Advertising And The Advertising Groups

Advertisements are everywhere. From billboards, to magazines, to newspapers, flyers and TV commercials, chances are that you won’t go a day without observing some sort of ad. In most cases, companies use these ads as persuasive tools, deploying rhetorical appeals—logos, pathos, and ethos—to move their audiences to think or act in a certain way. The two magazine ads featured here, both endorsing Pedigree products, serve as excellent examples of how these modes of persuasion are strategically used.

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

One anti-smoking poster shows merely a pair of hands holding a revolver. Instead of bullets the hands are using cigarettes to load the weapon. Listed in small print on one side of the poster are numerous conditions that may be related to smoking, such as fatal heart attacks, emphysema, cancer, and gum disease. The phrase “Smoking kills… so why bother starting” is printed in large font at the bottom of the poster. The message of this poster is clear: Don’t Smoke. The poster is trying to portray that smoking is like holding a loaded weapon. Just as someone would be endangering their life with the loaded gun, they would also be endangering their life with the use of cigarettes. The consequences and health issues associated with smoking can be just as deadly as those of the gun. Ultimately, if someone smokes they are putting their life at risk. Therefore, the logical act is to never start smoking.

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.

Cigarette smoking is the leading cause of death in the United States. Smoking causes more deaths each year than the most common causes such as car accidents, alcohol use, illegal drug use, etc. combined according to the Centers for Disease Control Prevention. (CDC). The “weapons of mass destruction” advertisement uses this appealing phrase to grab the audience's attention that smoking is deadly. This billboard advertisement posted in New Albany, Indiana is meant to capture attention from citizens and tourist who pass by that billboard whether it is by walking or driving. This advertisement conveys a strong message by using Aristotle’s three artistic proofs (pathos, logos, and ethos) to convince the audience that smoking leads to death.

Rhetorical appeals are crucial when it comes to advertisements. How is the company/foundation going to grab the viewer’s attention? How are they really going to hook the viewer and make them remember our message? Well, the CHF uses to rhetorical appeals, ethos and pathos. They use pathos in testing the viewer’s emotion. Using the quote “some children get to heaven earlier” really gets you thinking and feeling sorry for children who go through this every day. Emotion is one of the biggest, if not the most important rhetorical appeal. Using children really adds to it. I would like to think everybody feels bad for children around smoke after viewing this disturbing photo. Smokers may feel cautious now when around young ones. That is what the CHF is going after, parents reevaluating their choices with tobacco. Ethos and pathos were very effective in this advertisement.

In the photo there is two coffins with cigarettes in them. This symbolizes that smoking will be the thing that kills you if you do it because the cigarettes are in the coffin. Cigarettes are usually bought in containers that are similar to that of those mini coffins, so the advertisement is portraying that you are buying your

Shock ads are controversial images used to create awareness to certain issues. They are used to break through clutter and shock the consumers by using some form of nudity, sexual suggestions, and fear as well as taboos to affect people’s emotions. For example, anti-smoking ads are used to scare children from using tobacco before they get addicted or use. Another example, is the driving and texting commercials that also frighten people from using their mobile phones while driving. Many commercials have been banned from the United States because they are too graphic for most viewers. Those ads are used to bring attention to certain issues that can help people and prevent them from making mistakes but they can also make people angry and upset.

Imagine turning forty-two years old then looking in the mirror and you look double your age. This is what smoking cigarettes will do to you. This ad by Nicotinell is trying to explain that smoking cigarettes will cause premature aging. In this image, there is a lady celebrating her forty-second birthday, but she doesn’t look forty-two at all. She looks like a grandmother in her eighties. I found this picture on Google Images while searching for PSA’s. I decided to go with this picture because it was really eye catching and very straight forward. This PSA targets cigarette smokers because the brand Nicotinell sells patches to stop nicotine addiction. It also says “Smoking causes premature aging” on the PSA also. This PSA illustrates a point by making it very obvious that smoking causes premature aging. This imagine is important to me because my mother smokes cigarettes and I want to show this paper to her when I am finished to hopefully get her to stop smoking cigarettes! This image can be analyzed by looking at eight rhetorical factors: character roles, setting, type of photo, distance from subject, orientation/camera angle, use of color, point of view and image manipulation.

Through the use of pathos, camera angle and color, the supposed antagonist of the commercial is transformed into the protagonist. Without the use of these persuasive tools, the advertisement is misleading to the viewer.

Such fear-mongering approaches to advertising are still present within modern society, no doubt it, and oftentimes they play off this fear of aging as a means of soliciting their product or, in the case of the first advertisement to be discussed, their message. The first advertisement that I will be discussing is an anti-smoking ad from 2006 by the name of “Icons.” This advertisement, sponsored by Tobacco Free California, attempts to dissuade children, teens, and young adults from becoming smokers with serious disabilities later in life and yet is still guilty of practicing ageism, even though it’s an objectively good cause (See Ad 1 on Advertisements page). Within the 33 second ad, the logos of four big name cigarette companies, like Marlboro

The advertisement I chose was made by Sécurité Routière, the french institute of road safety. In the ad there is a picture of an injured little girl. The text on the ad says “ in town, car accidents don’t just happen to cars. Slow down.” The company created this ad to alert people about the danger of speeding. The girl has a dent in her forehead resembling a car. On her face there are marks that look like paint scratches found on a damaged vehicle. This ad uses several methods of persuasion to get their message across.

USING EMOTIONAL, HUMOROUS AND THREATENING APPEAL IN ADVERTISING TO ADDRESS THE ISSUE OF SMOKING BY ADULTS

The clincher—throwing a party at the bottom in Newport orange—are the words “Fire it up!” clothed in ill-fitting capital letters and optimistically sloped upwards. In stark contrast to the upbeat theme of the overall advertisement, the Surgeon General’s Warning glowers from the corner of the page demoralizing the viewers with its solemn, black font and stodgy, separating box. Framing the advertisement are two green bars that provide a source to build from. Although a warning is present, the font and placement keeps it from becoming a major focal point and from disrupting the general flow of the advertisement. The true beauty stems from the ability of the picture to draw the viewer’s focus to just the happy faces, the calm ocean, and the word “pleasure!” with just a hint of the product to remind them of what they need to obtain this. When you smoke Newport, fun chases you everywhere you go, which makes you a cool person, and popularity follows coolness like the Spartans under Leonidas I at Thermopylae. Hirschberg points out several ways cigarette companies manipulate the imagery when advertising that present themselves in Newport’s advertisement:

Advertising has played a major role in human society, which often appears in every corner of the streets. Most of them have efficient effects on the progress of human reactions. Some are trying to convince consumers to buy the products. Some advertisements are existed with the purpose to persuade and educate viewers of particular knowledge. Further more, advertisers also utilize countless means to attract viewers’ attention, such as sexuality, celebrity, fantasy, and creativity. Comedy is also being used as a magnet to alert people of the advertisement. For example, an ad of the Indian Cancer Society has successfully applied the humor tone on male sexual organ as the consequence of smoking.