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This is an ad for Jordan Brand, and is narrated by Michael Jordan. It shows audience that people only see Jordan's tremendous success, but don't realize his painstaking to attain his goal in NBA. The video contains scenes of statues, trophies, and milestones that Jordan achieved over the course of his career. Also presented are old basketball courts, weight rooms, a work out schedule, and a college dorm room. Why are these two elements presented when they are so opposite? At the end of the video Jordan is lecturing a group of teens, why is he doing this? What themes are presented as the contrasting scenes are shown? What excuses are Jordan talking about? How does this ad try to convince customers to buy Michael Jordan brand shoes?
11 comments:
The contrasting locations featured in this video highlight the differences between where Michael Jordan started and where he is today. By working hard at the run-down gyms, basketball courts, locker rooms, and weight rooms he worked his way up to the pristine courts, locker rooms, and earned all the awards and accolades shown. When Michael Jordan is shown lecturing to the group of teen basketball players at the end of the video, he is telling them that they have to work for what they want. He may have made success seem easy on television, but they did not see how hard he had to work to get where he is today. This advertisement is trying to get people to purchase Jordan shoes by building off of Michael's success as a basketball player, which is something people already know about. They take his star power and make him seem more like everyone else, making it easy for everyday people to relate to his struggles. The combination of Michael Jordan's stardom and his implied humble roots make the shoes desirable for more than one reason.
This video first showed brilliant achievement that Michael Jodan got, like six-time NBA finals MVP and three-time NBA all-star game MVP. However, behind his splendid success, he paid so much that much beyond people's imagination. Old basketball courts, weight rooms and gyms are all the places that are full of his sweats, tears, and pain. These contrast images reflect unimaginable efforts Jordan made to become an outstanding basketball player and even a superstar and he deserves all the achievements.
There are two images showing his sports clothes, which print the name of his college—University of North Carolina. It implies that Jordan is grateful for his school where supplied him with top education, instruction and equipments and he contributes part of his achievements to his school.
At the end of the video, Jordan is Lecturing on other young basketball players. As a successful predecessor, he intends to tell them that there's no short cut to become the top one, no matter in which area. Also, there’s no excuse for failure, and failure means efforts are not enough and you hasn’t contributed yourselves into it. Nobody has god-given gift, and each player should struggle for their own milestones and trophies.
After watching this commercial, Jordan's fans, admirers and supporters will feel thrilling by his impressive "autobiography" of his hard work behind success. They may buy shoes of Jordan brand to encourage and inspire themselves to strive for their own lives. When they wear these shoes, it seems like they are standing on the accelerator that they can feel Jordan’s strength and spirit, pushing them to struggle to success.
The thing that jumped out at me the most was that during the commercial never once did you actually see Jordan's name on anything. You watch the commercial assuming that the run down gym and the dorm room belonged to Jordan. Even the practice jersey with the number 23 written on it is written in marker and gives the impression that it is not permanent, that it can be changed for something else. So whose path is it showing in the commercial then? Is it simply a summary of Jordan's path to greatness? Or is it a precursor to what one of the young men that he's trying to motivate will eventually accomplish. Is it your path to greatness that it shows? Jordan spends the whole commercial trying to convince these young men that it's hard work, and not God given talent that will get you the trophies and the success. So why then can't the commercial apply to anyone that's willing to work as hard as he did?
This video can be divided into two parts. One is to look back to the way of strive, and another is to show the achievements that Jordan obtained. First we can see the training room and old court. The stuff makes us associate with the scene when Jordan was training. We can see a basketball with sweat all his face keeping training until he is exhausted. Then we can see the trophy and various kinds of honors. These are the flagrant contrast compared to the previous scenes. Such a technique of expression tells us that working hard is absolutely the basic to success.
At the end of the video, Jordan lecturing the group to tell the teens fights for the game and encourage them to make breakthrough and legend.
In the video, the Jordan starts every sentence with “maybe it’s my fault” to stress the efforts he has made, and to explains that the success that he create is easy to give people false impression that success needs gift rather than efforts. The excuse Jordan talks about is the reason of failure. When people fail, they often seek pretexts to explain. Actually that is just excuse. The reason of failure usually is lack in efforts.
This is a pretty successful advertisement. People are greatly inspired by Jordan. Then they will buy the products of this brand as a kind of motivation.
This commercial starts with statue of Michael Jordan, and then a list of Michael Jordan's career accomplishments, The commercial begins with images that represent how the world sees Michael Jordan. The images begin to display a much different message as the commercial continues. We see images of Michaels Jordans journey before the fame and forturne we see the man behind the fame we see that he is a human that there was preparation, hard work and dedication that lead me to where he is today. The images show that his success did not happen overnight and he wants the youngmen in the video to see that he is more than his brand. The commercial also give a sense that Michael wants the world to see that his brand is about hard, work dedication and has very little to do with his fame, fortune, and awards it is more about the road to success the pleasure and accomplishment of the journey.
To answer your question, the two opposing elements are there to substantiate the implied claim he is trying to make: that basketball wasn't just a "god given gift" as he put it. It took him his whole life of practicing daily, playing in high school, playing in college, and working out in order the reach the heights that he rose to. At the end, Michael is lecturing teens because he is preaching to the new generation of the populace. He is telling kids that he got to where he got to by hard work and dedication, something that the teens themselves might also be able to do. The excuses that Michael is talking about are the things people say when they don't think they can be good at what they want to do. Michael was especially referring to the excuse that "one can not do a sport because they aren't 'naturally gifted' like all the other good players. This ad always uses a subliminal technique in terms of getting people to buy the Jordan brand shoes. The whole time Michael is telling the teens, and the audience, that what he has isn't as naturally given to him as they make it out to be. That if people do certain things, like practice and be dedicated, that they can be good too. At the end of the commercial it reveals that is an ad for shoes. This structure gets the audience to think that buying his shoes might also be one of those "certain things" that will make them great. Something else that I noticed links back to our discussion of context in class today. People view Michael Jordan as this god-like basketball player who was created to play the sport. They never think about him having to work hard or really "earn" his title. Everyone thought it naturally came to him. People think that because they don't know the context of his life. They don't know his background, how he grew up, how hard he had to work, or how much he had to overcome. With this new found context one gains a whole new level of respect for the man and allows him to be a lot more relatable. It allows us to view him as a one of us, and not this unobtainable, "god-like" human being. This also helps in the selling of the shoes by making us think that their creator is a fellow man on our level that we can relate with, which makes the buyer a lot more comfortable purchasing the item.
How many time when we see those famous persons, we just envy what they possessed, their reputations, their gifts, their richness. In this video, Michael Jordon as narrator, it seems, tells us that each successful person with simple title in different fields actually have a lot of arduous stories to be said. There are bunches of opposite elements between what other people think Michael Jordon did and the realities of Jordon's stories. Jordon serves like a decoder of the secret to success. He tells everybody the truth that success is not stemmed from gifts that you born with. He says people focused too much on what he had accomplished such as his championship cups and rings and his unstoppable and impeccable performances in the games. He debunks the truth that those glorious outcomes are not results from gifts but they are exactly the result of the exceeding diligence. As the graphs shown in video, we see the old basketball course Jordon ever played, we see the gym that Jordon exercised before, we see the school and dorm that Jordon spent time in his school. Those objects are extremely normal as what we can have. That is true, there is nothing too much different between he and every basketball players. And that is also the idea that want to teach those young people, that the only secret to successes is working hard, rather than gift, rather than which course or which ball you play, rather than the stuff outside of your bodies.
Jordon says there is no excuse. Indeed, you can see that so many people complain that they don't have enough talent like he or she has, and some impute their failures to their misfortunes. But actually, if there is a thing that you can complain about is that you are not diligent enough. Because we may find that there always be one that can accomplish what you can't do, and you are not worse than he or she at all.
The ways this commercial advertisement trying to convince people to buy Jordon Brand is to set a heroic and spiritual model or idol. As you thoroughly understand that Jordon's success is contributed by his arduous efforts, whenever you wear Jordon Brand shoes, you will be reminded to work harder and to focus on the steps in front of you rather than dream that far.
The name of the video “Maybe It’s My Fault” is drawing the audience’s attention by inviting them to doubt how something can be Jordan’s fault. Then, in a narrative way, Jordan elaborates on how the audience were overwhelmed by his amazing success and failed to see the pains-taking effort and sweats behind it.
There are many contrasts in this video. First I notice is in the beginning of the video, there is a copper board engraved with Jordan’s accolades and accomplishments on it. And then, the next scene is a training list including pushups written on a white board. These two scenes are linked together because they exhibit two different things but in the same form so as to indicate that the success we see is not achieved easily but based on the endless training and hard work.
I think the second big contrast is generated from the desolate basketball court and what Jordan was narrating. The leaves piled up the court, the basketball net trembled in the wind, in analogy with what Jordan said: maybe I made you believe basketball is a guy given gift. Apparently what Jordan wants us to believe is that basketball is not a born gift. It requires constant work and exercise in order to achieve success.
Another interesting thing about the video is that most of the scenes are in slow motion. But three scenes are still which I assume they represent the beginning of three stages of Jordan’s career life.
In the end Jordan appeared. Jordan fans would be thrilled to see Jordan and buy Jordan Brand. I believe when they are wearing Jordan Brand, they will always remember not making excuses no matter what difficulties they encounter and Jordan’s spirit will always be their side.
Listen to the music and watch the scenes of this commercial carefully. It gives me a tough process of basketball players to success. At the beginning, loud street noises, the honk of automobiles and the bustle of crowd, come out. People are hurrying to and fro in the street. No one cares about plain people. Unknown Michael Jordan could one of these plain people. In contrast, “flyer”, Michael Jordan, is showed up as a reverent statue. Following with the beats mixed, noises generally reduce. The beats, like the sound of basketball impacting on the ground, build up relatively slow. Basic basketball skills are required to put efforts and time. Len shoots on the simple and crude places, basketball court, dorm and changing room. Shoots with “23” express the route that every “flyer” has to pass through. With the sustaining beats, piano sounds pop out after a short section of beats. Piano sounds obviously overwhelm the beats. Yet, after piano sounds come out, beats are increasingly stronger. Basketball is not the God-given gift; it is the footstep to step on. Sustaining a period of the beats and piano sound, the music reaches a climax. Meanwhile, trophies filled the whole cabinet exhibit. During this phase, no excuse is allowed. It is not Jordan’s fault. It is the excuses of laggards.
This commercial is one of the best I ever seen. The viewers or supporters will be moved by the struggling phase of Jordan and activated by the powerful background music.
After viewing this video, I believe that the opposing elements are shown to highlight the main theme. I think the main theme is that you need to work hard to truly be great. These elements show that Micheal Jordan did not start out being great, but he instead worked hard to sharpen his skills. These elements show that he started out small and grew with hard work. I believe that Jordan is talking to young players in the end to be a mentor. As a mentor he is showing these young players that they do need to work hard. The main themes shown are hard work and greatness takes time and effort. When Jordan talks about excuses, he is referring to Lebron James and the excuses he has been making. I do not think this commercial was made to sell shoes, I think it is meant as a message to Lebron saying that he needs to man up and quite his complaining.
It is an irony that when we see successful people, the first thing that comes to our minds is their bright light of lives, such as their luxuriously material life and their reputation, rather than how much is behind these success. In this video, Michael Jordan talks about the strenuous efforts he made in his basketball career. At the beginning of the video, Jordan says it maybe his fault to make other people think his success is easy. In the meantime, an image of his achievements is showing, his six-time NBA final MVP, all-NBA first team, NBA rookie of the year, and three-time NBA all-star, etc. Then some contrastive slides are showing on the screen, the old basketball courts, weight rooms, a work out schedule, and a college dorm room. At the end of the video, Jordan is teaching these backetball player as a successful basketball player. Impressed by Jordan’s lecture and his own story, customers are convinced to buy Jordan brand shoes.
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