Essay: Herbal essences branding

The creativity of the advertisement is an important part of impressing the customers with the product that they are selling successfully. An Herbal Essences’ commercial, which begins with a voice that says ‘the story told us that the sleeping beauty was woken by a handsome prince, but the truth is that it was just Herbal Essences shampoo’, uses the fairytale of the sleeping beauty to advertise a shampoo product that is important to all the girls. The romantic colors, the new but premium characteristic of the sleeping princess, and the setting of the forest in a fairytale are the three most important elements that help this advertisement impress the audience, especially young girls who like dreaming about sweet stories. The analysis of color of this commercial can be separated into two parts. One is the orange of the sunsets, which makes a romantic environment of the fairytale for the audience. The sunshine is on a dark and old castle, forming a significant comparison to the fairytale so that the people’s imagination of it is evoked. As the audience enters the story, the flowers are remembered naturally. Thus, the commercial’s color turns into red and green, which are the colors of roses and the leaves. These colors make a connection to the fragrance for the audiences. Simultaneously, this type of Herbal Essences shampoo has the smelling of plants. Besides, the green color provides the customers with the environment of nature like a forest, which impresses a feeling of fresh and clean on them, and that is the most important feeling for buyers after they wash their hair. Therefore, this commercial makes a romantic and natural impression on the audiences by using the colors of sunshine and plants subconsciously. There are only two characters that appear in this commercial, and it focuses on the sleeping beauty, who is no longer a tender and graceful ancient princess, but more like a cute and sexy girl in modern time. At the very beginning, the picture shows this girl sleeping with a sexy dress with straps to prove this is not ancient princess impression. She is woken up by a shampoo and follows the flying shampoo bottle with joy and happiness. Then she starts to wash her hair in a pretty lake. She seems very excited and sometimes makes a sexy voice to express that she feels very comfortable. This voice leads a ‘handsome prince’ looking for her in the forest. The prince was searching quite carefully with a confused emotion on his face; this plot adds more mystery for the story. Eventually, the girl finishes her hair washing and goes back to her bed to sleep again, but from her smiling, everyone can tell that she is pretending to sleep this time, until the prince comes to find her and wake her up again. This process is like a girl was preparing for her dating and waits for her prince comes to take her, so the story is close to the lives of the majority customers, who are almost all young girls. Therefore, they easily love the personality of this princess and wish that they, themselves can play the role of the story. As a result, most of them will select Herbal Essences when purchasing the shampoos, hoping to attract ‘handsome princes’. Another element which makes this commercial successful is the setting of the picture. The princess was sleeping in a soft and comfortable bed, which is set in a beautiful forest, around which is the grass, flowers and trees. Then, the bottle of Herbal Essences shampoo came with an adorable wing, which is like a small fairy. The fairies in fairytales are usually clever and magic to bring the luck or happiness to people. Therefore, in this commercial, the designer was trying to give an impression to the audience that Herbal Essences shampoo can make people feel happy like the characters in the fairytales. When the girl in the advertisement started to wash, there was a waterfall behind her, telling us that she is taking shower in that waterfall. There were also several roses that were blooming during the time of her shower. This again reminds the audience that the feature of this shampoo is that it has the fragrance of the flowers. The bloomed flowers are bright and full that represents this young girl in the commercial, which demonstrates to the costumers that everyone will be as charming as flowers after using Herbal Essences shampoo. All in all, the commercial of the Herbal Essences shampoo contains much creativity to make a special impression on audiences. Moreover, the method that uses the story of sleeping beauty could catch the costumers’ attention successfully. The color, characters and the settings are the keys making good impressions on the audiences.