A Rhetorical Analysis Of Anti-Smoking Images

In the commercial created by the CDC “Terrie’s ad” a woman is in a hospital bed speaking against smoking cigarettes. Her voice is very difficult to understand, her skin has detrimentally changed, and the imagery portrayed is very disturbing to the audience. Terrie claims she started smoking as a teenager, and it is eventually released that she dies at the age of fifty-three from cancer. The purpose of this commercial is to stop people from smoking, ideally before they start. To reach this goal the creators of the video utilize multiple rhetorical appeals in an attempt to get across to the audience.

What captures the attention of people when they view an advertisement, commercial or poster? Is it the colors, a captivating phrase or the people pictured? While these are some of the elements often employed in advertising, we can look deeper and analyze the types of appeals that are utilized to draw attention to certain advertisements. The persuasive methods used can be classified into three modes. These modes are pathos, logos, and ethos. Pathos makes an appeal to emotions, logos appeals to logic or reason and ethos makes an appeal of character or credibility. Each appeal can give support to the message that is being promoted.

Gillette ads have focused on men in all the different ways a man will have to use their product. They have also used heroes from all the different sports played like, Hank Aaron, Mickey Mantle, and Honus Wagner for baseball, also Soccer star Park Ji-Sung, motorcycle champion Kenan Sofuoglu, cricketer Rahul Dravid, and Victor Cruz are just a few of the endorsement. The brand’s natural fit with baseball and tradition has helped the company connect emotionally and literally with its core audience. Taps into a key passion for men and strengthening the connection with

Advertisements often employ many different methods of persuading a potential consumer. The vast majority of persuasive methods can be classified into three modes. These modes are ethos, pathos, and logos. Ethos makes an appeal of character or personality. Pathos makes an appeal to the emotions. And logos appeals to reason or logic. This fascinating system of classification, first invented by Aristotle, remains valid even today. Let's explore how this system can be applied to a modern magazine advertisement.

This anti-smoking video begins by showing adult smokers on the street who become very confused when small children come up to them asking for a lighter. Through the use of ethos, pathos and logos, the story display’s a very powerful message to it’s audience. By using these three rhetorical situations, the writer illustrates an important story to persuade the audience not to smoke cigarettes.

American’s most savored beverage is beer. It’s one of the top consumed drinks and can be drank for different occasions. Budweiser, one of the most top selling beer companies puts out their commercials to advertise their beers. While their commercials are used to produce sales, what most don’t see is the message they associate when drinking a Budweiser. These commercials often use rhetoric to persuade us. Rhetorical devices are used to be the most effective way to persuade and audience into thinking. Pathos, ethos, and logos are used to make a powerful statement to be successful in their beer sales.

Throughout history, literature, pictures, and speeches have been laced with modes of persuasion. In modern society, thousands of advertisements are produced a day. Each one uses either ethos, pathos, or logos to convince viewers to shift and support a certain belief. One field of advertisements that relies heavily on pathos and ethos is the health field. The national anti-smoking campaign advertisement, below, uses blatant visuals and medical facts to make viewers understand how smoking negatively impacts people’s lives.

According to Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), 36.5 million Americans currently smoke, that is about fifteen percent of the population which is equal to the combined population of America’s twenty-five largest cities. Although anti-smoking advertisements are shown throughout the United States, people do not take them seriously half the time. The advertisement in this analysis showcases a grayish background, with the colors focusing mainly on a cigarette box that has the cigarettes put into crayon labels and the box also opens like a crayon box. There is also a child’s writing with crayons saying, “Just like mommy.” From this, the image showcases the dangers of smoking and the causes it has on loved ones. This advertisement uses strong ethos, pathos, and logos to get ASH’s point across very clear.

Persuasion is a part of our everyday lives. Whether we are persuading our mother, using persuasion through speech, or threw advertisements, we are using rhetoric strategies to get the response we desire. With the help of minor details in many advertisements, Ethos, Logos, and Pathos are a way of persuading the audience to buy or think a certain way. A Colgate toothbrush commercial used Logos, Pathos and Ethos to spread the word that they have the best toothbrush of all, in which they target everyone who has teeth. Through the use of advertisements, Colgate has convinced the world that they have the best toothbrushes, they’re even recommended by dentists.

This type of advertisement is selfless in that it seeks to achieve satisfaction from the possibility of stopping its intended audience from smoking and nothing more. It even asks at the bottom of the picture if the individual needs help. Following up with a smokeline expresses concern for the person. In its design, the layout has a depressing background. This gloomy image is possibly representing what comes along with each deed. A glowing white font captures the viewer’s eyes, but is present to sort of highlight and make it clear that the

Every piece of writing is embellished with its own set of rhetorical techniques meant to influence an audience to agreeing with a certain idea or purpose. In order to persuade and attract the audience, writers tend towards including techniques that invoke pathos or logos. For instance, Tony Robbins uses rhetorical techniques to engage his audience, explaining through active language and rhetorical questions how emotion is the motivating factor for any human action. As such, Robbins asserts that “emotion creates what we are going to do, or the action”. His message is that emotion is the most powerful device that leads people to do what they are doing.

Approximately twenty percent of adults in the United States smoke cigarettes, it is this habit which is the number one cause of death that is easily preventable. Anti-smoking advertisements are seen throughout our society, usually showing the harmful effects of tobacco through graphic pictures or other shocking images. The advertisement I chose is a black and white image, showing a young man smoking a cigarette, with the smoke from it forming a gun pointed at his head. Off to the side appear the words, “Kill a cigarette, save a life. Yours.” The advertisement makes use of the three rhetorical appeals of logos, ethos, and pathos through its image and implied meanings. Through this, the image is able to convey a strong sense of danger and bring awareness to the deadliness of smoking.

One of the ways that photography limits our understanding of the world is through the manipulation of images to trick us. In cigarette advertisements, the picture of the cigarettes is edited with vibrant colors and little details to the point that it starts to persuade the viewer to think that smoking is good. This is how companies manipulate their images to fool us. Others claim that it does not matter because the point that the advertisement is trying to make is that cigarettes are harmful, but this does not go through the viewers heads because

Below the cake there is white bold capitalized letters saying “Smoking causes premature aging” which explains what may have happened to the lady. Then in bottom right corner there is a blue box advertising the product, in the box there are some words reading “Helps you stop smoking”. The target audience of this advertisement are any individuals 18 and above years of age of any gender who smoke, but more specifically the ad is geared towards women that smoke because they showed a woman who is 42 but looks like she is 70. In today’s age many women want to retain their beauty for as long as they can. The author chose this picture specifically for his ad because it illustrates what people today don’t want and that is that they don’t want to grow older faster. The author’s purpose of the ad is to persuade anyone who sees the ad to quit smoking and warn people about the dangers of smoking. The author shows their product alongside the picture because they want the audience to quit and think that only their product can help them quit. Aside from the clear picture that we can see from the ad if you think rhetorically you can see that the author is using ethos, pathos to subliminally persuade you to follow the

The electronic cigarette company Blu, is a cigarette company that specializes in electronic cigarettes. These cigarettes contain a nicotine based liquid that is vaporized and then inhaled. This ad was published in October 2011, in a magazine called Men's Journal which provides men with health and style tips. The intended audience of this ad are traditional smokers that are looking for a smoking alternative. The overall purpose of this ad is to switch traditional smokers over to Blu. This ad to me is false advertisement and just causes a swap of addiction. The slogan, “nobody likes quitter”(Blu pg. 12), the portrayal of the smoking man in the ad, and the apparent pros that Blu gives in the ad, are misleading and inaccurate.