Rhetoric is the art of persuasion. It concerns with how to say things rather than what to say (McQuarrie and Phillips, 2007, p. 4). Rhetorical perspective can be applied in anywhere, in the court, in classroom, and even in advertisement. For today’s post, I am going to analyse a perfume advertisement by Britney spears using rhetoric perspective.
From the advertisement, we can see that Britney spears’ hair is messy and it signified wildness. On the other hand, her night gown exposed a lot of skin and it connotes sexiness. There is also a man starring at Britney Spears in the background looking forward to something. An enthymeme is an incomplete version of a formal deductive syllogism (Griffins, 1997, pg. 281). Does this advertisement have any unstated argument which is enthymeme? Yes. The main unstated argument is that if you use the perfume, no man can resist you. So now it is not the matter of buying it or not, it’s whether you dare to use it or not. It is just too irresistible.
If you ask me to say one advertisement that I remember from young, I would probably tell you that it’s the pizza hut advertisement.
All pizzahut advertisements are always shoot in real time and represented by real people. The way they shoot the event is straightforward and it illustrates how the pizzahut exactly look like. Let’s look at the setting for all the pizzahut advertisement. The director wants your attention and he wants it in very specific places. That is why the director uses dull, even unattractive background so that the audience will be focussing on the pizza during the close up rather than something else.These visual elements provide the audience with realism. Notice hat the pizza is also shoot in a straightforward manner without any distortion. The reason is that all the images are representation of real life and therefore it is clearly relevant in the sense that the audience recognizes it. The advertising is realistic and was shown in an objective manner without any distortions of style. Because the pictures seem to be such transparent representation of reality, we might be tempted to theorize that they are unproblematically absorbed into the consumer’s mind without the need for cognitive engagement or the invocation of learned strategies (Linda, 1994, pp.253-254).
The director also uses pathos to generate emotions in audiences in order to persuade them. In all of the advertisements, there are all normal people who enjoy eating pizzahut’s pizza. The setting is always at the people’s home or in the pizzahut restaurant. This has created identification between the audience and the people that are eating the pizza in the commercial.
As mentioned by McQuarrie and Philips (2008), rhetoric in advertising is more concerned with style than content. Noticed that for all the pizza hut advertisement, it always start with a story depicting the problems they are having or how do they feel after eating the pizza. It is then followed by the close up view of the pizza and voice over of the description of the pizza. Finally, they all ends with the same pizzahut short music clip. The style is very persuasive and creates attention, therefore, most of the pizzahut advertisements are persuasive.
References
Griffin, E. (2009). A first look at communication theory. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
McQuarrie, E. F., & Phillips, B. J. (2007) Go Figure! New Directions in Advertising Rhetoric. Armonk, NY, USA: M. E. Sharpe, Inc.
Linda, M.S. (1994). Images in Advertising: The Need for a Theory of Visual Rhetoric. The Journal of Consumer Research. Vol.21, 252-273. Retrieved from http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic565425.files/unit%203%20reading%204%20Scott.pdf
Image taken from
http://ikranm.blogspot.com/2010/08/everyone-is-at.html
If you ask me to say one advertisement that I remember from young, I would probably tell you that it’s the pizza hut advertisement.
All pizzahut advertisements are always shoot in real time and represented by real people. The way they shoot the event is straightforward and it illustrates how the pizzahut exactly look like. Let’s look at the setting for all the pizzahut advertisement. The director wants your attention and he wants it in very specific places. That is why the director uses dull, even unattractive background so that the audience will be focussing on the pizza during the close up rather than something else.These visual elements provide the audience with realism. Notice hat the pizza is also shoot in a straightforward manner without any distortion. The reason is that all the images are representation of real life and therefore it is clearly relevant in the sense that the audience recognizes it. The advertising is realistic and was shown in an objective manner without any distortions of style. Because the pictures seem to be such transparent representation of reality, we might be tempted to theorize that they are unproblematically absorbed into the consumer’s mind without the need for cognitive engagement or the invocation of learned strategies (Linda, 1994, pp.253-254).
The director also uses pathos to generate emotions in audiences in order to persuade them. In all of the advertisements, there are all normal people who enjoy eating pizzahut’s pizza. The setting is always at the people’s home or in the pizzahut restaurant. This has created identification between the audience and the people that are eating the pizza in the commercial.
As mentioned by McQuarrie and Philips (2008), rhetoric in advertising is more concerned with style than content. Noticed that for all the pizza hut advertisement, it always start with a story depicting the problems they are having or how do they feel after eating the pizza. It is then followed by the close up view of the pizza and voice over of the description of the pizza. Finally, they all ends with the same pizzahut short music clip. The style is very persuasive and creates attention, therefore, most of the pizzahut advertisements are persuasive.
References
Griffin, E. (2009). A first look at communication theory. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
McQuarrie, E. F., & Phillips, B. J. (2007) Go Figure! New Directions in Advertising Rhetoric. Armonk, NY, USA: M. E. Sharpe, Inc.
Linda, M.S. (1994). Images in Advertising: The Need for a Theory of Visual Rhetoric. The Journal of Consumer Research. Vol.21, 252-273. Retrieved from http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic565425.files/unit%203%20reading%204%20Scott.pdf
Image taken from
http://ikranm.blogspot.com/2010/08/everyone-is-at.html
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