A
Rhetorical Analysis of Advertisements: Ethos, Pathos, and Logos
At first glance
most advertisements appear to be direct and to the point with an intended
message and clear selling point. Many
consumers look and watch ads without looking at the advertisements through a
rhetorical perspective and are unable to decipher some of the deeper and
cultural messages that an advertisement can convey. Rhetoric, as defined by
Charles Bazerman, consists of “…how people use language and other symbols to
realize human goals and carry out human activities…ultimately a practical study
offering people greater control over their symbolic activity.” Print and commercial advertisements use a
visual type of rhetoric that combines language, symbols and human activities to
encourage and persuade the intended audience to purchase or buy into the item
being marketed. Visual rhetoric, which can also be described as visual
metaphors are “similar to verbal metaphors yet visual metaphors can also be
characterized as visual argumentation in that it employs the syntactic
structure of visual persuasion (Jeong).”
Advertisements are in every direction we
look. They are posted on billboards in
every town, on every highway and interstate.
They are also posted on web pages, scoring the screens of social media
websites and networks, encouraging consumers to purchase the product because it
will help “clean the house faster” or “make the whites in the laundry
whiter.” Advertisements are a type of
visual rhetoric that are used to persuade an intended audience to purchase
items that will ideally help the consumer reach a better lifestyle whether it
be regards to a cleaner kitchen or losing the last 10 pounds with a diet
pill. Overtime the ways in which
advertisements reach the intended audience have changed with all the new
technological advancements since the early 1990s. Before these advancements most advertisements
were seen in newspapers and magazines, reaching a very specific audience in
respects to the corresponding publications.
Now, however, advertisements are posted everywhere from the traditional
newspapers and magazines to the more modern modes of communication such as
Facebook and email. Regardless of how
the consumer becomes aware of the advertisement, the ultimate goal is to convey
the message that the product is somehow a necessity that the intended audience
needs.
The
means of persuasion that advertisements utilize are the three modes of appeal
of rhetoric: ethos, pathos, and logos.
The three modes work together in visual advertisements to rhetorically
convince the audience that the product being advertised is the best out of all
the other products of its kind. Ethos is
used to establish the credibility of the speaker. Depending on the type of advertisement the
credible speaker could be portrayed as a stay-at-home-mom who is selling a
cleaning product, which would be significant to most mothers, or the credible
speaker could be a young celebrity who found success with a certain brand of
face wash that many teens could relate with.
Pathos, on the other hand, is used to convey a specific emotion to the
intended audience. Some advertisements
send a happy and excited message with the speaker smiling and laughing, while other
advertisements will draw on the consumers frustrations with, for example, other
similar products by demonstrating how the comparable product failed to do what
was advertised. Logos, the third
component of the modes of appeal, uses “…patterns, conventions, and modes of
reasoning that the audience finds convincing and persuasive (Covino).” Advertisements can convey logos with a number
of different situations such as using a cleaning product because it won an
award, or to convince a consumer to join a certain phone company because it has
the broadest network. The three models
work together and if done successfully, “…ethos
moves an audience by activating their faith in the credibility of the
rhetor and pathos stimulates their
feelings and seeks a change in their attitudes and actions, so logos, accompanied by the other two
appeals, mobilizes the powers of reasoning (Covino).” Because of the different appeals
that the visual metaphors utilize, the advertisements “tend to be more implicit
and complex than verbal metaphors and allow for several possible interpretations
(Jeong).”
Using
these three modes of appeal, five different advertisements will be looked at to
compare and contrast how overtime, although the modes of appeal have remained
the same, the means of persuading the audience have changed in regards to the
authority of the speaker in the advertisement, the emotional means of
persuasion, and the logic being used due to the changes in cultural beliefs and
values over the past 50 years while specifically looking at how women were the
targeted audience based on cultural traditions, beliefs, and stereotypes of the
time.
“Retailers had long identified
women as the principal buyers of domestic items” and this vintage advertisement
from Tide laundry detergent demonstrates the stereotypical and traditional
values of the time when the ad was published in the 1950s (Howard). The intended audience is very much directed
towards women and the homemakers of the time.
In the advertisement, the woman shown is used to create a relatable
image of the “established homemaker,” which is using ethos to attract the
audience’s attention at the viewer’s first glance. Pictured, is a woman with perfectly done
hair, polished nails, and make up that appears to be flawless, creating the
idealized wife that women of the time were to aspire to become. The wedding ring on the woman’s left hand
should also be mentioned when assessing her credibility in regards to the
intended audience. Many women were
expected to marry at an earlier age than what is now expected culturally. Her ring, implying that she is in fact
married, establishes her credibility as wife and homemaker, not just a woman
who is doing the laundry. Much of the
pathos of this advertisement is created with the woman’s excited expression and
the words next to her bright smile stating, “What! Can anything be better than Tide?” Her overall expression of excitement over the
product sends the message to the audience that Tide is the best product for a
happy woman and that they will be just as happy if they use Tide detergent
also. Logos is expressed to the audience
in the written text of the advertisement with the announcement of “New
Tide.” In the last sentence of the
advertisement, the text continues to explain the woman’s necessity for Tide by
stating that, “When you see the new New Tide gets that dirt line out, you’ll
wonder if there’s anything it can’t do.”
As a whole, the three modes of appeal come together in this
advertisement by effectively demonstrating a speaker to the intended
audience that they can relate with who displays a positive emotion towards the product as well as to the
act of washing laundry while the added text is used to reiterate why New Tide is
the best detergent around, similarly addressing the stereotypical belief that
women of the time loved nothing more washing clothes with the newest and best
brand of laundry detergent.
The next advertisement is a
commercial that Tide detergent aired in August 2012. Again, taking a look at the three modes of
appeal – ethos, pathos, and logos – there are some very similar approaches to
persuading the intended audience, women, as well as noticeable differences in
respect to traditional cultural beliefs as well as stereotypes. At the start of the commercial a women’s
clothing store is shown before Betty White, a well-known actress, appears in a
clean, white outfit. Within the first 5
seconds of the commercial Tide has
established a certain amount of credibility with the speaker to the audience by
using a well-known celebrity, especially since the commercial is intended for
women consumers. Betty White establishes
credit with older viewers who recognized her from earlier years, as well as
with the younger audience who would be familiar with her recent movies and
appearances on late night television shows.
The pathos of the piece is fun and playful which adds a twist to the
piece when Betty White states, “And don’t even think about working up a sweat
in the club,” implying to the younger women in the store that she goes
‘clubbing.’ Unlike in the previous Tide
ad, the pathos in this piece uses a lot of humor to get the audience’s
attention instead of conveying the image of a happy housewife who stays at home
all day. Making the advertisement more
lighthearted demonstrates that women do, in fact, have better things to do than
wash clothes, which was not depicted in the earlier advertisement. Because the women are shown at a clothing
store, the ad is implying that clothes are important to women young and old and
that is why they should buy the product being sold. This is effective because Betty White is
known for her sense of humor as well as her youthful spirit and young-at-heart
attitude. If she were to have appeared
in the commercial with too serious of an attitude the pathos of the piece would
have failed and White’s credibility would have been lost. The logos of the piece is found at the end of
the commercial when White expresses that she’s not worried about her whites
(which could be a play on words) getting dirty because she uses Tide. The commercial uses a feminist platform that
includes a mission of securing nontraditional advertising accounts in an effort
to change the way advertisers and audiences think about the “women’s market” (Howard).” By using the nontraditional approach of
stereotypical women expectations of doing laundry, the commercial’s playful
approach is less offensive to modern women shoppers.
Budweiser
and beer advertisements are historically known for using women to sell their
products. In this advertisement, it
appears that women are the intended audience for the purchasing of the
product. Ethos is being displayed by
using a beautiful woman, notably of color, and the hand of a white man is
pouring her a beer. This goes against
the cultural perspective of the time that a woman should be the one serving the
beer to the man. In the advertisement,
the woman is wearing in a white dress which indicates a higher level of
economic status along with her white, crystal-like jewels. Her credibility is established as being a
wealthier woman who drinks Budweiser also has access to the pleasures of
materialistic items that goes hand-in-hand with drinking the product. The background of the advertisement helps
establish a playful pathos with the use of the pink background and the pink
record player. Rather than placing a
background that matches the woman’s attire, as well as the man’s business suit
sleeve, the pink, childlike background creates a feeling of relaxed freedom that
can still be enjoyed by two seemingly mature adults. Pathos in this
advertisement is being used to help establish the ethos of the piece as well.
While the woman smiles and eyes the beer being poured, she gives off a relaxed,
joyful feeling. This is trying to imply
to the audience that they too will feel this happy and relaxed when they drink
a Budweiser. “Budweiser. Where there’s
life…there’s Bud,” is the message splashed across the top of the
advertisement in a youthful and feminine font.
The logos that is used in this case with this message is very weak and
does not strengthen the “argument” of the advertisement. Although implying that life without Budweiser
is unbearable, to the point of death essentially, the argument becomes
unrealistic to the audience and would have been more effective had it been more
playful like the methods of ethos and pathos in the advertisement.
In this
minute long commercial, Budweiser takes its audience through the last 100 years
of American history. The commercial runs
through the last 100 years by portraying each decade since the end of the
prohibition, and then ending with more current times by showing a large block
party in the city. With each transition
from the different decades a woman is shown from the old era to the next one,
never is a man used for transitional purposes. This puts a highlighting factor
on the women of the commercial, rather than placing them at the center of the
advertisement. The ethos of this piece
is lacking because the credibility of the characters is missing since there are
no actual speakers, just a continuous group of people partying, essentially
demonstrating how much fun consumers have had drinking Budweiser over the
years. Women are included in the commercial
essentially as objects that are meant to provide entertainment to the men that
surround them through the different decades, mainly being treated as
eye-candy. The men in the commercial are
seen wearing business attire as well as army and navy uniforms, while the women
are more often than not, wearing dresses
that were appropriate for the stereotypes of the times being
portrayed. There are no professional or
occupational outfits worn by the women, ultimately suggesting that women didn’t
work throughout the last 100 years. Pathos
is used in this commercial to make the intended audience feel that they can
also have as great of time as the people portraying the events from the
past. Men and women alike are seen
throughout the commercial smiling and laughing with one another. The “good time” attitude that the previous
advertisement had is even more present in this commercial by means of showing
groups of people celebrating different events, suggesting the old slogan of Where there’s life…there’s Bud and that
those who are not celebrating with the different crows are not living life to
the fullest.
The advertisement above is trying
to persuade women to purchase the brand of Virginia Slim cigarettes. Without
reading the text, one can establish the use of ethos from the picture of the
women, in order to establish the credibility of the character, is a more modern
looking woman who appears to be enjoying the cigarette with ease. The use of the blonde woman, who has noticeable
perfectly done hair, nails, and make-up – much like the woman in the first Tide
ad – send the message that if you smoke these cigarettes, you will also appear
beautiful. While maintaining her
feminine characteristics, the woman also portrays a sense of strength to the
audience, which leads to the use of pathos in this specific piece. Now looking at the text that states that, “We
made Virginia Slims especially for women because women are dainty and beautiful
and sweet and generally different from men. You've come a long way, baby.” The
text is creating the emotion for the audience that they are better than men
because of their feminine qualities, rather than the implied characteristics of
men such as course, ugly, and unsavory.
However, with the closing line of “You’ve come a long way, baby,” the
advertisements suggests that women, before smoking Virginia Slims, were more
manly in character. The logos used in
this piece, as in most cigarette advertisements, does not send a convincing
reason for women to start smoking the cigarettes, especially because the
characteristics of a woman who smokes Virginia Slims does not correlate with
the woman pictured.
The
above advertisements are just a couple of examples of how women have been
directed as a target audience to advertising strategies and how rhetoric has
been used to persuade women consumers with uses of ethos, pathos, and logos, as
well as with visual metaphors that allow for multiple interpretations from
different members of an intended audience.
By looking at the advertisements using the three different modes of
appeal, the audience can gain a better understanding of what the advertisement
is really suggesting in regards to cultural traditions, beliefs, and
stereotypes of the time of the advertisement.
Advertisements not only market a specific item or product but also
highlight what is happening in society at the time of its print or initial
broadcast on the television, leaving consumers with a much more insightful
understanding of how the advertisements of the time not only influence their
thinking or purchasing choice, but also displays what they value in their own
lives and connections with society.
Works
Cited
Covino, William A. "What Is Rhetoric?" Part I An Introduction to Rhetoric (n.d.): 3+. Web.
Howard,
Ella. “Pink Truck Ads: Second-Wave
Feminism and Gendered Marketing.” Journal
of Women’s History 22.4 (Winter 2010): 137-161. Web. 7 Dec. 2012. <http://muse.jhu.edu.proxybz.lib.montana.edu/journals/journal_of_womens_history/v022/22.4.howard.html>.
Jeong,
Se-hoon. “Visual Metaphor in
Advertising: Is the Persuasive Effect Attributable to Visual Argumentation or
Metaphorical Rhetoric?.” Journal of
Marketing Communications 14.1 (February 2008): 59-73. Web. 9 Dec 2012. <http://www.tandfonline.com.proxybz.lib.montana.e
du/doi/pdf/10.1080/14697010701717488>.
