maybe notice the ad and have it in the back of their head. I think that they also might have had a google pixel sponsor which isn’t a super deep observation, they just used the phone in a few shots. They also used this dark green lighting in one of these scenes, I think dark green lighting is tended to be associated with things that are underground like gross greenrooms, and illegal boxing rings. There is also a scene where one of the celebrities is driving a car and says “I think we’ll make it“ while driving off a bridge to another bridge.They get pretty close to the other side of the bridge but it is clear that they would not make it.There is a scene where he says “I’m pretty sure these hornets aren’t the murderous type” and then the hornets' nest falls on the customer's head. They immerse you in these scenarios, there are just enough of them to make you almost forget about why you are watching the commercial. The hornets' nest is this gross tan color and it falls on the customer's head and then quickly pans to the side moving on to the next scenario. I think the fact that each scene is ended in such chaos and abruption, showing that all of these scenarios would be horrible and it’s chaos. It says “you don’t want to go through this chaos right?”. It ends with the car scene with them screaming and then it goes back to them in real life. Screaming because they went through all of the scenarios in their head. It ends with the guy taking out his phone and showing them the app, after which a cut scene comes out where they put a sold sign on the house and one of the celebrities in the bad scenarios shows up and they quickly avoid him. The commercial is saying “look at all the trouble you saved when using our app”. Also, this house that they bought is a suburban neighborhood, the house is quite plain this light grey house added flowers to make it look nice but the flowers don’t overpower the house making it overly luxurious. My first thought was “yeah that looks like a house”. I think the overall emotion that this ad wanted to get across was relief. They didn't show bright colors of excitement and joy they showed colors they showed colors that show stability.