First world problems

This week I want to analyze an ad called “First world problems”. I have seen a lot of charity advertisements appealing for donations but this one is special. Most charity ads are showed in a tone of “you can do” but this one conveys the message in a “you have to do” way.

The claim of this ad is that we should forget about our co-called problems and help children in the third world countries to solve their water problem.

This ad can be divided into three parts. The first parts begins with a little girl standing in front of a dilapidated school bus, wearing a worn and dirty T-shirt and saying “I hate when my phone charger won’t reach my bed”. Following her, people living in a poor condition keep complain about something like “my house is too big and I can’t connect to my wifi”, “my clothes in the washer so long and they start to smell”. We all know people living in that condition don’t have the troubles they complained about and they might have no idea what they were talking about. From this part, we begin to feel sympathy.

The second part is only one sentence in a pure black background-“First World Problems Are Not Problems”.

Then the director shows us what the real problem is in the third part. A cute boy drinking from a dirty water pipe directly and he enjoys the unsafe water so much, and he is trying to catch every drop of the dirty water. It seems the ad is yelling in silence “See it? This is the real problem!” After I watched this part, my feeling can be described as sympathy mixed with guilt.

I think this is an irony and the director uses this strategy to make people who really have those troubles feel guilty and shame because, in fact, they say nothing about themselves but talking about us at first. And then they show us what their real lives look like. This ad doesn’t tell us what to do and how to do but the guilt and sympathy keep pushing audience to donate for them. So I think this is an successful example of using irony in an ad.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxyhfiCO_XQ