Rhetoric in Advertising

One of the places where rhetoric touches our lives every day is through advertising. Some quick and dirty research on the question of just how many advertisements the typical American gets exposed to produced answers from 300-3000 advertisements per day (http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=56750). Since numbers which vary this much point to research which still needs to be done, let's go with a low ball estimate and go with 250 ads per day. Even this conservative estimate translates into all of us being bombarded with advertisements.

If you don't think advertising agencies have done audience research, think again. If you don't think there's a host of rhetoric training behind most successful advertisements, think again. One of the reasons you are being trained in looking at basic rhetoric and learning to think critically about how others communicate with you is to learn when and how you are manipulated through rhetoric. However, now you have the training, there's a lot you can learn from such successful communication as advertisements.

Here's an example. Somewhere there's an essay with "weasel words" in the title. When I used to teach composition as a course in reading, I used to use the essay. It discussed words in advertising, such as, "virtually." The statement, "It has virtually no fat.," translates into, "It has fat." However, advertisers count on their audience being lazy and not taking or having the time to think through what they are saying.

Here is a link to a site which offers small businesses advice on the Truth in Advertising Act:

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/business/adv/bus35.shtm

Boiled down, advertisers are required to have "reasonable evidence" to back up their claims. This is a pretty low threshold for determining what makes a true claim and what doesn't, and it counts on your and my willingness to accept claims as face value without thinking about how they are supported.

Truth in advertising leads me to a second example of how advertisements work. Nance and I decided to have bacon, eggs, and baked tomatoes with our scones and tea. It's a Sunday, so we have additional time to cook and enjoy. Nance breaks out the bacon package and comments that, "It has thirty percent less fat."

The claim is right there on the label, "30% LESS FAT." By the way, this is Kroger's high end, house brand of bacon; so, you can look for yourself. Her BS antennae go up and critical thinking kicks in. Nance has lived with me, so she has long since learned to think rhetorically and critically.

"Thirty percent less fat than what?"

She looks on the bag and in tiny, tiny print it says, "than USDA data for bacon." Knowing the USDA sets very, very minimalistic standards, having less fat than the fattest bacon allowed to qualify as bacon doesn't mean a lot; but, this qualifies as "reasonable evidence." Notice how Kroger has highlighted the claim and minimialized its support by crafting how the message appears. The large print and bold lettering draw your attention to the claim. They are counting on the fact you will never take the time to look at the small print and their "reasonable evidence."

Such advertisement is insulting to its audience. It suggests you are lazy
enough not to think about the claim itself and to know that claims are only as good as the evidence used to support them. Sloppy or manipulative claims say a lot about the assumptions their authors make about their audience, and they say a lot about their authors.

Yes, such claims work; otherwise, we wouldn't be exposed to them by advertisers. Remember, advertisers are in the business of making money. If their messages were not successful and didn 't make money, they would soon be out of business. However, you are now being trained to think critically, so you don't have to be taken in by sloppy reasoning and manipulative claims.

Over the next few weeks, as you look for examples of rhetoric to include in your two weekly analysis, you could do a lot worst than to pay attention to how advertisements try to work, the assumptions which are made about their audience, and what these assumptions say about their authors. One trick here is to learn to hear what advertisers are saying, instead of just taking an ad at face value.

One lesson you can learn from all this is that of making sure your claims and evidence stay up to high standards. You can bet, Nance will be looking at other sources of bacon. After all, we don't see why we should support a company who has such a low opinion of our ability to think. You might also learn that some members of your audiences are looking at your claims and evidence and trying to figure out what they say about their authors and their assumptions about their audience.