To be completely honest, I’m not the best at articulating my reasoning or emotions, but I’ll do my best throughout this letter. So here goes nothing.
Many businesses and organization use the method of advertisement to sell their products. Ads enhance products and encourage the audience to buy its products. There are many strategies in which influence how successful an ad can sell its product. In this essay, I will be conducting a rhetoric analysis on a chip advertisement created by Popchips. This essay should identify the audience the ad is trying to reach; the message the ad delivers; and the three modes of persuasion (ethos, logos, and pathos) that are used in this ad. For reference, this ad can be found at the end of this essay.
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.
Starting this year, I thought English 102 was just going to be another general education requirement I needed to have in order to graduate. English has never been my favorite subject, so I guess it is safe to say that I was not super excited about this class. However, this class turned out to be different then I thought. It turned out to be more useful then I originally thought. English 102 was both helpful and fairly simple because of what what I learned, the effort I put in and how prepared I was.
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.
4. Identify a message in advertising. Describe how you perceive the message of the advertisement. Try to determine the reality of the advertisement. Distinguish between your perception and the reality of the message.
There are millions of commercials. All of them have different audience and purpose. Advertisement maker tries to convey audience to look at their point of view, which can be political, social or convincing them to buy their product instead of others. According to the article “Rhetoric and Advertising” more than 2,000 years ago the Aristotle came up with three different categories to describe how people use rhetoric to persuade people: ethos, pathos and logos. Each of these terms describes different way to try to reach an audience and convince them to agree with you. Pathos is an appeal to emotion, and is a way of convincing an audience of an argument by creating an emotional response. Logos is an appeal to logic, and is a way of persuading an audience by reason. Ethos is an appeal to ethics, and it is a means of convincing someone of the character or credibility of the persuader. Many ad makers use 2 of 3 techniques in their ad. Commercial maker uses logos and ethos a lot while making a commercial. For example, Luna commercial. Luna is a carpeting company who installs new carpet in houses at the discounted prices. They always have a promotions going on which includes get carpet in 2 rooms and get the 3rd one for free, by doing this they are attracting customers, this is example of ethos. They also have a catchy audio which makes people remember their number (773-241-LUNA) this is an example of logos. They also have family who are dressed well talking about how good their
In this advertisement, the company should include a type of spokesperson that a viewer would think is reliable, convincing, and alike. This person could be a mother, father, grandmother, grandfather, etc. They would say something along the lines relating to the health of your family, then turn it personal with a story relating with theirs. “When we got the call from the doctor saying John is diagnosed with heart disease last year, the first thing we thought about was the countless amount of money we would have to be paying but if it wasn’t for Group Health Insurance we wouldn’t be covered.” After giving their personal story they would give additional information about the health company and the benefits. “If you were to be put in a life threatening situation… would you be covered?” They say finishing off, and then panning over to a scene of them with their family all happy, which possibly gives the company more
This advertisement demonstrates equal amounts of each rhetorical appeals, ethos, logos, and pathos, at the start of the commercial the first rhetorical appeal that was presented is ethos.
Advertisements all have one purpose, which is to make a customer aware of them so that the product or message being advertised can be brought to their awareness. The goal of gaining a person’s attention towards a product so that it can be bought is often achieved by appealing to the author’s credibility. An example can be seen in the American Red Cross Poster reveals that by giving blood, it brings communities together and it helps save lives of many (Red Cross). It can be seen that credibility is trying to be gained by showing that the audiences best interest is being made by stating that the blood would help save other lives and people would be closer together. Another example of the appeal to ethos can be seen in a passage from the book
In order to fully comprehend the meaning of the advertisement, one requires a process to analyze it. Kenneth Burke created a “Pentad of Dramatism,” as a way to critically analyze pieces of work such as advertisements. This method includes five major components: act, scene, agent, agency, and purpose. Act describes what types of communication are utilized in the work including actions done by the agents, both verbal and nonverbal. Scene describes when and where the act is takes
The main purpose of commercials and advertisements is to persuade the viewer to purchase the product that is advertised, but not all commercials are successful in this endeavor. Companies, such as Budweiser and Kleenex, appeal to the viewers’ ethos, logos, and pathos in order to influence them to buy the advertised product(s). In order to appeal to each of the categories, companies use different tactics to catch viewers’ attention. The use of ethos, logos, and pathos can make or break an advertisement based on how it is being used.
Advertising is a form of communication used to encourage or persuade an audience to continue or take some new action. But when advertisers produce an ad, they have many different variables that come into play if they want to successfully persuade consumers. The first most important step they have to figure out is, what type of audience they are trying to target. They then create images and intend to appeal specifically to the values, hopes, and desires of that particular audience. This is why someone would rather pick the well-known Malboro cowboy ads over the new female cigarettes of Virginia Slims. Each of these ads targets a specific audience;
A) The four advertisements I chose are all women’s clothing. The first pattern I noticed in the advertisements was that all four of them showcased just one woman by herself and the second pattern was that each woman had quite a bit of skin showing. In each of them they were doing something slightly different though. In the Bottega Veneta advertisement the woman is posing with her arm up and looking off at something out of the shot and her legs seem to be never ending and completely revealed. In the Ann Taylor advertisement the model is Kate Hudson and she is sitting down on a chair with her legs crossed and is leaning a bit forward and resting her head on her arm. The slit of her dress goes up very high and reveals most of her legs and a slightly deep cut around her neck revealing part of her chest as well as all of her right arm. Also this advertisement is specifically for the new little black dress line. In the Express advertisement girl seems to be walking with her hand on her neck while simultaneously swirling the bottom of her dress around from walking. Her arm is uncovered and you see a good amount of her legs and the movement of the dress draws your eyes to that. In the Levi’s advertisement the woman is facing away from the camera so we see her from behind. She is pulling up her Levi’s shorts, which draws the eyes to her bottom half.
For example, the “Leo Messi on the road to the 2014 FIFA World Cup™ - Fast” commercial advertises a pair of Adidas soccer cleats. Furthermore, the ad is trying to persuade young athletes to buy this product. The appeal is to ethos because the ad relies on the credibility of a professional athlete. The next ad in this time slot is from Old Spice, “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like.” This is in the demographic category of gender as it appeals to both men and women. Men will be great if they wear the product. Also, women should buy the product so their man will smell great.