Course: Writing 1
Date: 10/07/2013

If You Really Want to Touch Someone The title “if you really want to touch someone,” to me, sounds more like chorus of a teenage pop song than a touching advertisement of post service at the first glance. Direct, obvious and effective modern culture, like pop music, rules; even though people are to get over it and move on to the next hit quickly. Old-fashioned traditions are thus tailored according to the taste of modern people. For example, instead of writing letters, which is time-consuming and slow, people now prefer emails and texts.
However, in the aim of advocating a dying way of communication, the advertisement relates effectively to its customers in three ways. First, the creative “touch” between the letter and the little girl expressed a strong spine. The image of the Dad coming out from a paper while holding his daughter steadily adds more to a striking visual effect. Even though the audience can’t see the man’s facial expression, the implicit details, for example, the way he gently kisses his daughter with his nose, and his tender smile, altogether build up a peaceful atmosphere. It seems as if the man doesn’t even really exist, or that he is just a vague sculpture without life. But there he stands firmly, holding his precious baby with his deepest emotion. It is such a powerful hug, even though his strong arms around his daughter’s legs are just lines and words. Moreover, the picture inspires imagination. The advertisement itself expresses the simple idea of “touch”; while at the same time it leaves space for its audience to interpret in their own ways. For instance, to me there is also acoustic sensation: he is whispering to her that he is proud of her, and that he loves her forever, everything that is beautifully written in the background letter. The personal understanding enhances audience’s resonance with the advertisement.
The second idea to help appeal to the customers is the choice of characters in the picture. Writing letters definitely doesn’t have absolute advantage in communicating in many scenarios, for example in the workplace. But in this specific situation, every one can relate to the emotional connection between a father and his daughter. There’s a story behind this hug, and it encourages its audience to think of their own stories. The little girl, contrary to her dad, creates a more bubbly and vivid feeling through her smile, her little pinch clip, and her pink socks. She looks so familiar, just like the sweet little girl next door who feels most at ease in daddy’s arms. The soft and peaceful pleasure in her eyes expresses her mutual affection for her dad. She relaxes her back, because she trusts him and depends on him. She’s having a great time in her dad’s hug, even though the hug is actually just a letter.
The third effective advertising method, besides the figures of the Dad and the Daughter, is the details of the letter on the background. The script of the background letter, for instance, every effort he puts in writing his “neatest handwriting”, conveys the simplest expectation of a father. He wants to make sure his beloved baby reads every word clearly if he gets older and starts to lose memory, or she grows out of daddy’s little girl and loses patience in analyzing his terrible handwriting. Even though the customers may not scrutinize every word on the background, they get the idea of the love of a father: simple and profound. He remembers every detail in her life and how exactly he felt at that moment. The fact that the sentence “I remember the first time I held you” connects the dad and the daughter in the image further enhances the affection in the hug. Then he moves on to talk about how she looked when she was born. Every detail of her means more to him than to anyone else. As a father, he’s stating his most sincere feeling when he puts down, “what’s the better way to do this (Dad and Daughter Diary) than a letter? ”. Memories may