Final Paper

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>.