New boyfriend/New girlfriend: State farm Commercial

If you watch T.V it’s likely that you have seen some of State farm’s new commercials. Their new ones have their customers singing a little jingle whenever they get into car trouble and need the agencies help. One I want to focus on specifically is the New girlfriend/New boyfriend commercial. The state farm advertising crew uses pathos to persuade people to switch to their car insurance, and most of the new commercials; including this one, rely mostly on humorous pathos as rhetoric to persuade the audience. However there are points I want to hit about the commercial. In this specific commercial they show the couple on the street and they have their car backed up on top of another. The original girlfriend is complaining to her boyfriend that he is a bad driver, she wonders how he could of backed onto another car, she says he should have listened to her, she also tells him he is giving her a headache, etc., etc. This could be seen as State farm stereotyping girlfriends as always nagging and complaining while the guy stands there and painfully puts up with her. Now as we see next he sings the jingle and the State farm agent pops up and begins assessing the damage of the accident. This part makes State farm seem easy and uses ethos by showing that the agency is reliable and there when you need them. The transition from the nagging girlfriend to her being quiet after the agent pops up could emphasize the instant simplicity of State farm and how they can ‘make everything better’.
The major pathos comes in next when the girlfriend requests she have a new boyfriend. Instantly her old boyfriend transforms into a stunning and hot new one. Then the guy requests he have a new girlfriend, and instantly his old girlfriend transforms also into a stunning and hot new one, then they commence fighting about how this is what the other really wants. This reinforces the idea that State farm is simple and instantly there when you need them, however, it could be seen as falsely promoting that they can give you everything you want and can make any situation better in an instant like a genie. To wrap up though, the commercial uses almost only pathos in the form of humor and only a small bit of ethos in showing and stating at the end, that State farm is there when you need them.

To Google, or Not to Google?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rS4Lb-ie4Lc

When faced with a question, wondering, or conundrum, many people instinctively think of one word…Google. The title of a common search engine has now morphed into a verb and adjective, as in “to Google”, or a phrase being “Google-able”. Without a doubt anytime a question comes about in someone’s mind, their first response is to type it in to Google and see what type of answer they get. Or sometimes Google is used as a past time, a way to entertain a solemn teenager who is tired of procrastinating on facebook, and has resorted to typing random words into Google images. The most common words typed into Google happen to be “sex”, “hangover”, “weight”, and “love”. Another top entry is “Tom Cruise”, but that may have only occurred after his well-known special on Oprah where he professed his love for his wife by jumping up and down on a couch like a monkey.

While Google is probably one of the most famous websites of all time, I begin to wonder why. Why do people trust this search engine more than ask.com or bing.com (who is rumored to stand for “because it’s not Google”). Why does everyone turn to Google before consulting any other website? Is the websites popularity due to the websites miraculous team of advertisers, or simply by word of mouth? If you were to ask a person about the most recent Google add they have seen, they may hesitate for a moment and have to think. The most popular Google add, if anyone remembers it, was from a past Super Bowl, and used pathos as its main rhetorical argument. This commercial uses logos and pathos combined to show you that not only is Google an efficient search engine, but it is also capable of helping a relationship flourish.

Although many people may not think about it, Google has a huge impact on our lives. As shown in the commercial, it helped a man impress a girl, find a place to marry her, and then showed him how to assemble a crib. Of course Google personally cannot be credited for telling him all this information, rather it led him to the best sites where he could find his answers. If Google did not exist, heaven forbid, all those websites with the information regarding crib assembly would still exist; there would just be no place to direct us to those helpful sites. So it may seem that Google holds all the answers, and that “to Google” is to instantly find the answer to a problem. But once looked at carefully, Google is only a gentle nudge in the right direction. Google may be there to hold your hand, but ultimately it is you who is left to search for the answers yourself.

Let's Talk About Men

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owGykVbfgUE

Advertisements can be found everywhere, from the televisions in the dining halls to the posters lining the billboards down the hall. Commercials, specifically, are frightfully effective at catching our attention with multimedia stimuli and catchy jingles. However, unknown to many uninformed consumers, commercials are jam-packed with different rhetorical strategies and other bits and pieces chosen to make each advertisement appealing to the audience. Companies and businesses, as well as other non-profit groups, put just as much thought into the background components of commercials as they put into the dialogue and “story” of the commercial. Despite the hours of thought put into producing a rhetorical message for consumers, commercials often contain rhetorical fallacies and offensive stereotypes.

Similar to every humorous commercial, Old Spice’s “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” contains many examples of rhetorical strategy. Pathos, the emotional or pathetic appeal, appears in the form of sex appeal. The speaker in the advertisement is athletic, handsome, and possesses that deep, intriguing voice that makes many women swoon. For the entire commercial, the man is shirtless, another example of the pathos strategy at work. As the commercial continues, the speaker appears on a boat, sweater around his shoulders, holding at first an oyster with tickets “to that thing you love” and then diamonds. At this point, it’s clear that the primary intended audience for the Old Spice commercial is the housewife. All three things, the diamonds, the tickets and the boat, appeal to a woman’s excitement and her desire to live in luxury. The man in the commercial seems to be every woman’s dream: masculine, rich, sensitive, and, of course, he smells “like a man.”

Pathos is not the only rhetorical strategy used in the Old Spice commercial. Ethos, otherwise known as the ethical or authoritative appeal, is also present. “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” is part of a series of commercials all featuring the same speaker. To anyone who watches the television regularly, he is known as “the Old Spice guy.” His reputation was built by the series of commercials by Old Spice and, therefore, his person is recognized by the very audience that the company wants to attract. Despite the appeal of the pathos and logos strategies, this commercial also contains a false need fallacy, where the consumer experiences a perceived need for the product being advertised, when in reality, the product is not required for survival. Such rhetorical fallacies are not intentionally placed in an advertisement or commercial, however, they are a common occurrence, as are the many stereotypes present in advertisements.

Everyone is familiar with the typical female stereotypes. There’s the hormonal teenager, who is always, “like, OMG!” and the crazy, shopaholic mother. Let’s not forget the ditzy blondes, and the party-hard redheads. In American culture, women are often portrayed as the weaker sex, and the slightly odd and always humorous behavior of the women in many commercials is accepted as normal because of such a stereotype. In the Old Spice commercial, both sexes are stereotyped. Women are the primary intended audience of the commercial, and Old Spice appeals to the audience by appealing to their desire for a handsome and athletic man with obvious wealth. These generalizations about what women want present throughout the commercial make females seem vain and shallow. On the other hand, the speaker assumes that the husbands and significant others of the intended primary audience are nowhere near as masculine and secure as the man on screen. The Old Spice commercial hints that men are not acting, looking, or smelling the way their women want them to act, look, and smell. In many cases, such generalizations are offensive. Although the use of rhetorical strategies is paramount to the success of the commercials of most companies and major business, many commercials contain little pitfalls of offensive stereotypes that could ruin the interest of the consumers.

Failing Stardom

Today we briefly discussed parodies in class. Parodies are works that mock or comment a work’s author, style, or subject. MadTv created a parody called Laguna Biotch that obviously ridicules Laguna Beach. The characters on Laguna Beach are clearly spoiled Californians that search for drama in every episode. Laguna Biotch begins with a song and introduction of characters, similar to Laguna Beach’s introduction. Rather than Hillary Duff’s lyrics to “Come Clean” which are “let’s go back, back to the beginning, back to when the earth, the sun, the stars all aligned”. MadTv changes the lyrics to “we are airheads, we are all just stupid air heads, we all have too much money than we should have for our age”.

The skit continues with Kristin narrating and a blonde girl walking down the stairs. Kristin does not know who the girl is stating that “we all look alike”. The girl ironically turns out to be Kristin, proving how shallow and unintelligent these girls are.

Kristin’s friends, Alex and Jessica, come to Kristin’s house and shockingly discuss boys. During the skit, Jessica goes to talk to her ex-boyfriend and then brings a new guy named Polster. By the end, Polster has kissed each girl and none of them find a problem with the situation.

A parody such as this is humorous for America. We watch these shows on MTV and cannot understand how people live with such low values in life. These characters are dense, self-centered, and materialistic, yet we still find ourselves glued to the show.

Rhetoric of Victoria's secret

Some well-known advertisements that appear often on T.V are the Victoria’s Secret Ads. The people who make these Ads use a variety of methods to persuade their audience to purchase their products. They use rhetoric or persuasion to convince the viewers of the ads to purchase their products. The first and most obvious tool the advertisers use would be the models who wear the merchandise. The models are visibly fit and beautiful and they make any and all of the clothes and merchandise look good. This can advertise to both women and men. Women see the models and think “that would look good on me”, men see the models and think “that would look good on my girlfriend/wife”. However the models beauty is not the advertisers’ only tool. They also use a variety of ethnicities in models to advertise to a larger audience, an audience of almost any ethnicity. Another tool the advertisers of Victoria’s secret use is a lot of color. In the photo above the models are each sporting a different color of intimate wear. In almost all of the ads and commercials there are a lot of colorful and feministic supporting objects. For example, a commercial could have a model sporting a nightgown holding a soft teddy bear with a paint splattered wall in the background. Another commercial could have a model in intimate wear throwing feathers and colorful glitter in the air. The extra color use and feministic supporting objects aid in convincing the audience that the merchandise is appealing. It makes the commercials stand out from the others and they definitely catch the viewer’s attention. Victoria’s secret advertisers also make a point to make the models look extremely happy and pleased in the ads. The models almost always have a smile on their faces and this appeals to viewers making them think the products are even more appealing. To be honest though I think that the biggest tool in the ads is clearly the level of sex appeal. The models are clearly attractive and the merchandise is usually intimate wear so it makes the ads particularly appealing to men. Although the products are for women, men are more likely to be persuaded to purchase the products in the ads. A downfall of the ads could be that using such attractive models could persuade women out of buying the products, because they may think they could not look as good as the nearly perfect models in the clothes. Then again however, the ads could persuade women to buy the merchandise if the women think the merchandise will make them look good or attractive just like the models.
The point of the Victoria’s secret ads are to convince men and women to buy the merchandise for women. There is clearly a level of sex appeal in the ads which often works considering the products being advertised: intimate wear, swimwear, nightwear, etc. The use of color and colorful objects, attractive models, feministic supporting objects, and happy expressions all aid in convincing viewers that they should buy Victoria’s secret merchandise.

Welcome to our class blog!

This blog is designed for English 103 students at Clemson University to express their thoughts on rhetoric and argumentation.