Utterly Fresh

Utterly Fresh

The advertisement for the Playtex Insulator Bottle is found on page 97 in the May 2005 issue of American Baby magazine. Two parts divide the full-page ad.

The top portion is a picture that takes up 75 percent of the page and the bottom 25 percent is a green box with white text. The picture is a close-up shot of a four-toothed, blonde baby boy dressed in a blue romper. He is seated in a side-by-side stroller (like one used for twins) next to an equally sized black-and-white milk cow. Only the cow’s head and front legs are visible. Yellow blankets cover them both. The cow is staring right at me; while the baby, wringing his hands, is staring at the milk cow. I can barely make out that the stroller is sitting on a cement sidewalk with green grass in the background.

The top line of the text in the green box reads, “There’s only one other way to keep milk this fresh.” The bottle for which this advertisement is for is featured in the bottom right corner overlapping the two boxes. It is a clear, plastic bottle with a blue ring securing the clear silicone nipple. On the bottle there is text that says in blue letters, “Playtex the insulator BOTTLE.”

Purpose and Audience

The purpose of the advertisement is to sell the Playtex Insulator Bottle. Playtex is a brand name that is featured often in this and other parenting magazines. They sell a variety of infant care items. Expectant mothers and new parents that are homeowners with children under the age of five are the main readers of this magazine. Those that bottle-feed their children are the intended audience for this advertisement.

Words and Figurative Language

The use of the tag line “There’s only one other way to keep milk this fresh” is an effective use of humor and shock to capture the readers’ attention. According to Everything’s an Argument by Andrea Lunsford and John J. Ruszkiewicz, humor is a valuable way to “set people in a favorable frame of mind” (274). This tag line catches my eye, makes me laugh, and want to read more. I want to know what the other way is to keep milk as fresh as straight from the cow.

In a September 2004 article, “A Stale Pitch”, Margaret Webb Pressler of the Washington Post writes about the word ‘fresh’ in retail settings saying “Analysts at the food-industry consulting firm Technomic Inc. have studied the word ‘fresh’ extensively for clients interested in using the term. What they've found is that fresh has moved far beyond its roots as, simply, the opposite of ‘frozen.’ Now, fresh can indeed mean just about anything -- and all of it is seen as good.

‘Fresh equates very strongly with quality, and what fresh means to the consumer doesn't necessarily mean that a product has never been frozen or is not processed -- it means high quality,’ said Joe Pawlak, a senior principal with Technomic, based in Chicago. The word simply has a ‘healthy connotation’ now, he said” (Pressler F01).

Another line in this box says, “There is nothing like it.” This statement makes the product sound superior, different, and unique. Yet another line featured in the ad, “And for short trips, it’s so much easier to fit in the stroller,” relieves those parents that have had troubles with bottles and strollers in the past.

Images and Color

The first image that catches my eye is the cow in the stroller with a baby. Seeing this is an unusual thing. It entices me to find out why the cow is in the stroller. The cow is important because it ties to the line “There’s only one other way to keep milk this fresh,” and explains what this statement means.

The main theme of this advertisement is freshness. The company uses many different ways of communicating this message. Use of the color green in the Playtex ad is quite prevalent. The color green suggests health and freshness (“Understanding”). These are two qualities that are extremely important to parents bottle-feeding their children. The statement “There’s only one other way to keep milk