Introduction:

• Background on IFAW and its overall purpose as an organization
• Discussion of IFAW’s campaign which contains this ad
• Background on the Washington Post
• Discussion of Tom Toles as a political cartoonist
• Thesis: Although the two ads have contrasting ways of presenting their information, as one has a more serious tone, while the other plays with a satirical approach, IFAW and the Washington Post both utilize the exigence and dominant ideology related to an environmental issue to make the ads more persuasive in order to achieve the purpose of calling to the civic to take action and improve the condition of the environment.

Claim: IFAW uses stylistic choices to create a serious tone in order to show the severity of the animal welfare situation.

• Juxtaposition of digital elephant to natural background
  • Words to create elephant (skeletal look)
  • Color scheme and symbolism of background
  • Comparison of elephant and background
• Message at the bottom of the ad
  • Syntax: Question, then exclamation, then command
  • IFAW logo

Claim: Tom Toles takes a different approach than IFAW by making a cartoon style ad to ridicule those who are in denial of climate change.

• Antithesis between “Reality” and “Climate Change Denial”
  • Crack between two phrases
  • Statement: “The crack just grew another 17 miles”
• “Still no increase in see level.” statement
  • Use of “see” instead of “sea”
  • Placement of person saying the quote

Claim: With IFAW and the Washington Post’s differing styles of portrayal, they both use the exigence and dominant ideology of the deteriorating environmental situation to create a call to action to aid the environment.

• IFAW: Rate of animal extinction is same as growth rate of new charities
  • Shows severity of situation
  • Asking a global audience to help protect the animals
• Washington Post: Majority of people believe in climate change
  • Use of dominant ideology to mock those that do not conform with it
  • Focused on making climate change deniers see the reality of climate change and help take action to stop it

Conclusion

• Restate main points
• Two very different approaches can be used to achieve the same goal when targeting different audiences.