lucozade and lara croft.

At the beginning of the lesson, we discussed the 4 different viewpoints on the media, and how it can affect the consumer. This topic sparked from a recent story about a man who was stabbed and robbed of his copy of the newly released and highly popular Grand Theft Auto 5. This certainly caused a debate around certain news sources about violence in video games reflecting violence in real life. This story was reported after merely 3 weeks after the series was blamed once again for inspiring an 8 year old to shoot his grandmother in the back of the head. The series (and violent video games in general) is a hot topic when coming to real life violence; gamers read it, politicians read it, scared, conservative housewives read it, etc. There are many reasons that break down why video games don't have an impact on real life violence, but the topic crops up anyway. As a gamer, I feel insulted when someone criticizes our medium as a 'way for kids to waste time' or a 'dangerous drug'. These days, video games are as legitimate an art-form as film or television or literature. Phil Fish describes gaming as "The ultimate art-form. The ultimate medium. It's the sum total of every expressive medium of all time - made interactive." It's a shame that most people don't see that as much as I do. Anyway - LARA CROFT.

After defending gaming in a lengthy paragraph, we turn to a Two-Dimensional character from a mediocre game endorsing a soft drink that I don't really like. But this isn't up to personal taste; the ad-execs at Lucozade certainly know (or at least knew) what they were doing when putting the fictional Lara Croft at the head of their marketing stunt. Despite me disliking Lara Croft (her being the benchmark of video game objectification of women and her 'tomb raiding' without justification or any use for her relics) she was a popular face at the time, with 2 feature films about the character a few years down the line. Of course the main demographic for video games (at the time) and fans of Lara Croft are primarily male. I'm just speaking for myself here, but I see more men drinking Lucozade and all of its spin-offs consumed by men than women. Marketing Lucozade for men isn't a bad thing - if your audience is mainly male anyway, you might as well appeal to them more aggressively - but it does leave out a large demographic.

This advert was unique at the time for being computer animated. Most adverts you see today have some use of CGI or otherwise computer-altered images, but in 1999 this was a relatively new innovation. It's certainly a risk to take, as 30 seconds of 3D animation and rendering can take quite some time, but the fact that it was so new and fresh at the time made up for all its flaws and foibles. Of course it promotes Lucozade in an exceedingly positive light: you're stuck, drink Lucozade, problem solved, etc. But it does so in a unique way. Faced with live threatening situations (fictional, of course), drinking a Lucozade will get you out of it.

I'm not a fan of the character or the drink, but what Lucozade did here was clever. I don't think I've seen a fictional game character be the face of a marketing ploy before. It makes a lot of sense though; she's just like a regular celebrity, but she doesn't say or do stupid things in public, and she's a fantastic stunt actor.