Essay #1 Student Sample "All You Can Eat"

Miley Cyrus

Professor Emilio

English 1102

23 June 2015

“All You Can Eat” or Not?

            Every year advertisers try to make their best ad for super bowl halftime. There are always a wide range of ads that touch on nearly every human emotion. This year we saw ads that were sad, such as the Nationwide “Make Safe Happen” commercial, ads that are heartfelt, such as the Budweiser “Lost Puppy” commercial. Then you have ads like the Weightwatchers “All You Can Eat” commercial, an ad packed with criticism about the food industry and human’s nature to resist temptation. The uncut version of the Weightwatchers commercial runs one minute and six seconds but it is packed with tons of signs about the American food industry.

The producers used great technique when developing the imagery and music for the ad; it grabbed the attention of the audience and helped to uncover the awful truth to the many realities Americans live through each day. The ad features celebrity Aaron Paul, of the hit television show Breaking Bad, as the voiceover. With his voice they re-create the theme of the show to draw a parallel between drug addiction and food addiction; resulting in the rise of obesity in America. The commercial uncovered the dreadful truth about the manipulation by the food industry and how their ads affect the daily choices consumers are faced with when buying foods, healthy or unhealthy.

One technique the producers did was use an attention-grabbing musical piece to be played in the back ground. They used the classic orchestral musical piece called “In the Hall of The Mountain King” composed by Edvard Grieg. This musical piece is something that one would expect to hear at a carnival. The tempo of the song goes from a medium slow pace and gradually works its way into a fast and loud grand finale. The ad showed many images of very unhealthy foods and these shots were moving with the pace of the music. The images shown were strangely connected to the words spoken by the voiceover Aaron Paul. The sarcastic sounding voiceover is heard as followed:

Hey, wanna get baked? And glazed, iced, fried? How much do you want? An eighth? A quarter? How about a half? Come on, I got poppers, fizzes, whippers, whiz bangs, whatever you want. And coming down is gonna be rough. You’re gonna want an upper. Go ahead, treat yourself. It’s a special occasion. Just have a taste. Cooked it up special for you. I know your gonna love it. Guess what? If you buy more, I’ll cut you a deal. It’s a social thing. I just want you to have a good time. No one’s telling you what to do. You’re in control. You can stop whenever you want. Well, sorta. I mean, you gotta eat, right?

After reading this skit one could easily imagine this is a scene straight out of a drug movie. What sounded like a drug deal relayed a message of how drug addiction is analogous to food addiction.

After analyzing the imagery with the commentary, one of the deeper meanings of the ad is comparing the buying of drugs to buying food. Just like people are addicted to certain kinds of drugs, many Americans are addicted to foods, especially sweet, greasy unhealthy foods. Constantly Americans are shown ads that depict images of these desiring foods; many of the ads draw people to go buy these foods by offering them a deal. How many times have you been asked “would you like to power size that? For 25 cents more would you like to make it a large?” The ad represents this in the scene when he says “How much do you want? An eighth? A quarter? How about a half?”  While images of fast food portions become larger and larger. Americans are given this choice every day when purchasing foods, especially fast food, the question of what portion size do we want. Although it is impossible for ads to force one to buy their product, they exploit the emotion of human desire, which ultimately leads to consumers (especially those addicted to food) to purchase the larger portion. Julian B. Corbett, an advertisement analyst, describes “ads cannot create, invent, or even satisfy our desires; instead, ads channel and express current desires with the hope of exploiting them” (233).   What advertisers are doing is exploiting the emotion of human’s nature to resist temptation. Consumers then buy larger food portions and the affect is an increase of obesity in the US.

The commercial also uncovers how Americans are manipulated everyday by food industry advertisers. In the scene when Aaron Paul says “No one’s telling you what to do. You’re in control. You can stop whenever you want.” We are shown re-enactments of food advertisements; we see a steak being sauced with a title “endless steak”, a neon light that reads “all you can eat”, and another sign that says “two pastas $9.99.” Food advertisers zero in on what makes consumers buy more; they put consumers in a situation where they have to fight the desire to “get a good deal.” Consumers are merely tricked into buying more food than they truly wanted. When consumers buy more food and get a good deal the action becomes a domino effect; once a consumer has been satisfied with a great deal they continue to react on the desire to save more money. As R. W. Pollay explains “advertising does more than merely stimulate wants; it plays a subtle role in changing habits” (qtd in Corbett). When consumers are manipulated into buying more food they are adversely affected; the food industry companies’ profits sky rocket while consumer’s health (and wallets) plummet. The consumer is left with the habit of giving into the deals food advertisers present them.

Each year ads are becoming more creative and companies, like Weightwatchers, are becoming braver. Consumers are starting to see a trend in ads uncovering the ugly truth about the society we live in. We are starting to see more ads like the Always “#LikeAGirl” commercial, an ad revealing how females are undermined of their capabilities. We also see ads like Nike’s “Find Your Greatness” commercial which is an ad that portrays a young boy overcoming Americas arguably number one enemy, obesity. Whether it’s an ad bashing a rival company or an ad uncovering the truth about current problems Americans are facing, we all can learn from them if we keep an analytical mindset. Weightwatchers “All You Can Eat” ad is a great example of an ad everyone can learn from. The ad compares drug addiction to food addiction by using a famous character and theme from a hit television show that is about drug dealing. The ad illustrates re-enactments of food ads and unveils how consumers are manipulated into changing their buying habits when it comes to foods. If American consumers are more analytical when purchasing foods, then maybe we can start to see a decline in the rise of obesity in America.

Works Cited

Corbett, Julia B. “A Faint Green Sell: Advertising and the Natural World.” Signs of Life in the USA: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers. Ed. Sonia Maasik and Jack Solomon. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s 2012. 227-243. Print.

Weightwatchers. “All You Can Eat.” Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 1 February 2015. Web. 23 June 2015.