Nitrotech Not So Hardcore

http://www.bodybuilding.com/store/mt/pdf/PRD_NTR_HC_JaCutl_Sep07.pdf

This ad by Muscletech sport supplements emobodies several of the appeals Jib Fowles describes in his article "Advertisings Fifteen Basic Appeals". One appeal that just pours from the ad is the need for guidance. In this ad you have 2 time Mr. Olympia Jay Cutler and IFBB pro Johnnie Jackson, saying, "Hey this is what I take and look at me im HUGE!!! And if you take so will you!!!". What the ad fails to mention, and what Raymond Williams would say is a pathetic attempt by mebers of a capitalist economy to simply sell product and in doing so mislead consumers, is that NitroTech Hardcore isn't all these guys are taking. You don't get to be 300 lbs at 5 foot 9 with out a little extra help (In case you live under a rock, I'm refering to anabolic steriods, HGH, and insulin). Drinking your protein shakes and training and eating your "mass building just isn't going to produce the results this ad would lead one to believe.

Other so called needs this ad appeals to are the need to dominate and the need for prominence. The whole ad is focused on giving the competitive athlete that little extra edge they need to dominate and become prominent, successful young men. This ad promises athletes what they think they need, success, power, and dominance. This is another example of what Raymond Williams spoke out against in his "History of Advertising". Williams ponts out that the savy capitalist aims to create, with ads the confusion between what we need or want and what we're told we need or want. Just because you put on 8.4 pounds of muscle in two weeks, doesn't mean you'r going to win your wrestling match or catch the eye of the opposite sex, but this ad is doing its best to convince that not only that doing those things is what you want, but what you need, and if you use this product, that's what's going to happen.

The targeted audience is obviously young to middle age men. I mean what kind of normal guy wouldn't love to put on 10 pounds of solid muscle? That is the problem with today's society. We see these advertisements with these bone thin supermodels and juiced up super freaks and it creates problems within our culture. Today's world has seen dramatic increases in eating disorders and other body image problems. And this ad only compounds the problem. It plays on the Adonis complex in men, that feeling that they are small and need to get bigger, and makes them feel like they need this product to get bigger so they can look like Jay Cutler and Johnnie Jackson. And ultimately the ad is successful. The sport supplement industry is a 5 billion dollar a year industry so you know someone is buying this stuff. And while this product is in fact one of the more reliable products available, it simply doesn't produce the results promised. And as this ad shows, Muscletech would never admit that.

-Andy Soukup