Commercial Signifiers

Whether we realize it or not, we are constantly surrounded by advertisements. On average, we are exposed to approximately 3,000 ads per day, through logos, billboards, and television commercials, even our choices of brands. But in today’s society, one of the most used and influential tools of advertising are women. But the unfortunate thing is that women are not just viewed as actresses in these ads but as objects for people to look at, use, abuse, and more. In her fourth installment in a line of documentaries, “Killing Us Softly 4,” Jean Kilbourne explains the influence of advertising women and popular culture, and its relationship to gender violence, sexism and racism, and eating disorders.

The first rhetorical appeal, logos, is used in this image. The primary idea is that smoking is bad for your health. In most countries today, this is common knowledge. This is especially true in Northern American culture, as smoking is generally seen as damaging and

The ad was published in September 2008 in Russia by the agency BBDO Moscow, with the brand name CSI. BBDO is a worldwide advertising company that advertise's, not only anti-tobacco, but many other products such as Band-Aid brand and Snickers; mainly sticking with current events. This is where the credibilty lies, BBDO seems to advertise a lot of products, but not about many issues/causes such as anti-tobacco. However, this group has earned many recognitions such as, “Most effectice network in the world” and many “Network of the year” 's. As well as “Most awarded agency network in the world”, therefore this leads me to believe their ethos is pretty good. But, i am not sure how committed the agency is to anti-tobacco campaigns since they also have other products being advertised and do not take donations nor really contribute to the community ( other than creating and publishing the ads). I do believe the ads are making an impact in many countries; such as Algeria and Pakistan and many other regions of the world. Otherwise the agency wouldn't have recieved that many awards/recognitions, especially the ones with “world”

Advertisements are all over the place. Whether they are on the Internet, billboards, or in a magazine, there is no way of escaping them. They all have their target audience who the specifically created the ad for. In this ad, it targets mainly non-smokers and even smokers. The advertisement we are looking at is a woman’s mouth. Her mouth is slightly open and the inside is swallowed by a black hole. Her bright red lipstick grabs your attention. What disgusts you is her teeth. Her teeth have been replaced with vulgar. Cigarette buds. The advertisement utilizes the three rhetorical appeals of logos, ethos, and pathos through its image and implied meanings. Through this, the image is able to convey a vividsense of disgust and promote awareness.

As medical marijuana is becoming legal, more advertisements for medical cannabis are being released. The background and color help shape the advertisement into a unique work of art that aims to grab peoples’ attention. This advertisement said, “I just saved my liver by switching to medical cannabis.” The advertisement is also associated with a well-known advertisement character for Geiko. Why are the creators writing in this way? Why is the character positioned in the way he was? Why was he facing the words? These different elements work together to produce the effect that medical marijuana is good for people and that people should buy the product.

The advertisement that I examined for my rhetorical analysis essay from is the First National Anti-Smoking Ads “Smoking Kills”. The ethos of this image was created by the Center for Disease Control, in an effort to inform nonsmokers, and smokers about the dangers of smoking, and the tactics tobacco companies are used to persuade people to buy cigarettes. In the image smoking is perceived as brutal to the public health. Also, smoking is the largest cause of preventable death in the world. Smoking in this image associate the cigarettes to bullets in a gun as a way to clarify how cigarettes are deadly and can kill you slowly.

Advertisements we see it all the time, some of them we ignore and some it gets our attention. Advertisements have many different pictures from food, people, clothing, cars and they are located everywhere in order to sell their product. But what if I told you that they have hidden messages projected throw them in many ways, and that we do not see it right of way. When it comes to advertisement in magazine and commercials, men are often portray as strong and big showing the image of power, but in the other hand women for a very long time have been portray in different ways as weak or a toy for sexual advertisement. In addition Kilbourne mention in her video “Killing us softy 4” they advertise images that show violence, sexuality and health issues.

Everywhere we turn there are advertising, sometimes in places we least expect them to be. Well-designed advertising can have dramatic effects over consumers. Nancy Day acknowledges how advertising can educate us, but it can also “ reinforce racial,cultural,and sexual stereotypes” (Day). An example of a cultural stereotypical commercial is Kendall Jenner’s 2016 Pepsi Commercial.This advertisement was supposed to promote the Black Lives Matter movement, but in contradiction to the purpose, Pepsi used a privileged-caucasian model as the lead role. Advertising main point is to persuade consumers to purchase an item, yet so many advertised are doing the complete opposite.

Did you know that almost every one person out of seven smokes cigarettes on Earth? It is one of the top cause of death, yet, five million people die each year. Anti- smoking advertisements usually comes up very often, when you are watching TV, on social media, even on top of the cigarette packs. The advertisement that I choosed to do my rhetorical analysis is black and white picture, showing young woman smoking a cigarette and the smoke is forming like rope around the lady’s neck where it is about to choke the lady. The advertisement is using the two rhetorical claim of logos and pathos through this picture. Through this advertisement, the image shows us how deadly it is to smoke cigarettes.

Women are suppressed and degraded in society. They are merely seen as pets for males or care-takers of the house and children. The advertisement on women’s equality is rhetorically effective due to its connection to the audience, emotional appeal, and how things are positioned in the ad, as well as the misogynistic comments and how society depicts women.

In this advertisement, it shows a man making a gun shaped form with his hand with a gun as the shadow. The wording included is smoking kills in bold letters and a fact that states that about 106,000 people in the UK die each year due to smoking. I believe this advertisement appeals to people that believe smoking is harmful and also to people who are smoking but are thinking about quitting. It does not appeal to people who believe smoking is just a regular activity to do when they are bored because they just believe that it is another advertisement to scare them and encourage them to quit. I believe this advertisement deals with logos and pathos. It deals with logos because it uses the fact that over a thousand people die each year in the UK

The advertisement appeals mostly to women than men since the particular item shown in the image is a bright white purse being held by a malnourished woman. This visual represents the difference between a “want” and an urgent need. Its main purpose is to make women think twice about buying a purse that they may not need or donating only five dollars a week to someone who needs to be fed in order to be able to survive and in some cases feed their children, for example the woman in the picture whose name is Elisabeth Leonkokwea, she has four children she must feed. The advertisement’s image has a small amount of writing. By doing so, the rhetorical device

Ads sell much more than products. They sell moral values and cultural images, such as concepts of success, love, and sexuality. Jean Kilbourne argues that advertising is a very powerful social force that should be taken seriously. Her videos (e.g., Killing Us Softly: Advertising Images of Women; Still Killing Us Softly; and Calling the Shots: Women and and Alcohol) use print advertising as a vehicle to provide careful and cogent analyses of gender inequality. (Cortese 14)

On May 2014; the Women’s and Health magazine published an advertisement for Sofia Vergara featuring Head and Shoulders. Head and Shoulders is a shampoo product with different kinds of shampoos. This advertisement is selling the green apple head and shoulder shampoo with its conditioner. Who are the targeted audience? Why would any person choose this product not the other? A lot of questions the advertisement must reply on to be considered as a good advertisement. One of the main questions asked would be if this was a persuasive advertisement or not. Such a question is answered through the use of logos ethos and pathos.

In this essay I will analyse two different print advertisements, they will be portraying two totally different meanings. A combination of signs are used in adverts to create a recognisable identity for the product or the emotion the advert/poster is trying to communicate to the audience. There are meanings within these signs which are built up from an underlying level to trigger our subconscious understanding and encourage a positive response reflective of the audiences common needs, views or desires.