Signifier: New Balance and Dustin Pedroia.
Signified: These ads shows you it doesn’t matter how tall you are and no matter what people tell you, that you can do whatever you put your mind to. These ads center on one of the best players in baseball, my favorite baseball player. Pedroia wears a special make-up of the New Balance 1101 baseball spike, including a version in his signature camouflage colors. New Balance will introduce a new collection of lifestyle t-shirts that Dustin collaborated on.
Image: In the first video it shows a highlight package along with Dustin Pedroia telling you to tell him why he can’t. In the two print ads, it’s all about him defying odds as a 5’9” baseball player, saying he can’t play or saying even though he is 5’9” he is still an excellent player. New Balance also ran a few commercials of a round table of the other baseball players that endorse their product like outfielders Nick Swisher and Andre Ethier, and shortstop Hanley Ramirez joining Pedroia. Recently he did ads with actor Kenny Mayne, and Olympic runner Jenny Simpson too.
Denotation: This is an ad for New Balance Shoes one of the popular shoes out there which competes with Nike, Puma, Adidas, Reebok, and Champion, to name a few.
Connotation: New Balance is a successful shoe company that in 2008 had worldwide sales of $1.64 billion. New Balance in 2013 finished 6th in a top 10 list of most popular brand of sports shoes. New Balance employs more than 4,000 people around the globe. They have 6 brands under them: Warrior, PF-Flyers, Dunham, Cobb Hill, Brine, and Aravon. Their selling mark is that they have been made solely in the United States for 100 years, made in the “Heart of America, Boston.”
Diachronic Analysis: William J. Riley, a British emigrant founded New Balance in 1906 as the “New Balance Arch Support Company”, and is one of the world’s major sports footwear manufacturers. The first product, a flexible arch support, was designed with three support points to provide greater balance and comfort in the shoe. It is believed that Riley came up with the name “New Balance” by observing chickens in his yard, and demonstrated the way his arch supports worked by keeping a chicken foot on his office desk. He explained to customers that the chicken’s three-clawed foot resulted in perfect balance. In the 1960s, they designed and manufactured the “Trackster”, the world’s first running shoe made with a ripple sole. It was also the first running shoe to come in varying widths. The “Trackster” was given a big boost through the YMCA programs in which it became the unofficial shoe. College track teams such as MIT, Tufts University and Boston University, adopted the New Balance Trackster for their cross-country teams, soon to be followed by other colleges and private high schools around the country. In February 2015, the company announced its entry into the global association football market. New Balance had started its soccer business through its subsidiary Warrior Sports in 2012, punctuated by a $40 million-a-year sponsorship deal with Liverpool, but made the move to rebrand based on the global reach of the parent brand. The company has reached a total profit of approximately $40 billion since 1991.
Ideology: They compete with so many shoe companies for sports that they have to keep finding ways to sell the product. So the new ads are about fresh foam, having it sound like they are the most comfortable shoes to walk, run, or to play sports in, as cleats too. They also are following the social codes of having famous athletes endorse their product, to make the product sell better than just say they are good shoes. They also give back to the community by giving five percent of the MSRP of all sales to be donated to the Red Sox Foundation and Massachusetts General Hospital Home Base Program, as part of the deal with Pedroia. On New Balance’s website for baseball products, Dustin is on it and his collection of gear has its own link to the page; so they help the athlete get the shoe/cleat he wants and have the fans go out and get the product their favorite athlete uses. Pedroia also wears a special make-up of the New Balance 1101 baseball spike, including a version in his signature camouflage colors. Dubbed a “running shoe on spikes,” the 1101 features high performance running technologies to eliminate spike pressure that gives an athlete unparalleled comfort and fit on the diamond. They did great co-branding since Pedroia has other endorsements from Dunkin Donuts, Sullivan Tires, and was the cover boy for MLB the Show before.
Icon: New Balance has always had the same logo in black or red of the big NB or their name on the products. When you see the NB you know it’s them. Also, they use popular and excellent baseball players to endorse their cleats or running shoes that make it easier to sell when this baseball player wears them.
Codes: The social code is if you play baseball you want to wear the same cleats your favorite baseball player wears or what your favorite NBA players’ wears on the court if you play basketball. They also make a special line of cleats and shirts for the player so you have more to buy from your favorite athlete’s endorsements.
Jingoism: New Balance targets all ages and both genders as they have lines of shoes for kids and women besides men, as they have Jenny Simpson in the commercials for the women’s running shoes. Just the whole point of using baseball players to be in commercials is to get baseball fans or younger kids to buy their cleats. Also, a lot of runners or the average person can buy it for everyday use and not just for sports. They wanted to get it out there targeting other people needing shoes or cleats.