Fallacies in Advertisement, Essay Example for Everyone

Essay on Advertisement Introduction

A fallacy is basically an error in reasoning or the act of portraying low-level reasoning in approaching an argument. In trying to appeal to the target audience, ads tend to use rhetorical devices to create interest and raise curiosity and in the process and command a traffic towards their targets. According to marketing, ads should be conspicuous, eye catching and use words that raise curiosity to the reader. The choice of words should also be relevant and should exhibit some language magic.

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This work is intended to critically analyze the use of rhetoric devices and on an ad whose picture is below (from the global warming ads in their advertising journal) about global warming. A comprehensive conclusion will summarize the discussion and some references will be made.

There are various devices identified from the ad and analyzed as follows.

Global Warming Prosopopoeial:

This is also referred to as personification. It is a device used to give nonliving things humanlike abilities. In the ad, the phrase ‘Global Warming Paints a Dark Future’, Global warming has been given a human ability to paint. On the same note, even from the picture on the ad, a man is shown painting a dark building that stretch in front of him. However, in logical reasoning and understanding, global warming is demonstrated to pose danger in future. Readers’ understanding at most times follows logical reasoning.

Epexegesis – a rhetorical addition of words:

This is a rhetorical addition of words in a phrase to add more sense and improve its clarity to the reader. It is more on emphasis. In the ad this device has been used in the words ‘it’s a better future for all of us’. The additional words in form of that phrase has been used to emphasize on the phrase that requires healing of the world. The additional words vary from a single word to a series of sentences that logically add sense and emphasis to the original phrase.

Anacoenosis – the rhetorical questioning:

This is the rhetorical questioning on an opinion about a raised matter or subject. From the ad, a question is raised and states, ‘What are you going to do about it?’. In the subject matter of the ad, the audience are challenged to state or look into ways of actually trying to heal the world. This could also be looked at as a form of emphasis on the subject of the ad that raises the reader’s curiosity to know what is required by the ad in particular to global warming. Again this form of questions, may be more than one and can even form a logically arranged series or even enumerated.

Adynaton – emphasis words:

This refers to the use of an almost impossible situation in trying to create emphasis on a phrase. In the ad the words ‘Heal our world’ has been used in this regard. In logical reasoning, the word heal is used mostly with diseases and cases that require some form of restoration. In language use, heal will be used to refer to things and situations that have been regarded damaged and would need to be returned back to the previous situations. Therefore, to the audience, the phrase is used to refer to the various ways they can undertake to restore the world to a previous condition that was free of global warming. This device is not limited to occurrence on its own. It can occur in form of a question or even an emphasis.

The ad targets various audience that may include the following:

Manufacturers:

There include heavy industries that engage in massive emissions that are regarded as contributors in global warming. Normally the pollutant industrial segment is considered to be the manufacturing because they emit a lot of different toxic gasses to the atmosphere and toxic liquids to rivers and even solid materials to land. In this ad the audience are advised to heal the world through their various preventive measures.

Agriculturalists:

These are even looked at as the pacemakers in the fight against global warming. They are advisors of farmers on matters of climate and weather. The ad tends to emphasize on the world healing, and to them this may be in form of dispersing useful information on farming methods that contribute to alleviating global warming.

Policy Makers:

This is a group that is comprised of various world leaders and are endowed with the duty of setting policies. In the case of this ad, global warming dangers need formulation of new policies and or reviewing the available policies and help towards achieving the need to heal our world.

Students and researchers:

This is a group that is most targeted especially from the question posed in the ad. They are supposed to explore and try to give a solution to the way things should be approached in handling global warming as it tries to paint our world dark. They are regarded as the continuously active group that links different stakeholders in different areas of concern.

Therefore, students are required to ignite interest about the subject, carry out research and come up with projects that will try to answer the question ‘what are you going to do’.

Environmentalists:

This is probably the first target group of the ad. They are in the forefront of the double edged fight against environmental degradation as well as global warming through the environmental side. Their healing process would maybe include, tree planting campaigns, anti-deforestation campaigns and this stretches to conservation of water. They lead water pollution campaigns, solid waste dumping in cities and other urban areas.

The Ad Has Got Different Psychological Effects to Different Audience;

Firstly, to manufacturers, climate change through global warming is likely to get policies tightened against all me manufacturers pegged with pollution and gas emissions. This will psychologically affect them in creating stress as sales will be falling due to introduced restrictions. Therefore, they have a reason to warry and adjust their way of doing things.

To policy makers, the stress involved in coming up with policies that will protect the vulnerable groups that include children and the elderly in enormous. The ad tries to remind them to hold to their policies.

To students and researchers, they are psychologically motivated to come out strongly and realize success in providing solutions that help humanity.

Environmentalist are even pressed psychologically to intensify their campaigns against environmental destruction and rewarding outstanding efforts in environmental conservation.

The ad tries to play with the subconscious desire to have the world look beautiful and smelling nicely and feeling comfortable. It tries to show the subconscious that there is a better experience in the global warming solution.

Conclusion on fallacies in advertising

In conclusion, we have seen that from the above discussion, ads have an absolute power and foundation to use any rhetoric devices and in any combinations to send out the required message and implication.

The audience therefore have to be critical in deducing the message from the ad in order to avoid ambiguity. At the same time, they should be able to differentiate between fallacies and logical reasoning in the way words and phrases are used in the ad.

Advertisement Essay Description

I am in most cases online in social media and other websites and therefore interact with more than twenty advertisements in a day. This is a digital age, and therefore most of the companies have embraced the idea of marketing their products online including social media platforms and websites as a way of reaching out to a wider market. I have seen an advert by NFL aimed at showing people the greater picture of what America is all about.

I also saw a National Geographic advert of Geoffrey Rush playing Albert Einstein playing Lady Gaga’s song Bad Romance on violin. I have also seen numerous adverts by the different phone companies including Apple and Samsung advertising their products on the social media platforms and awarding their customers with gifts as enticements to purchase their products. The Coke advert “it’s beautiful’ kept on being repeated many times over the course of the day.

Advertisement Analysis

I realized that most of the advertisements were running between 5 pm and 9 pm on TV. I believe that the companies aim at ensuring that they reach out to their potential market of people who during this time they are in their offices working. The adverts are also accompanied with videos which most of them develop a strong sense of humor and music that quickly connects with the potential customers. I also realized that the same advertisements played on the television are played online.

Entrepreneurs have realized that there is a big market online and therefore releases their adverts on this platform to ensure that they tap on all the available markets. For companies advertising mobile phones, they provide the customers with information and detailed features of their product. This aims at giving the customers a hint of the possible experience of using the product. The advertisements are also relatively short with the longest taking about two and a half minutes.

How Is Advertising Evaluated

The adverts are created in such a way that they appeal to the larger market. Companies realize that it is important to invest in adverts that the customers can easily relate. The videos prove that companies are willing to build a relationship with the customers by ensuring that the advertisements are presented in a straightforward language. Timing is also critical. Those that were running online did not have an issue with timing because they appear as popup any time the users are online. The users are provided with a link which when they click automatically directs to the link where they can watch the advertisement.

Those that are running on radio and television were played during the day when taking commercial breaks. The advertisements were also played in the evening as a way of reaching out to more customers especially those that were in the office during the day. The advertisements are becoming goal oriented with companies maximizing the use of celebrities in communicating to the market about their products.

Work cited

Evans, R. (2015). The Osier Cage (1st Ed.). Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky.

Francis, B. (2014). Impacting policy discourse? An analysis of discourses and rhetorical devices deployed in the case of the Academies Commission. Discourse: Studies In The Cultural Politics Of Education, 36(3), 437-451. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2014.902919

(2017). Retrieved 19 March 2017, from http://Global Warming Ads