Synthesis Essay: The Use Of Self-Appeal In Advertising

From McDonald billboards to Axe commercials, the everyday person has seen thousands of advertisements in their life. Consequently, people have gotten pretty good at blocking them out. In order to break past this mental barrier, advertisers have employed the use of psychological and physiological appeals in order to subconsciously hook a reader’s attention. Because of this, advertisements tend to exaggerate the real world and pitch people a false reality. Although this holds true for clothing and car ads, it is food advertisements that are the most realistic and straightforward, despite a select few. Clothes cannot make a person look good, but food can make a hungry person full. This is the main reasoning behind most food advertisements. As Fowles explains, “Many ads seem to be saying, ‘if you have this need, then this product will help you satisfy it’” (Fowles 840). For this reason, many ads, like the attached Oscar Mayer ad, simply have a delicious sandwich to make the reader hungry and a catchy phrase to draw them in. However, some advertisements draw in readers using additional appeals. For example, the Hillshire Farm ad uses the physiological appeal of the need for food, but it also appeals to the need to dominate by utilizing the words “Don’t be chicken” in big bold letters. The reason for

This happens when a food advertisement plays upon the reader’s memory of how something tastes; their nostalgia. The easiest way of doing this is by showing the food being eaten, which is exactly what the attached ad for Mini Oreos did. “Better ads”, Fowles notes, “seem to avoid being too diffused” (Fowles 854). This means that the less appeals there are in an ad, the more effective it is. The Oreo ad does this well by simply showing a large mouth eating the Mini Oreos, which makes the reader think of the mouth as their mouth which in turn makes them remember the taste of