LIVE WITH FIRE.
The ZQuick shoe is being advertised because it is a new product, released as of February 1, 2014.
The intended target is urban, unmarried young professionals. These customers live independently, under their own financing in small apartments. Age 25-34, but there is also appeal to older customers in their nostalgia for the passions they held at that age.
The message connects to the target’s need as the target is living inside a small box, they have a need to break out of their consigned societal role by adding something new and distinctive to their persona. Reebok promises that, through their product, customers can “live with fire”, and flames are certainly an unforgettable attribute.
The SMITH (Single Most Important Thing) in this message is its clarion call to:
Live with fire–fire of a superhero, fast as commuter locomotives.
The visuals support and communicate the product’s SMITH by showing groups of young friends utilizing the ZQuick shoe to run “Unnaturally Quick”, keeping pace with a commuter train on a more direct route and performing superhuman feats such as stopping a speeding automobile and hurdling giant walls in a single bound.
I feel the copy supports this message extremely well—there was no voiceover or dialogue copy written, the only writing is found in the conclusion of the ad as “Unnaturally Quick” dissolves into “Reebok ZQuick” and then a hashtag cuts in underneath: “#LIVEWITHFIRE”. These help make the message relevant, but it is the borrowed audio which I feel is most effective in communicating with the target. The audio is the theme-song to the show “Underdog”, about the canine superhero. The song was not written for this spot, yet I profoundly feel that it serves as a supremely effective anthem for the target’s needs and desires.
The media and context are both effective in communicating the SMITH, but for very different reasons. The television media is effective since the audio is taken from a decades-past television program; customers familiar with this program might applaud this media usage. The context is effective in a more universally-accessible way. Through the theme-music and the running, stunt-performing actors (unless you want to call them “freerunners” or “parkour performers”), the sight and sound seem to be shouting “Forget everyone and everything that’s trying to box me in, I’m going to bust out and be superhuman for no better reason than BECAUSE I CAN.” As I said above, the music communicates very well with the customers’ needs, and it is through this context and this message that it does so.