This advertisement can be found in the Bell Canada booth of Aberdeen Mall.  It contains pictures of devices – Galaxy Z Fold3, Z Flip3 and S21 Ultra 5G – their names, two brand logos and catch-phrases. The purpose is clear that Bell aims to increase the number of customers and contracts by selling Samsung’s new devices.

First, the picture of this advertisement is very high quality, realistic and clear because of its resolution and white background, and it is easy to assume the picture was made using computer graphics technology as that is the industry standard. The people who look at this advertisement can easily focus on the Galaxy Z Fold3 smartphone with a pen because of its size and left-center placement, and additionally, the colourful butterfly being displayed on the smartphone’s screen.  There is also the Z Flip 3,  the smartphone displayed slightly forward of the other devices and between them. Both folding and flippable phones are in a half or almost fully-folded state to show their ability and the butterfly expresses the high-quality image resolution of the display. The S21 Ultra 5G, on the right-hand side, displays a woman who is laughing and holding what appears to be the same smartphone.  While this device lacks a unique folding feature, the image of the woman, as well as the use of the frame-within-a-frame technique, highlights this device.

While this is an advertisement for smartphones (and phone contracts),  the targets of this advertisement are young, university-age adults of any gender. It is possible to guess by looking at the person in the picture, who appears to be a little older than university age, that this is one of the targeted age groups. At the same time, the new features of these phones are not likely to attract elderly people, and their price, which is around 1000 – 2300 Canadian dollars (Samsung), is too high for teenagers. While advertisers usually include the price of the product being marketed, I thought it was a good strategy in this case to draw attention to just the outstanding features of the various devices. Although the approach did not really convince me, the S21 (the smartphone displaying the women) did catch my attention because the front-facing camera is the only thing obstructing the display. By not excluding the small details, it was possible for me to acquire some pieces of knowledge about the product.

People with smartphones in Canada know both Samsung and Bell Canada because they are giants in the technology industry. This advertisement mainly focuses on Samsung’s new devices, with the company logo taking center stage, but there is a larger Bell logo in the bottom right-hand corner. Samsung’s devices made headlines in 2017 when the BBC reported that 2.5 million devices got recalled because of the explosion of the battery, and Samsung asserted that they would check and fix their safety regulations. The reputation was damaged from this accident; however, Samsung is selling products without large problems now.

References

BBC. Samsung confirms battery faults as cause of Note 7 fires. 23 January 2017. 23 September 2021. <https://www.bbc.com/news/business-38714461>.

Samsung. All Smartphones. 2021. 23 September 2021. <https://www.samsung.com/ca/smartphones/all-smartphones/>.