high or low?

This Heineken television commercial a few days ago and is a strong example of an advertisement with high context. The commercial first shows a group of ladies walking to a walk-in closet filled with clothes and shoes and proceed to show them screaming and squealing excitedly to show the importance fashionable items such as this are to women. While screaming, shouts can be heard from the room near the ladies. The camera switched to the walk-in refrigerator filled with Heineken bottles with a group of men shouting and reacting in the exact same way as the ladies had when they first entered the walk-in closet. Without saying anything in words or verbally, the commercial had successfully planted the idea of how the Heineken beer is important and loved by guys, just as much as how ladies love their shoes and clothes.

I find commercials and advertisements such as this a whole lot more eye catching and memorable as compared to low context advertisements, such as the ones Dell frequently advertise on Today newspaper. In fact, most electronic goods, especially computers, follow the low context way of advertising their computes, showing only specifications and price of the advertised products with barely any form of ‘extra’ information to make it stand out. The only thing they are likely to show in such advertisement are most often just words like ‘discount’ which straights out just tells the readers what they have to offer, leaving no room for imagination like what the Heineken commercial had done.

However, I feel that there is no better or ‘right’ way for the advertisements to be shown though. What matters really is where the advertisement is shown, the products and the market they are targeting at. Although advertisements that are high in context are often more entertaining than the low context advertisements, it will likely not be well-received if it is shown in countries where the people are used to interpreting information for just what they see and read. In such cases, using a high context advertisement might most likely only cause confusion to the viewers. Low context advertisements though boring, tend to be a whole lot more informative and likely to be a better way of advertisement for non-lifestyle products, mostly electronic products, where specifications would likely take precedence over standing out from the crowd.


(Credits: YouTube and the respective uploader)