You’re sitting in your favorite chair one evening just after polishing off a hearty meal, and you’re deeply engaged in the season finale of your favorite drama on television. The show is well into its climax, and in a few short moments you will finally discover the fate that befalls the characters you have come to love. You’re hanging on the edge of your seat, and just when you think the show has reached its last few frames…a commercial airs. At first you are taken aback, and you’re not really sure why you’ve lost view of the setting you were just so deeply immersed in. But when you realize the answer, your surprise is rapidly replaced by disgust. You lean back in your chair, eyes rolling and arms folded. “Why do they even show commercials?” you snap aloud. “It’s not like I’m going to buy the thing they’re selling just because I saw a commercial for it.” This is the conscious opinion many people have of commercials: they are meaningless little sequences that come between the things we really want to watch, and they have no effect on the public. While it is true that no one really gets excited to sit down and watch commercials, there often is more to their substance than meets the eye. The idea that commercials have no effect on the public is simply untrue; evidence to this point can be seen in the vast amount of commercially advertised products that are sold every day, such as State Farm insurance policies, Doritos, and Chevrolets. So how do commercials attract so many customers while remaining “on the down low.” They appeal to our subconscious minds rather than our conscious minds. Commercials, unlike shows or speeches, only have thirty seconds or a minute to get their point across. This means they cannot use the same tactics as these other mediums to persuade their viewers. Commercials rely mainly on attention grabbers that will stick in our subconscious minds rather than play out in our heads as a brilliant and put-together argument. Though many might not consider commercials examples of rhetoric, they certainly are, as they are one of the greatest persuaders in our society. With any piece of rhetoric, an analysis can be made of the elements and strategies that make it effective, and commercials are no exception. Though it may seem challenging to complete a cohesive interpretation of something that appeals to our subconscious minds, with a bit of digging, an ocean of tactics and appeals can be found in even the shortest of ads.
An ad I chose to analyze is one of a thread of several Direct TV ads that aired a handful of years ago, and it can be viewed in the link below. To summarize, this ad follows a pattern that begins with a man becoming agitated while being put on hold with the cable company. A deep-voiced narrator then proceeds to lay out a progression of events that results due to the ad’s “protagonist” being kept on hold, and this is accompanied by quickly-changing scenes that depict each part of the sequence the narrator lays out. The protagonist feels trapped by being kept on hold, so he tries hang-gliding to fight this feeling. As he is sailing through the sky, he crashes into a telephone wire, which results in the grid going down throughout the nearby city. This widespread power-outage leads to a rampant spread of crime that plagues the entire area. Just when the consequences of a cable phone line hold seem to have developed into an epidemic for the entire area and not just our protagonist, chance circles around to punish the poor guy when his dad is punched in the gut over a can of soup during a Katrina-like raid of the local supermarket. The ad closes with the following advice: “Don’t have your dad get punched over a can of soup. Get rid of cable and upgrade to Direct TV.” Though on its surface it may seem rather simple, this ad is filled with a mountain of appeals to logos, pathos and ethos that have a remarkable persuasive effect on our subconscious minds.
First, this ad appeals to logos, or our sense of logic. The ad takes us through an absurd and rather hilarious sequence of events that take a sharp, unrealistic turn early on, and then finish with a contrastingly simple, yet even more ludicrous consequence. So it’s not exactly easy to see where the logic fits into this. Though the events that occur don’t really make sense, they do illustrate a sensible point: the idea that something bad could happen as a result of our cable not working, outside of simply not being able to watch our programs. Since television is such a routine form of heavily-desired entertainment for so many, it makes sense that a disruption in using this technology could have consequences in our daily lives, as it would be interrupting something we are so used to. People do not like to have their routines interrupted, especially the aspects of those routines that they enjoy. Most people can relate to the idea of having their day “ruined” or at least made worse by some form of routine technology failing to cooperate, and that is why the basis of this argument works so well logically.
In addition to logic, an allure of ethos, or credibility, also appears in this commercial. Though it may sound somewhat silly, the narrator’s voice serves very effectively as an assertion of credibility. This unseen storyteller relays the events that occur in a deep, clear, and articulate voice, and one that is pleasing to the ear. He sounds like a “man of business”, which inclines the viewers (listeners) to believe him. In addition to the perception that the narrator knows what he’s talking about, his voice also conveys a hint of comedic appeal, as he relays the absurd sequences in an almost sarcastically serious tone. This unique combination further inclines the listeners to believe him as a truly talented orator with the ability to blend aspects of seriousness and comedy simply by speaking. Another way in which this ad makes use of an appeal to ethos lies in its context. This ad was made by Direct TV, a company which has had a great deal of success and is one of the most popular and long-standing broadcast satellite providers in recent years. The fact that this commercial was made by a company of such magnitude and reliability alone serves as a tremendous reference to its credibility.
The most essential persuasive method this thirty second cluster of scenarios utilizes is pathos, or an appeal to emotion. The primary emotion this commercial appeals to is our sense of humor, and it does a marvelous job. Though the most effective means of using pathos is typically characterized by an audience being made to empathize with a certain group and, in turn, identify with an argument, this is not always the best practice. In the case of this ad, humor is used to quickly grab our attention, and this references my earlier assertion that ads need to use aspects that appeal to our subconscious mind so that we will keep them in the back of our minds, rather than lay out a craftily-structured argument that makes us sympathize with the cause of the argument. The ad uses a unique and unexpected comedic structure that sets it apart from most other commercials, and arguments for that matter. The ad starts with a scenario in which a man’s cable is not working and he feels trapped, a rather normal start. However, the sequence quickly turns to relay a number of comedic, outlandish occurrences, each of which is more absurd than the last. This increasing preposterousness, coupled with the unfittingly newsman-like voice of the narrator makes for some laughs early on. By the middle of the ad, we think we get the point. Each event will be crazier than the last, and each new scenario will relate a widespread consequence that was derived from a relatively insignificant start, and we will get a good kick out of each chaotic scene. However, the end of the ad takes an unexpected turn, in which it narrates a small event that occurs in the midst of all the madness that resulted from the protagonist’s cable not working at the start. In a hilarious turn of events, the protagonist’s dad is slugged in the gut while slowly reaching for a can of soup on a shelf in a supermarket that is being raided. This event is hilarious not only because it serves as a bit of slapstick humor that had not appeared before and was not expected, but more importantly because it represents the sequence of events circling back to bite our protagonist, which was the message of the ad all along. This event is made even more hilarious as the protagonist stumbles down the sidewalk outside the supermarket, dragging broken hang-glider and all, to peer at the fruit of his unanswered cable call shown by his father crouched over, gasping for air. This hilarious turn of events not only keeps us intrigued throughout the ad, but it also makes us remember it after it is complete. This memorable aspect of the ad makes viewers much more likely to purchase Direct TV.
Commercials, though seemingly a small and unappealing element of popular culture, can, in fact, be some of the most persuading pieces of rhetoric around. The Direct TV ad I chose uses appeals of logos through hinting at situations concerning technology that commonly apply to our daily lives, through ethos through the charismatic voice of its narrator and well-known reputation of the company that made it, and through a unique use of pathos in which unexpected and absurdly simple humor is used to keep the ad in the subconscious memory of its viewers. These three appeals, coupled with one another, make for a very compelling argument in a short segment that, to most, seems like just an interruption.