Essay and Speech Outline

Essay – DRAFT!!

Smoking has claimed over 8 million people worldwide and is slowly starting to claim more. Many of us know the impacts of smoking, especially the health effects; lung cancer, increased chance of stroke, etc. Nicotinell is known for producing products aimed at assisting people in their journey to quit smoking. In 2008 they put out an ad that sent out a very clear message. The ad in question features a woman celebrating her 42nd birthday, although her appearance suggests she’s significantly older. The underlying message or commonplace is clear: smoking is damaging to one’s health. We can analyze this ad through the lens of meta-competencies, specifically focusing on “Temporal Thinking”. Although we may not intuitively associate smoking with aging, this ad effectively employs visual cues to underscore the accelerated aging effects of smoking. The second advertisement was put out by McCann Healthcare Worldwide Japan Inc. in 2015.  It features a woman holding a cigarette in one hand and the smoking going over one side of her face. This communicates to the audience her beauty before smoking and the outcomes or health consequences of smoking. We can view this lens through the lens of visual rhetoric paired with the ideology of pathos. Both artifacts show the commonplace bad health effects that smoking has on your health; more specifically your beauty. Notably, both ads use the commonplace that beauty is looked upon highly in this society. Overall, both advertisements push the audiences to rethink their actions and how smoking impacts their health specifically with a focus on beauty and looks.

In the “42” ad the woman is captured in the act of lighting a cigarette with a birthday candle, a powerful metaphor for her addiction to smoking. It is depicted as the primary factor behind her prematurely aged appearance. As well as the words “Smoking Causes Premature Aging” cause the readers to think about the consequences to one’s beauty. Viewing this ad through the lens of Temporal thinking and ethos. Temporal Thinking involves drawing lessons from the past and applying them to project future needs and consequences of current actions. This ad is a lesson, that teaches us to look not only at the health effects of smoking but also at what we can do to move away from it. It is also important for us to acknowledge that while the ad is warning us about smoking we also need to recognize that it is coming from a company that sells products containing nicotine. Using ethos, the audience will hopefully recognize the company and the product they are promoting in the ad.  Ethos is used in this ad by having the company’s name and product at the bottom of the ad.Giving the audience an incentive to buy their products and therefore stop smoking. The ad also touches on the commonplace that smoking is bad and detrimental to your health, with the visual aspect that the woman is aging faster than average. We can also pull in the commonplace that smoking is an addiction, with the lady lighting the cigarette with the birthday candle. As we all do, we don’t see smoking causing aging effects we usually associate it with causing cancer or other health-related problems.

The second advertisement was put out by McCann Healthcare Worldwide Japan Inc. in 2015. It can be viewed through visual rhetoric and pathos. To raise awareness of this issue McCann Healthcare Worldwide Japan Inc. used a female model to appeal more to the viewers since a societal commonplace is that women tend to worry about aging more then men. The play of shadows and light creates a shadow over the side that is aged. To emphasize and symbolize the diminishing and fading of a person since smoking. The smoke also symbolizes that the woman is burnt out from smoking but can’t stop, which highlights her addiction. We also so the words at the bottom and the top the symbolic meaning of a shadow and the white cloud over her face brings a lot of meaning into the ad, especially with the words above her face bringing the audience focus to the words. The words on top “Your Beauty. Up in Smoke” also connect with the commonplace of beauty and conserving your young self. The bottom says “Tabacco will destroy your face cell by cell, from the inside out. That’s the ugly truth.” The ad here really emphasized the need to look a certain way using the words “ugly truth” paralleling that smoking is something that is ugly. We also have to take into perspective the background, I think that the company could have used a different background but chose to do black to emphasize the effects that smoking has on your beauty.

Third Body Paragraph: While one ad focuses on representing old age in real-time, one is looking back. Compare them in terms of the timing and the beauty and the commonplace that beauty is something that people really cling to.

Conclusion.

Speech Outline

SLIDE 1: Focus on the bad health effects of smoking

• Smoking has claimed over 8 million people worldwide.
• Talk more about the overlaying issue in general
  • In 2021, statistics showed that 12 out of every 100 US adults were smokers, in a broader sense that’s an estimated 28.3 million adult smokers in the US. Despite the 9% decline in smoking rates, it’s important to note that smoking still claims the lives of 8 million people worldwide.
• Although we may not intuitively associate smoking with aging, this ad effectively employs visual cues to underscore the accelerated aging effects of smoking.
  • Many effects that we may immediately associate with smoking include cancer, heart disease, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD)
  • More than 16 million Americans lie with a disease that came from smoking

SLIDE 2: Artifact

The ad in question features a woman celebrating her 42nd birthday, although her appearance suggests she’s significantly older. She is captured in the act of lighting a cigarette with a birthday candle, a powerful metaphor for her addiction to smoking is depicted as the primary factor behind her prematurely aged appearance.

SLIDE 3: Connect to commonplace

The underlying message or commonplace is clear: smoking harms people’s health specifically your appearance and aging.

SLIDE 4: Connect to visual rhetoric

• Describe and analyze the artifact in great detail
• The background looks like a garden setting the stage for a birthday party
• The woman looks much older than her age
• The clothes and the color she is wearing connect to the product in the corner
• Bright pink catches the audience’s eye
• 42 to emphasize that she doesn’t look that age and looks much older
• “Smoking Causes Premature Aging” causes the readers to think about the threat to one’s appearance.

SLIDE 5: Connect to ethos

This advertisement is attributed to the Nicotinell Company, known for producing products aimed at assisting people in their journey to quit smoking. It is important for us to acknowledge that while the ad is warning us about smoking we also need to recognize that it is coming from a company that sells products containing nicotine.

Using ethos, the audience will hopefully recognize the company and the product they are promoting in the ad. Considering the irony that their products still contain nicotine which is what is what causes addiction to smoking.

Ethos is used in this ad by having the company’s name and product at the bottom of the ad. The ad’s particular ethos lies in the fact that it emanates from a company that produces an alternative to traditional cigarettes, aimed at aiding in smokers’ addiction but still allowing the consumer to consume nicotine. We can also possibly see this as a possible marketing strategy to gain new consumers.

SLIDE 6: Society cares about maintaining an appearance and what it means to look young

Much of society today cares about their appearance and the way that they look. We value our appearance in society since it can determine how others view us, and the opportunities, and experiences we get.

Much of society today tries to conserve their youngness and prevent aging. They do this by getting enough sleep exercising, managing stress, using retinoids to accelerate cell renewal, drinking water, using sunscreen, moisturizing, botox, and injectable fillers.

SLIDE 7: Connect to SDGs and Rhetorical question

The SDG that directly correlates with the ad is good health and well-being, people choose to smoke and damage their health without thinking about the major effects it can have on their lives. The SDG of Good Health and Wellbeing strives to ensure healthy lives for all people of all ages target 3. a . focuses on controlling the use of tobacco in countries.

The question arises: how come smokers still don’t stop smoking knowing that it’s damaging their health and appearance?

SLIDE 8: End

Thank you.

SLIDE 9: Sources

• https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/adult_data/cig_smoking/index.htm
• https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/basic_information/health_effects/index.htm
• https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal3
• https://www.health.com/beauty/best-anti-aging-tips
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2811283/
• https://www.architecturendesign.net/39-of-the-most-powerful-social-issue-ads-thatll-make-you-stop-and-think/