Media meditation 1: Nolan's Cheddar Cheese Ad

This ad for Nolan’s Cheddar Cheese, a product that doesn't exist, evokes every part of our tribune brain. Our limbic brain is immediately involved as the ad starts with happy music in the background with a little mouse scurrying across the floor. At the same time the neocortex is engaged when viewers see the mouse in the house, which they know is a problem and they begin to think about what should be done to fix it, which leads to the trap with the cheese. Although viewers know that it is a problem to have a mouse in a house, they can’t help but smile or smirk at the mouse from him going strait for the cheese and the happy music. As the mouse nibbles at the cheese he looks directly at the viewers and winks with a sound effect to highlight his wink. This makes viewers laugh and even think that he is cute as their Limbic brain is in full power dominating the Neocortex, since traditionally American’s view having a mouse in their house as a bad thing. Then the Neocortex and Limbic brain become involved at the same time again as the mouse puts more of his body on the trap causing viewers to slightly panic because they know what is coming next. SNAP goes the trap, kicking the reptilian brain into full gear as viewers jump from the noise. Then the ad quickly goes back to the limbic brain with the sad music and an image of the mouse caught under the trap struggling to breath. Suddenly the audience is relieved and excited when the music quickly cuts to motivating music that symbolizes strength as the mouse pushes the metal bar off of him and starts to use it as if it were a weight. Finally the ad ends with involving viewers Neocortex and Limic brains as it continues to lay the motivating music and cuts to the mouse eating the cheese on a cutting board with an image that says the brand name and other text saying “seriously strong.” Nolan Cheddar’s advertisement, which was created by John Nolan, leaves it audience with a positive and memorable impression of their product and reinforces the strength of their cheese through engaging all three parts of the tribune brain.

This ad also highlights many of the 8 shifts of our 21st century media culture…
Epistemological shift- This ad is strictly image until the very end where the only words it uses are the name of the brand and two phrases to highlight the brand and product. The audience interprets and understands this film mostly through the image, which highlights and in a way, helps give meaning to the words at the end.
Technological shift- I viewed this advertisement from my computer, rather than on the T.V. By viewing this ad of the computer I was able to play, and stop it as many times as I wanted.
Personal Shift- This media was personal to me because I was shown it from my boyfriend who posted it on my facebook wall. The advertisement went from being shown to the mass, to only me by being on my own personal social media account. I view this concept as positive because with it I am only shown advertisements that I would be interested in. However I also think personal shift can be bad because it can narrow the information a person receives to only things that support with their views or that are of interest to them. I think it is important that people are aware and understand others view points.

Nolan’s Cheddar ad also highlights the seven basic principles of media education, especially emotional transfer. It operates mostly on emotion with the music in the background and the character of the mouse. The emotional of strength from the mouse is transferred to the cheese. By doing this it causes the mouse to be associated with the cheese, and the cheese to be symbolic of strength in terms of being a very sharp cheddar.




Finally, the advertisement uses many of the persuasive technique tools. The most obvious is humor. Over all the ad was humorous and was intended to make its viewers laugh through the music and the mouse using the trap as a weight to show how strong he was. Timing was also one of the main techniques that the advertisement used. It persuaded through the orchestrating of various story elements of production techniques to enhance the media’s meaning and power. It used sound effects to highlight certain parts such as the mouse winking and the trap snapping. The advertisement also used music and the character of the mouse to become more powerful through deriving certain emotions from their viewers and to enhance the meaning of the ad.