Messages Conveyed Through Advertisements
Advertisers send messages about the American culture through their advertisements using different design effects to increase their persuasiveness. These messages about the American’s values, beliefs, and desires make up the American culture. By examining these values, beliefs, and desires communicated through the advertisements we see the many different ways that advertisers use to persuade their audience. The ad I selected conveys an issue that is on the rise in American culture. It is an ad for Companthia Athletica: Health and Wellness, and can be viewed on youtube.com under funny advertisements. It is on the issue of obesity and the desire to be healthy . It shows a crying baby lying in their crib. The father, in his pajama pants and no shirt, picks up the baby and sits on the couch to comfort the baby. The upset baby then begins sucking on the father’s chest in an attempt to feed. The ad puts a humorous effect on the advertisement so that to appeal to the audience’s body image. The ad is a statement about obesity and the embarrassment it brings.
The advertisement uses no verbal words, only text saying “Get in Shape.” Although it uses no words it still sends a powerful message about obesity through its design. By using the fact that female are the ones who nurse children because of their enlarged breasts during pregnancy, it is suggesting that the father is obese because his child believes he is the mother and has large enough breasts to feed on. This is an attack on the man’s body image. In this day it is very embarrassing to be obese and it is a big issue for the American people. If your chest is big enough to be mistaken as a pregnant women’s chest, it...
... middle of paper ...
...eat all the time. People in other countries, many times have to conserve their food and get whatever they can when it is available shows us that many times they don’t get the delicious, yet very unhealthy, food that we have.
Obesity is a very stressing issue in the current American culture. It is an issue that is increasing its presence in the media. In the chosen ad we look at it humorously through the embarrassment it causes although it affects the American society in different ways. By looking at what obesity causes, in our example it affects your body image, we see why it is an issue and why it needs to be taken care of. That is the purpose of the ad, to bring light to the problem that is affecting Americans. It is a desire of every American to have a positive body image and not be embarrassed by it, which is why it affects our American culture.
This advertisement features Pathos, because the little boy in the advertisement will probably make people feel guilty, because they spend a lot of money on unnecessary things and waste it, but this child says “Don’t I deserve a happy life?”, and this will probably make people from our society want to spend money to support this cause. This advertisement also features patriotism, because it suggests that purchasing this product will show the love, and support you have towards your country. This company makes people from America want to support this cause. It says in the advertisement,” Help stop child poverty in America”. This advertisement also features Transfer andWeasel Words because it uses positive words, and positive images to suggest that the product being sold is also positive.
Advertisements are one of many things that Americans cannot get away from. Every American sees an average of 3,000 advertisements a day; whether it’s on the television, radio, while surfing the internet, or while driving around town. Advertisements try to get consumers to buy their products by getting their attention. Most advertisements don’t have anything to do with the product itself. Every company has a different way of getting the public’s attention, but every advertisement has the same goal - to sell the product. Every advertisement tries to appeal to the audience by using ethos, pathos, and logos, while also focusing on who their audience is and the purpose of the ad. An example of this is a Charmin commercial where there is a bear who gets excited when he gets to use the toilet paper because it is so soft.
What comes to your mind when you hear someone is overweight. In most american’s eyes, it is someone who anyone who is not a model. This creates a huge predicadment counting that America is known to be fat. In the past few decades, lifestyle has changed our habits, but we did not think about the consequences. If we eat more then we must be doing some kind of exercise to counteract what we put inside of us. In the article “America’s War on the Overnight” by Kate Dailey and Abby Ellin, they successfully persuade the reader to tackle obesity, we need to focus more on the subject of obesity and not attack the obese using the rhetorical triangle.
Advertising is so prominent in American culture, and even the world at large, that this media form becomes reflective of the values and expectations of the nation’s society at large.
Did you know that 35% of the United States population is considered obese? Also, 66% of the population is considered overweight or more? (Saint Onge 2014) Even more frightening, in 2012 the Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported that more than one third of children and adolescents in America were overweight or obese (CDC 2014). The media sources used investigates the political, scientific, historical, and cultural reasons behind the childhood obesity epidemic in America. Obesity is a rapid growing epidemic in America and these sources present the facts causing this epidemic. As well as how the children of the American society are being wrongly influenced by the media, especially advertisments. (Greenstreet 2008).
Americans are constantly facing obstacles to healthy eating. Obesity is something that is growing rapidly in the United States. Some Americans argue that fast-food restaurants play a major role in obesity. In “Preventing Obesity” Barbara Mantel states, “Four of the companies — Cadbury, Coca-Cola, Hershey and Mars — pledge not to advertise any food and beverage products on programming for children younger than 12, and the remaining firms pledge that 100 percent of their children's advertising would be for self-designated ‘better-for-you’ products ” (805-806). Whenever children see a junk-food or candy commercial they are instantly attracted to it, it might be because of how colorful they are or the usual toy they receive when they buy kids
Foster creates a logos appeal by providing strong reasoning and evidence to support her argument. Through her example about how Facebook advertisers are aware of their user’s insecurities about their body, thereby, increasing publication of advertisements in hope that users will undergo negative self-reflection and realize they do not conform to the mainstream ideal of thinness. Her examples also include research that she references from other scholarly authors. “For example it is no secret that exposing women to images of thin celebrities causes them to feel dissatisfied with their own appearances (Grade, Ward, & Hyde, 2008).” Foster’s second strong claim to her logos appeal by writing, that in spite of user’s insecurities, Facebook advertisers hope user’s will feel more dissatisfied with their body image and turn to the ads for a solut...
In order to take a sociological viewpoint into account when one examines obesity, first it is important to understand how obesity is recognized in current society. According to today’s news articles and magazines and advertisements and other mass media about health and healthy life, one can easily realize that a great number of people have an eagerness to be healthy. Also, one can assume through these mass media about health that everyone wants to be attractive, and they are even prone to transform their own behaviors to gain attractiveness. This is because most people live a life where social interaction is frequently required and must engage themselves into social interaction every day of their life. Therefore, based on these ideas and proofs throughout this mass media, obesity is regarded as one of the characteristics that is disgraceful and undesirable in society.
Have you ever seen an advertisement for a product and could immediately relate to the subject or the product in that advertisement? Companies that sell products are always trying to find new and interesting ways to get buyers and get people’s attention. It has become a part of our society today to always have products being shown to them. As claimed in Elizabeth Thoman’s essay Rise of the Image Culture: Re-Imagining the American Dream, “…advertising offered instructions on how to dress, how to behave, how to appear to others in order to gain approval and avoid rejection”. This statement is true because most of the time buyers are persuaded by ads for certain products.
Bordo’s essay shows the way that women are constantly being bombarded with commercials. Advertisements portray the idea that you are what society envisions you being, if you don’t make a certain choice regarding to the kinds of food you eat, and the amount of food you eat. They say that if you don’t eat a certain kind of cereal, that you will be fat, or that you look unattractive eating that thick, burger, and instead, you should have some
Although advertisements may be seen as harmless, one ought to recognize that the media has a large impact on a woman’s self esteem. Marketers use flawless models in their advertisements in order to attract women and induce marketing comsumption of their product. As women try to achieve their unrealistic body frame, women turn to extreme dieting, and eating disorders to achieve their goal. Although these goals are unrealistic, women are still lured by media. Therefore, media has a large impact on the health, and self esteem of women.
The bold print also indicates for the woman to remove her clothes, or for the viewer to do so. Everything is very clean, clear, and appealing to the eye. There is a highlight around the woman’s body leaving her look like she’s glowing. The weight scale is indicating that the woman has lost weight and she is shocked by how much she weighs now. The company displays this petite woman which advertises, if you drink their product then the consumers can look like her. This add is posing as a sex symbol for men and is showing younger women that they should look like this woman in the ad. This ad is also indicating that only ‘sexy’ and ‘healthy’ woman can produce healthier milk.
and disappointment and also a way to connect.” Despite the over excessive use of food in ads, overeating is not the only. eating disorder influenced by the media. In most ads, especially for cigarettes. and beer, thin, beautiful women are used to promote the idea of “having a good time”, which helps endorse the product.
Across America in homes, schools, and businesses, sits advertisers' mass marketing tool, the television, usurping freedoms from children and their parents and changing American culture. Virtually an entire nation has surrendered itself wholesale to a medium for selling. Advertisers, within the constraints of the law, use their thirty-second commercials to target America's youth to be the decision-makers, convincing their parents to buy the advertised toys, foods, drinks, clothes, and other products. Inherent in this targeting, especially of the very young, are the advertisers; fostering the youth's loyalty to brands, creating among the children a loss of individuality and self-sufficiency, denying them the ability to explore and create but instead often encouraging poor health habits. The children demanding advertiser's products are influencing economic hardships in many families today. These children, targeted by advertisers, are so vulnerable to trickery, are so mentally and emotionally unable to understand reality because they lack the cognitive reasoning skills needed to be skeptical of advertisements. Children spend thousands of hours captivated by various advertising tactics and do not understand their subtleties.
Advertising has been defined as the most powerful, persuasive, and manipulative tool that firms have to control consumers all over the world. It is a form of communication that typically attempts to persuade potential customers to purchase or to consume more of a particular brand of product or service. Its impacts created on the society throughout the years has been amazing, especially in this technology age. Influencing people’s habits, creating false needs, distorting the values and priorities of our society with sexism and feminism, advertising has become a poison snake ready to hunt his prey. However, on the other hand, advertising has had a positive effect as a help of the economy and society.