Download Lanzetta Alex Lanzetta 9/16/14 The Enhanced Qualities of Video

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Alex Lanzetta
9/16/14
The Enhanced Qualities of Video Rhetoric
Combining medium and rhetorical techniques to connect to the viewer can produce a positive
or negative level of effectiveness in an advertisement to Americans. I am going to be comparing two
advertisements in this paper. One of the advertisements is an image of an overwhelmingly happy
American family consisting of a mother, father, son and dog who are riding in their car, leaving from a
gas station. The second advertisement is a video that is advertising Islington University by showing
students enjoying the campus and by playing inspirational music in the background. These two
advertisements are similar in that they use American values, the feeling of happiness, and the concept
of success to influence the viewer's connection to the advertisements, yet they are different in that the
illustration and video are completely different forms of communication, attract to separate audiences,
and ultimately prove to have different levels of effectiveness in their rhetorical advertisement
techniques. In this paper, I propose that the video ad is a more powerful form of advertisement to
Americans because of the similarities and differences that they possess.
In talking about the advertisements’ similarities, the first observation is they both utilize what
most people would define as American values. The picture ad uses the image of a typical American
family as defined similarly to a nuclear family – a mother, father, and children. The reason showing a
typical American family in this ad is effective is because according to an article by Frank Newport and joy
Wilke, younger Americans have a high desire to raise children. “94% of all Americans between the ages
of 18 and 40 either had children or wanted to have children someday,” (Newport and Wilke). Knowing
that the ad appeals to the majority of people seeing it, it can be concluded that appeal to American
values is a strong rhetorical application of pathos.
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The second ad also appeals to American values. The music in the background includes the lyrics:
“This is my own. I have a goal. I believe I will succeed in my goal,” which can be paralleled to the
American dream in many ways, as the American dream usually includes owning property, making
money, and becoming successful. These things are properties of Americans who are potentially
watching the advertisement, which demonstrates powerful advertising techniques. In comparing the
two advertisements, the video ad utilizes more American values than the illustration, and it more
specifically references these values directly, therefor in this case, the university advertisement would be
more effective to Americans.
Another similarity of both advertisements is the application of the feeling of happiness to
influence and activate the viewer’s emotions. It is known that humans empathize with others when they
smile – it is literally contagious. In the image of the family, all of the people are smiling and clearly
happy. This creates a positive attitude towards to the situation. While they are clearly happy, the
problem with the still image is that the lack of action doesn’t clearly tell the user why the family is
happy. People are naturally quick to pick up staged emotions, and when there’s a discontinuity between
emotion and action, that will lessen the impact of the advertisement.
That being said, the video advertisement does have action. The video shows happy students
talking with friends at the university. It shows happy students eating food at the university. More
surprisingly, happy students are reading from books and giving speeches – things some viewers would
normally not associate with happiness. In this case the staging of emotion is broken by the effects of
action. Even with the ads both using the same technique of using happiness to connect to the viewer,
the video’s use of action makes it much more effective.
The last relevant similarity between the image and university video is the value of success. The
illustration implies success through the family. Having a happy family can be a result of the parents
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(most likely the father figure in this advertisement) having a good job, owning a house, and living the
American Dream. It is a shared value of Americans to be successful, from the country’s foundation to
today’s society. The common value in the images makes the viewer feel more comfortable and positive
toward the advertisement.
The video advertisement also uses the value success to influence the viewer’s opinion and
connection to the ad. As mentioned before, the music directly talks about success, as opposed to
making the viewer assume that success is conveyed in the ad. With the combination of students being
active at the college, the notion of success makes the viewer believe that studying and being part of the
university in the advertisement will make them successful.
Now that I’ve identified three similarities in the advertisements that help them be effective, it
can be observed that the video ad is more successful in terms of how well it relates positive values to
the viewer. A possible explanation for this upper-hand may be hidden within some of the bigger
differences between the two ads. The form of communication and the relevance of the type of audience
help generate this heightened effectiveness of rhetorical strategies in the university advertisement.
The form of communication, or the medium, is a very important factor of how well an
advertisement does its job in the current society. For example, it may not be hard for an average
American to identify a few good commercials they’ve seen in the last week, however asking someone
what their week’s most memorable newspaper ad was might result in a less spontaneous conclusion.
The same goes between these two ads. In America’s society today, video ads are more relevant and
centered around the current widespread media. They are found on television, billboards, phone
applications, websites, and most dramatically, YouTube, which has more concurrent viewers than
television. The significance of using video as the medium for advertisements is that they fit into
Americans’ everyday lives like a puzzle piece, constantly influencing their viewers. With image ads, there
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is definitely a massive audience as well, however they are less effective at influencing the viewers’
emotions.
Advertisers often start planning a campaign by asking who their audience is, because the target
audience is the most important factor in how effective an advertisement is. The target audience often
depends on the form of communication used, as the location of the ad is playing an important role in
who sees it. The video ad has an advantage over simple illustrations in today’s American society because
it’s very relevant in the amount of electronic technology available. The illustration doesn’t have a large
audience because people don’t spent a lot of time paying attention to image ads, whether they be in a
newspaper, a billboard, or anywhere else. The particular image of the family isn’t surprising or
captivating enough to be an effective means of advertisement in today’s society.
With all things considered, both ads use rhetorical techniques to connect to the audience by
utilizing the values of Americans, happiness, and success, however they differ in their form of
communication and type of audience. These similarities and differences show that the video ad will
most likely appeal to the American society today by applying the importance of relevance and power.
The university video advertisement is more effective than the driving family picture advertisement.
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Works Cited
http://www.gallup.com/poll/164618/desire-children-norm.aspx