Liking Isn T Helping Rhetorical Analysis

“Liking Isn’t Helping”
It’s becoming more common that a charity’s Facebook page has more “likes” than the organization has volunteers or donations. This advertisement, created by the Crisis Relief Singapore, informs people that “likes” just aren’t enough. The tagline says it all. “Liking isn’t helping”. The purpose of this ad is to encourage people to take action instead of solely supporting the cause on social media. To accomplish this purpose, the creator has used a very powerful image and tagline. This is significant because it forces people to see the truth and makes it difficult to ignore the message being conveyed.
This image depicts

a woman holding a child who looks injured. Surrounding them, there is a circle of hands, giving a thumbs-up to represent “likes” on Facebook. There is also a very powerful one-sentence tagline on the image (“liking isn’t helping”). This is the first ad that conveys the message that social media popularity isn’t doing as much to help the cause. Although it is true that volunteering and donating is much more helpful, spreading the campaign around social media does help in some ways (Schaeffer).
Sharing the ad on Facebook is bringing more attention to the campaign itself. Thus, more people receive the message. More people receiving the message means that there is more chance of donation and volunteer work being done. At this point, the advertisement has had enough popularity on social media and it is time to take real action.
As mentioned earlier, this ad has a very impactful tagline. “Liking isn’t helping” sums up the meaning behind this image. The text helps further the power behind this ad. One of the reasons the tagline is so impactful is because it is short and blunt. Instead of writing a paragraph full of statistics, the text puts the truth where everyone can see it. That also means that the audience cannot ignore the truth.
In addition to knowing the truth, the audience also responds to the use of pathos in this visual text. The image evokes sadness and pity. Using a person’s emotions is one of the easiest ways to convince them to take action. When someone sees this advertisement, they feel bad for the person in the picture and if they can, they either donate or volunteer. For instance, if a company makes an advertisement or commercial about shelter dogs, they are likely to use sad music and pictures of dogs behind cages to make it seem very sad. The company could claim that they will make a donation to the shelter if you buy their brand of dog food. As a result, the next time a person is buying dog food they will remember the advertisement and buy that brand of dog food. In a way, this makes it easier for people to “donate” and they feel like they’re making a difference. The company also makes good sales because they played on people’s emotions.
To summarize, many companies and organizations use people’s emotions to encourage them to take action, or in some cases, buy their product. This advertisement is the perfect example of pathos. The impactful image and text help to further the level of sympathy that a person has towards the people depicted in this advertisement. For this reason, I believe that the creator of this advertisement has conveyed their message extremely well.