Rhetorical Strategies In Advertising

Advertisements are everywhere. They’re at the grocery store, on television, in magazines and newspapers, and annoying, they pop up all over the internet. Whether selling a service, a product, or an idea, these advertisements have varying degrees of success. The effectiveness or ineffectiveness of an advertisement comes from the use of pathos, logos, ethos, and Kairos. The way these four rhetorical strategies are used and combined is essential in all advertising. If an advertisement is lacking in some areas or if there is a clash between any of these rhetorical strategies, the advertisement isn’t going to be as effective as one that finds the right balance for all the strategies. In this piece we will explore three advertisements, one is good

This once again indicates that the audience for this ad are Californians, and is furthered by the words “California department of health services” at the very bottom. This is a fantastic example of ethos because, first the audience knows who is sponsoring the advertisement, and secondly, the fact that this ad was created and utilized by a legitimate service industry in an effort to actually help people makes it much more effective because it’s not just a random person spewing words for no reason. There is a slight problem with this though, the actual words on the ad are so little that no one can actually read them unless zoomed in quite close. Therefore, the fact that it is an excellent example of ethos is moot point because no one actually knows what the words say. This is one of the biggest reasons this ad isn’t as effective as the one previous, if the ethos can’t even be read it might as well not be there at all and then why should anyone pay attention to the advertisement at all? Finally, Kairos, because this advertisement cites the California department of health services and is found on a Californian tobacco free website that indicates the audience is once again Californians. The problem with this is that the advertisement is really broad it can truly be used just about anywhere and by just using it for or in California the advertisers are missing a very large group of people. Also, this advertisement is less successful than it could be because the audience doesn’t really know what is being sold, are they selling coffins, are they selling a quit smoking service, are they selling an idea? The advertisers give the audience a great idea to think about and help the audience make a great connection, but then give them nothing to do with this idea or