Dunwoody College

In my last entry I promised an example of a commercial that took the opportunity to educate its audience. It's also a nice excuse for me to share this ad, which I stumbled across last week while looking for that sneaky International Delight ad.



Watch it again. I just love it. As someone who worked in a coffee shop, I can relate so deeply to that feeling of static emergency. And I genuinely believe that most people have experienced this sensation at some point or another in their lives.

I see a lot of ads for technical schools like Dunwoody that list off their programs, and I always end up tuning it out (no pun intended). Yes, it's a school; yes, they have programs. But this is the first tech school ad I've seen that really relates the possibility of school to a life someone is leading.

(You may ask why the ad doesn't say anything else about Dunwoody College of Technology. "It got my attention, but I don't know what to do now. Where's the call to action?" The simple answer is that Dunwoody is located in Minneapolis, and if you live in the area, you're already familiar with the college. Similarly, if you live in the Seattle area, you know about BCC. Or, if you live in the Cleveland area, you've heard of Universal Technical Institute, very unfortunately abbreviated as UTI. But that's not relevant.)

So congratulations to Dunwoody College of Technology for bridging the gap between talking at its audience and educating its audience - what better for a school ad? Not just, "Yeah, that's a school," but, "Wow, that school could get me out of this crappy minimum wage job."

Want to see an ad that isn't about coffee? And takes advantage of its customers' ignorance by pretending to educate them? It's like Consumer Exploitation 201, a step ahead of what we've seen in the past two entries. Stay tuned for the Corn Refiners Assocation.