Even a casual study of commercials (at least those made in or for the United States) will reveal that they can be broken down into a number of fundamental "atomic" types or approaches. These can be used by themselves or in combinations to create advertisements.
Tropes:
- Advertising Disguised as News: What looks to be a news broadcast/article at first glance is actually an elaborate advertisement.
- Appeal to Flattery: The commercial butters the viewers up in a way that suggests only good-looking, good-hearted people would buy their product.
- Bandwagon Technique: The commercial encourages their viewers on the basis that since everyone else is buying it, the viewer should too.
- Beer Commercials: Commercials advertising beer aren't allowed to show people actually drinking it.
- Bottled Cool: An ad promises you popularity/coolness if you buy the product.
- Celebrity Endorsement: Trying to convince the audience to want your product by having a celebrity speak fondly of the product.
- Character Celebrity Endorsement: Convincing your audience that your product is desirable by having a fictional character praise it.
- Commercial Switcheroo: A commercial for a seemingly-generic product gets interrupted by the actual commercial partway through.
- Consumer Conspiracy: The commercial offers the viewer "top-secret" info that other companies seemingly don't want you knowing about.
- Design Student's Orgasm: The commercial uses gorgeous, trippy visuals to grab viewers' attention.
- Face on the Cover: Something is advertised (most commonly a movie or TV show) by having a celebrity associated with it be on the cover.
- Hive-Mind Testimonial: The commercial emphasizes the product's wide appeal by having a sequence where multiple people say the same sentence (or a fragment of the sentence) praising the product over and over.
- Infomercial: A commercial stretched to half-hour length, giving the advertisers plenty of time to hawk the product and extol its virtues.
- Kitschy Local Commercial: Commercials made locally tend to have No Budget and are extremely dodgy/cheesy.
- Made of Shiny: The commercial intends to sell their product by how great it looks alone.
- The Man Is Sticking It to the Man: A commercial representing a large consumer company hypocritically persuades audiences to protest against capitalism via their products.
- Perfume Commercial: Commercials advertising perfume are frequently very artsy, pretentious, and nigh-incomprehensible.
- Phony Article: A print ad is inconspicuously disguised as a regular news story/editorial.
- Phony Newscast: The commercial shills the product in the form of a faux-newscast.
- Product as Superhero: The product's mascot is portrayed as a superhero, and the commercial shows them in action in some way.
- Product Switcheroo Ad: Demonstrating that a cheap product is so high-quality that it could pass for its pricier counterparts.
- Public Relations Ad: An ad meant to improve the government/company's public image.
- Public Service Announcement: A short film intended to educate the viewer on important social subjects.
- Put a Face on the Company: A product's ads strongly associate it with someone.
- Reverse Psycho: An ad begs you to buy the product by telling you not to.
- Scapegoat Ad: Blaming the employees/mascots of a competitor for its product's shortcomings.
- Scare 'Em Straight: A public service announcement intended to deter people from misbehavior by claiming that terrible things will happen to them if they do this bad thing.
- Sex for Product: The commercial persuades the viewer that if they buy their product, it'll help them get laid.
- Straightforward: The commercial simply tells the viewer what the product is and what it does.
- Talking Pest: A mascot who is a member of the species the product is designed to wipe out.