Persuasive Advertising (Example of an Ad)

Persuasive Advertising Advertising plays an important role in our diverse, media-saturated world. It surrounds our everyday lives. It is in everything we do, whether we are looking for a number in the phone directory, taking a ride down a road, or watching TV. According to Jamie Beckett’s article in San Francisco Chronicle, “The average U.S. adult is bombarded by 255 advertisements every day--100 on TV, 60 in magazines, 50 on the radio, and 45 in newspapers” (Beckett). More recently, Advertising Age estimated that the average American sees, hears, or reads more than 5,000 persuasive ads a day, which means that there is almost nowhere we can avoid their presence. Today, ad agencies spend more than $300 billion in the United States and $500 billion worldwide on advertising. Therefore, we can acknowledge that advertising is created in a results-oriented perspective that will increase companies’ and organizations’ profits in the forms of purchases, donations, votes, joinings, etc. This perspective can be achieved by using manipulative and persuasive techniques in advertising that would get people’s attention. These messages appear in many formats--print and electronic, verbal and visual, logical and emotional. As Stuart Hirschberg wrote in his essay “The Rhetoric of Advertising”, “The most common manipulative techniques are designed to make consumers want to consume to satisfy deep-seated human drives. In purchasing a certain product, we are offered to create ourselves, our personality, and our relationships through consumption” (Hirschberg 229). Thus, we all become the targets of this form of persuasion that uses pathos, positive images, and/or deceptive language to influence our needs, interests, and decisions.
The ad from Martha Stewart Living magazine shows its readers a new Honda CR-V automobile. Also, the company at the same time introduces its new campaign called the “Leap List” to the magazine’s primary audience that mostly consists of women ages 25 to 45.

Cited: Advertising Age.“Ad Menace?” July 17, 2000. Artinfo. “Visual Art Can Boost Advertising, Study Says” February 15, 2008. Beckett, Jamie. “Ad Pitches Popping Up in Unusual Places.” San Francisco Chronicle. 17 July 1989. Bertram, Pat. “What the Color of Your Car Says About You.” www.squirdo.com/car_color. Hirschberg, Stuart. “The Rhetoric of Advertising.” 1999. Language Matters. 3rd ed. Ed. Debra Dew. Southlake, TX: Fountainhead P, 2010. 269-283. Print. Honda.Advertisement. Martha Stewart Living. February, 2012. 92. Print. O’Toole, John. “The Trouble With Advertising.”. New York: Times Books/Random House. 1985.