Entry Eight: "What are today's advertisements saying?"

I found this advertisement in a January 2011 issue of Game Informer magazine. The ad is for the “Jeep Wrangler Call of Duty: Black Ops Edition.” Jeep aims their vehicle at the video-gamer demographic. What caught my eye and made me want to analyze this advertisement is the unique representation of the product. The grill of the jeep has taken shape in the “game world” of Call of Duty: Black Ops.

The denotation of the ad is the game world that is in the game Call of Duty. The connotation is the grill of the jeep that is “in” the world of Call of Duty. The myth in this ad is that being tough is great. The metaphor is that the Jeep Wrangler can take on an intense military world that the Call of Duty world represents. The metonym is that a “real” object like the jeep can survive in an intense video game world.

I play Call of Duty; I’m absolutely addicted to this game. But what I found out is that even though ESRB slaps a rating of ‘M’ for mature; a lot of underage gamers still play this game. So to make a vehicle directed towards video gamers, they direct towards people that aren’t even allowed to drive. Mike Manley, the president and CEO of Jeep Brand said, “We are able to expose the Jeep brand to an entirely new group of consumers.” To my guess, video games today are viral. Video gamers are a strong demographic and the Jeep brand is trying to display and relay that message.