Rhetorical analysis of advertising and persuasion techniques

Advertising Rhetoric

The Rhetoric of Advertisements

As readers of popular glossy-paged magazines can tell you, advertising has become an increasingly prevalent part of almost all information media sources. This is not limited solely to magazines, of course, but within the pages of the latest issue of Cosmopolitan or GQ, one can expect to see more pages of advertising than actual content, as well as content masquerading as content. The food magazine Bon Appetit has not escaped the encroachment of the ads even for non-food items, such as makeup brand Clinique's new "lip smoothie" product, which combines lipstick with vitamins and antioxidants to produce -- according to the advertisement -- lips that are both beautiful and healthy. As with most advertisements, especially in magazines, there is a highly visual element to this Clinique ad, but there is also a fair amount of text, and both elements can be used to examine the rhetoric of advertising, revealing the conscious manipulation practiced by advertisers through their presentation of what appears to be largely objective information.

The pattern of organization evident in the text portion of this advertisement is definitely what has been termed "psychological order," with the most important information at the beginning and the end of the written text. The first sentence consists almost solely of the product's name, and the last sentence encourages readers to visit the company's website for "flirty lip looks," adding a bit of sexual spice into an encouragement to spend more time looking at the product, which can increase sales. The information in the middle, which psychological tests have shown is the information least paid attention to by most readers, contains the technical description of the product itself along with its benefits.

The formatting echoes this emphasis on sensuality and a basic diversion from information that is actually directly applicable to the product and its use. The photograph that makes up the bulk of the advertisement is not a pair of lips with the product on, or several pairs of lips -- there are not any lips or indeed any human features at all. Instead, various ripe and luscious berries are situated around four glasses of different colored smoothies, shot from a bird's-eye-view with the opened cylinders of the product laying across the tops of the glasses, their colors blending with those of the smoothies and their labels clearly showing. The text occupies only about the bottom sixth of the full page add; the format emphasizes the color and lusciousness of completely unrelated items as a method of attaching these colors and the feelings they inspire to the product, taking emphasis away from relevant information.

The rhetorical appeal to the reader's feelings is most obvious in the photograph, where feelings of freshness and health and yet of indulgence and luxury commingle, but can also be seen in the flirtations enticement to spend more time with the product as mentioned above. The attempt to appeal to the reader's intellect is minimal in this ad, though the prominently featured word "vitamin" in the product's title is certainly at least a partial intellectual appeal, telling the reader's that this product is healthy and beneficial as more than simply a beauty product. The content in the middle of the text passage also describes the product in a way that makes it sound like an extremely intellectually engineered makeup product. The reader's sense of self is appealed to by the suggestion that one's lips are not the best lips they can be -- the lips one was "meant" to have -- if they don't have this product on.