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.