A Rhetorical Analysis Of An Ad Essay

Sexual imagery has been used in advertising for a long time with a great deal of success. With the ever-increasing difficulty of advertisers to gain the attention of the media consumer, the use of both effective and ineffective sexual imagery has flourished in recent years. Some products such as perfume and clothing are relatively easy to sell with sexual imagery. Companies selling products such as fast food, however, must be more creative with their use of sexual imagery. Arby’s Roast Beef Restaurant took such a creative approach with its full-page advertisement in the 2009 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.

Advertising is at the forefront of delivering the proper message to customers and prospective customers. The purpose of advertising is to convince customers that a company's services or products are the best, draw customers to the business, and to keep existing customers loyal. If there's one thing that every marketing and advertising pro retained from Business 101 class, it's that sex sells. The use of increasingly explicit sexual imagery in consumer oriented advertising has become almost commonplace. Ads for jeans, perfumes and many other products have featured provocative images that were designed to elicit sexual responses from as large a cross section of the population as possible. In our society, women are portrayed as highly sexualized

An old saying that comes into play when just glancing at this advertisement, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” is an old saying pediatricians would say to their miniature patients. Who would know this could grab attention of people just watching TV? “An Apple a Day” illustrates four Granny Smith apples on one side of the ad while a slice of a Granny Smith apple sits on the other side of the ad. The product the advertiser is selling has more to offer than the other companies which, is shown by the whole apples and the slice of an apple. The small description underneath the Granny Smith apples has a formal, yet demanding tone that provides information about the product. In the fine print, it has some details on how their company is “one of the best. “Then below the small caption is a large, bold black logo followed by the contact information of the company all directed towards drivers. “An Apple a Day” is trying to connect with middle-class drivers looking for better quality insurance for an inexpensive price.

What is it that drives commercials towards their target audience? Commercials can be for a certain age, race, and sometimes even a certain gender. Pop culture has influenced the minority groups and shed light to women 's rights or so it was thought. Lisa Shaffer a fellow student feels otherwise and believes that Pop culture has only defended traditional values and does little to challenge those who already have power . Commercials bring in gender norms and in Steve Craig’s article, “Men’s Men and Women’s Women” he speaks on four particular TV ads directed towards a particular gender. What is interesting is it shows a false image of the opposite sex to the audience being portrayed toward their preferences. It is the image the audience wants to see that appeals to them. This is all in an attempt to sell their products and take advantage of our desires and anxieties. Craig shows commercials brings gender norms that produce the ideas of what a man’s man and a woman’s woman which is why he would agree with Shaffer because it promotes an old way of thinking.

The Carl’s Jr Tex Mex Bacon Thickburger Commercial shown on television is a clear example of how women are objectified in advertising. The ad is to promote the idea of the new TexMex thickburger but how you may ask? It includes two models representing Mexico and the other United States. Both women are in tight fitted cheeky bikinis competing over whether the fast food is “Tex” or “Mex” playing volleyball. The idea of the commercial was made to appeal to men in seeking an attraction from the target audience using women in a sexual aesthetic. As both men are watching from the bleachers they are sure enjoying the women compete on who is right. “Should we tell them it’s both?” a man watching the game adds before his friend is quick to answer “eventually”, this bodily language emphasizes that both men already know it’s both Tex and Mex combined but want to watch the women as they are jumping around playing dirty in such bikinis. The ad has created a way to lure men to purchase a specific brand of burger using women’s body. Generally, it’s a win win situation because advertisements affect cultural ideas and what people desire, the influence of individuals is overlooked more than the actual persuading of buying the product. In “Can’t Buy My Love” and Killing Us Softly by Jean Kilbourne she relates society as a passive mirror where advertisements develop an effective pervasive medium of influence because as people consume ads they see they will eventually base it off themselves personally. With ad’s constantly lingering, our mind is presented to subconsciously process the ad and the sexual appearances. Therefore, by showing these attractive women as a highlight, it advertises the objective of women in making you crave this specific burger.

Advertisements are all over the place. Whether they are on TV, radio, or in a magazine, there is no way that you can escape them. They all have their target audience who they have specifically designed the ad for. And of course they are selling their product. This is a multi billion dollar industry and the advertiser’s study all the ways that they can attract the person’s attention. One way that is used the most and is in some ways very controversial is use of sex to sell products

Using logos, the advertisers make the female viewers see the logic in buying their girdle and bra. In addition, they use pathos to make female viewers feel self conscious, persuading them to purchase their products.

The advertisements that she studied all had the same patterns, depicting women as sexual objects who were submissive, domestic, and attractive based on male standards (2010). Even though men were sometimes depicted as sexual objects, they were never under the same scrutiny as women. Although people stated that advertisements do not affect them, that they merely tune them out, this notion is incorrect because advertisements are cumulative and subconscious; considering, 8% of the advertisement is taken up by the conscious mind (Kilbourne 2010). Thus, media images do influence the consumer, and makes them believe the gender roles reinforced through the advertisement because that is what their mind takes in subconsciously. Moreover, advertisements act as socializing agents because each gender is expected to act according to their gender role that is society constructed. As noticed in the pampers commercial, the idea behind the mother holding the newborn child reinforces the idea that women are expected to be domestic. Additionally, the same idea is present in the Disney World commercial where the women hold a status as a mother, in which her role is to be a caretaker of her daughter, while her strong husband and son bring the luggage to the hotel. Although subtle, the same message of the man being strong was shown in the Geico advertisement, where there are more men than women riding the motorcycles. However, there was gender role reversal in the Chase bank advertisement, where the man was shown as emotional and intelligent, while the women held the role of intelligent. This reveals the idea that even though there are advertisements that feed into the gender role socialization, there are some advertisements that stray away from this socially constructed notion. Overall, a majority of the

Old Spice is very blatant in the way they attract their customers. An obvious example is The Man Your Man Could Smell Like commercial. In this advertisement Old Spice envisions their audience to be anyone who is in a relationship or trying to be in relationship. The more obvious targeted audience is the female audience. To attract the female audience they put an attractive man in the commercials and try to make it seem that if their “man” uses old spice body washes their “man” will be like him.

In advertising, sex is the use of provocative imagery and erotic messages that are specifically designed to gain interest in a particular product. Typically, in ads beautiful women or handsome men are used to lure in the viewer or consumer. A McDonald’s ad from 1977 focuses on selling their product using a family oriented scene. Forty years later, Burger King releases an ad that focuses more on oral sex and degrading women. This illustrates that women have gone from being nurturing figures to sex symbols in advertisements.

When it comes to a perfect body many people have different opinions and views on how it should look. Although, one appearance in particular that has been known as the “ideal image” is to be thin and skinny. Society usually expects females to go by this image and follow the steps in order to achieve this appearance. When it comes to the media this image is the pure example of what a woman should look like. Society believes that they must be a replicate of this image so they may be accepted, but why? Media might have something to do with this way of thinking. In this era, media is the main focus, it tells society what to wear and buy, even how to look. The mediums such as films, ads and commercials help display a stereotypical image of a woman and society eats it up because this is what they’ve come to know.

At a first glance of the ad that was chosen, you might not assume anything of it at first, but if you take a second glance at the ad then you’ll be able to convey the message. The ad tackles on the deep and never ending controversial topic about Racism from the use of babies. Within our society today, some might say that racism does not affect opportunities for certain races, but some would argue that it still exists.

KFC is a prime example of how advertisements can effect the people’s perspective of their values, love and material possessions. The ‘Tender Wings of Desire’ campaign propagated by KFC depicts portrayals of standards for men, ‘desires’ for women and tries to portray love as a material object. This ad campaign targets middle aged mothers by portraying the stereotypical fantasy associated with middle aged women. It portrays the story of a woman being rescued by a what society considers an attractive man. As the target audience is middle aged mothers, the imagery of books that they are likely to read is portrayed. This portrayal of a ‘perfect’ man is only used as an eye catcher and provides no insight into the item that is being advertised. This is not uncommon in advertising however, simply because ‘everyone is doing it’ shouldn’t be considered as an excuse to portray either gender in a potentially damaging way towards the general public. This can be overcome by simply portraying a product that appeals to its intended audience instead of using people dressed provocatively to catch the attention from the consumers. That is why this

I was hooked from the opening sentence of this passage, and as I finished, I couldn’t resist a small internal cheer. I believe most of us would agree with the author’s sentiments, in that advertisements (ads) are truly the “most…toxic of the mental pollutants” [line 1]’ Who doesn’t fly through the channels when there is a break in your program, and the endless commercials, and infomercial begin? Today, our lives are saturated with ads occupying every square inch of viewing space. It is enough to make one scream! The statistics the author quotes are staggering. To imagine that “12 billion display ads, 3 million radio commercials, and over 200,000 TV commercials” air each day, and this is in North America

Beyoncé, Rihanna, Kim Kardashian, Kylie Jenner, Nicki Minaj and Jennifer Lopez are well known celebrities that are admired for their mesmerizing beauty and bodies. These empowering women are some individuals that come to mind when thinking of women with the most flattering physiques that many women aspire for. The female body image and what it looks like in media, marketing and advertising has been a controversial issue. The way these women in media, marketing and advertising are portrayed a certain way and that does not allow for diversity in body images. Since the early 1900’s women are often portrayed as sexy, attractive, and with unrealistic ideal bodies. Even though time has changed, culture continues to place a great emphasis on how women look today. Culture develop trends and expectations about the female body that women become subject to follow. These beauty standards have drastic impacts on young women and their body images and it starts at a young age. Society has created cultural norms on the female body image that has a great impact on girls and women.