Advertisement Essay, Research Paper

For some time now our world has run on the scheme of a market based society. Marketing signifies all activities involved in the movement of goods and services from producer to consumer. This process begins with determining the needs and desires of the customer. Following this initial step, a firm must develop products to satisfy those needs and wants. The firms responsible for producing all the goods and services are then accountable on informing the people (or customer) that these goods and services are available for their every desire. This element of marketing is known as advertisement. Advertisement is probably the most important part of marketing, considering it is the component which allows the producer to demonstrate the availability of the solution to the consumers wants.

The most pervasive form of product promotion is advertising. Advertising is any form of non-personal communication designed to sell a product or service. Its purpose is to disseminate information to large groups of people, generally through the use of such mass media as television, radio, magazines, news papers and the internet. The focal point of this essay is on the print medium, magazines. Advertisement is a positive factor when dealing with our economy, but negative in the sense that the producer goes about the wrong way advertising it, some times the advertisements go directly against any system of morals or values, they portray false realities. Though this is the way producers catch the attention of the consumers in order to benefit the economy. This will be demonstrated through the analysis of magazine advertisements using ethos, pathos and logos.

Before one could analyze an advertisement using ethos, pathos and logos, one must be clear on what exactly they are. Ethos is the ethical appeal that uses trustworthiness and credibility of the product and its brand name. Pathos is an appeal to the emotions by presenting images, colors, people, letters, or a combination of the above to evoke feelings of intrigue, happiness, or pleasure in some form. Logos is the appeal to reason or logic, using facts of one sort or another.

Although there are a number of general interest magazines, the most important magazines from an advertising standpoint, are those that are directed at a certain target group of people. For instance, within the magazine Cosmopolitan you will not see advertisements directed toward males, where you would in a magazine like Car & Driver. This paper will explore four of the advertisements in the magazine Maxim which is directed toward males roughly between the ages of 18 and 34.

This magazines advertisements use many different approaches to interest the readers. The first advertisement used is a Rockport ad that is supposed to be selling shoes. The ad shows a picture of a woman kissing a man s bear feet, the picture is in black and white. It reads at the bottom of the page ROCKPORT under the companies name it reads NEW YORK BOSTON SANTA MONICA . When the reader first looks at the page unless they know what Rockport sells they would be boggled by what the company is trying to promote, due to the fact that there is no picture of a product. Is it women slaves? Is it deodorizers for your feet? How is the audience supposed to know what they are selling? In this case Rockport relies mainly on ethos, the credibility of the company s brand name. They use the image of the woman kissing the man s feet to show the man what he will get for having Rockport shoes. This would be good for sales but it illustrates something that s most likely not to happen when you by the shoes. For the man if the picture is true the only logical thing to do is to buy the shoes, this demonstrates logos and pathos giving the man a feeling of happiness and desire.

The second ad is for Harley-Davidson, there is a picture on the top, two thirds of the page, and it has motorcycle behind a fence in country scenery. The bold writing on the page states EVEN COWS KICK DOWN THE FENCE ONCE IN A WHILE . Then it goes on to read, A Harley-Davidson motorcycle. In other words, freedom. Why not break for it? Knock down whatever is standing between you and the saddle and go . This implies that there are no barriers, you can do what ever you want, don t stop and think about what your wife says, or kids college fund go out and buy your Harley and you will be free, or else, or else what? They imply that your still a cow and haven t broke free yet, isn t it the perfect opportunity. This ad focuses on pathos using strong words and an image to lure you into buying something that may be out of your reach for important reasons. The ad definitely would sell, but is it influencing people who may not be able to afford it to go out on a limb to get it. This would certainly make it a negative phenomena.

The third ad used is a Nike ad. This ad uses solely ethos. The page is red with the bottom quarter of a red shoe at the top of the page. It is hard to first make out what it is at the top of the page, unless one has already seen the shoe prior to the ad. The page reads POSTERIZING in big bold letters in the middle of the page, underneath this text there is a circle with the Nike swoosh and the word play . This ad could have a negative affect on morals and values considering Nike has been under investigation for child labour and unfair working conditions for its employees in developing nations. So possibly supporting Nike could mean supporting crime.

The fourth ad used is for is for Chivas Regal Premium Scotch Whisky. This ad is made up of a black and white picture of a beautiful female in a skimpy bikini. On her left shoulder it says the ad reads Yes, God is man. To the left of the page there is a 2.5 cm wide strip that is he colour of fire and has a picture at the bottom of the Chivas bottle. Above the bottle it says When you know . This implies that a man who knows his scotch whisky (Chivas) has women thinking of him as god. This ad uses ethos, the big brand name that is trustworthy and is very creditable. Also it uses pathos by stating god is man, this intrigues man and makes him happy to see this beautiful girl with these words practically written all over her. Pathos is also used by the colour imagery, showing the bottle to be almost above the female having colour to it, where she is boring and black and white. The appeal to logic, logos would tell man that the best brand name is Chivas so the smart thing to do is to buy Chivas, so he the ordinary man could be like a god. This would be very pervasive and definitely be a negative phenomena, correlating a practically naked women, god and alcohol.

Advertisement has its negative and its positive factors. It is part of the economy, and the economy is a big part of modern society s life style. Such magazines enable advertisers to direct there advertising to those most likely to benefit from their product. This is definitely a positive factor, allowing the consumer to benefit from the producers product. Though the way the producer informs the consumer and some products them selves go against traditional moral and value systems, this is the negative use of advertisement. This could easily be shown through examining ads from certain magazines and creating an analysis of the products them selves. This paper uses ethos, pathos and logos to complete its analysis, and give the reader an understanding of the positive and negative phenomena in advertisements.