There are a lot of other cool ones though: 5 Gum-Rain, 5 Gum-React, 5 Gum-Solstice, and 5 Gum-Elixir. All of them are centered closely around the same idea, down to the same narrator and same guy manning the controls in the test chamber thing where all of this goes down.
Although the crazy stunts they pull in the commercials are nothing like chewing a piece of gum, I like 5 and I think the commercials are really cool to watch. These insane sensory performances are designed just to be awesome to experience. The people just kind of stand or lie there being amazed and looking around like, "holy crap." The commercials remind me of action/suspense movies, where the special effects are amazing and the technology in the movie is mind-blowing.
The main needs present in these ads are the need to dominate, the need to escape, and the need for aesthetic sensations. Although it doesn't have anything to do with dominating other people, they're definitely "mastering the possibilities" here, with this whole huge setup supposed to specifically cater to them. They're kind of the masters of this fantastical situation, and they look really bad*ss doing it. The need to escape is probably the most prominent need here. Nothing like this ever happens in real life, but they all look like the most awesome things ever, and very different from the mundane drudgery of day-to-day life. It makes it seem like chewing 5 Gum will put a new light on your day and make things different. The need for aesthetic sensations doesn't really have to do with traditional art or graphic design used in the commercial, but there are definitely really cool-looking things happening. They also say "how it feels to chew 5 Gum," and "5 Gum. Stimulate your senses," in all the commercials, and aesthetics have a lot to do with sensation.
Some techniques used are magic ingredients, plain folks, and gestalt. No gum is that awesome. It just won't happen. They make it seem like 5 has something in it that isn't present anywhere else, some kind of special ingredient that makes it amazing. (Maybe it's drugs.) They also use normal-looking people (generally attractive, but normal), wearing simple clothes. They all look to be young, and young people are the stereotypical gum-chewers. Gestalt is definitely used. Even in super high-tech, huge facilities most of this stuff is probably impossible, and it's definitely never seen in normal reality. It makes the commercials really memorable.
Overall, I think the commercials are very effective. I want to try all the flavors after watching them, and they aren't offensive in any way.
I completely agree with you about how incredibly impossible the things they do are and how I still think that I should be able to do it because they (or more the gum) can. In my mind it connects with how Old Spice does their commercials but in their case its the randomness of the words instead of the situations that gets the audience to want to buy their product.
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