Skip to main content

Get Rid of Cable

I was watching TV and noticed a Direct TV commercial. In these commercials they use a series of illogical events to explain why cable is bad and why direct TV is good. They used appeal to fear like in most of their commercials that if you don’t have direct TV then this bad thing will happen to you. It seems to persuade or at the very least entertain people since they are very popular and a lot of people know about them. The speaker is very convincing because of his mix between appeal to emotion and appeal to fear. People think that it is funny and like it, but see what “bad things” could happen and get scared.

Their argument was not reasonable but it was still convincing and funny which nowadays makes a commercial successful since it’s all about recognition. Having a logical argument is not the biggest deal, because commercials are no longer logical. They way that commercials work is just having people notice them, so when somebody says “Hey, I need new TV” people will say “Well I’ve seen a lot of commercials for Direct TV and people check it out possibly like it and then buy it. Logic is not always needed for persuasive arguments, but a sound argument is not always what people are wanting they want a commercial that is entertaining and not just the boring mish mash of a commercial or just another person wanting to sell their product. Commercials like this are what people recognize over anything else.

Comments

  1. I think you made a really good point about how commercials have to be entertaining, it doesn't really matter what they say as long as it is funny, or cute. The advertisement world is a big competition of who has the funniest and most entertaining advertisement, not who has the best product.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I think the writer, did a very good job of writing this article. It is very true and well thought out. He is right, the most entertaining commercial isn't always the best. I think he did a very good job whoever he is. 10/10 would read again.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I have seen these commercials and I think they are hilarious! This shows how much our society focuses of entertainment. If an advertisement is entertaining, the product is more likely to be successful today.

    Liz

    ReplyDelete
  4. You have a very good point about commercials not necessarily needing to be logical. People do want to simply be entertained. The point of a good commercial is so that you remember it, and usually the funniest, and most ridiculous commercials are the ones we remember most.

    Kaitlyn

    ReplyDelete
  5. DirecTV has really entertaining commercials lately. I especially like the Rob Lowe commercials with Meathead Rob Lowe, Paranoid Rob Lowe, High School Jock Rob Lowe, and all of them have cable and lots of social issues and then they show regular, cool, popular Rob Lowe.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Open Happiness

While at the movie theaters to see The Maze Runner , I saw a commercial that featured rhetoric. The commercial begins with a young woman named Jess purchasing two Coca Cola drinks in a convenience store. One has her own name on it, and one has the name of her friend Alisha on it. The cashier watches her forlornly as she leaves, hinting that he has a crush on his customer. Jess gives the Coke with Alisha’s name on it to her friend, and together the two friends drink them. Later, Jess, Alisha and two other friends come back into the store to buy more Coke, then leave and have a good time together. Jess keeps coming back to the store with more and more friends, each time purchasing Coca Cola with their names printed on the labels. The cashier smiles and watches, but it is clear that he wishes he was with Jess.  Finally, as the cashier is closing the store for the night, Jess shows up at the door with a Coke that has the name Chris on it. She smiles and hands the drink to the ...

Marilyn Monroe's Shampoo

While browsing on Google I found an old advertisement.  The ad was for Lustre-Crème Shampoo. It featured Marilyn Monroe, known for her beauteous looks and her parts in different movies. One of her movies was Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Lustre-Crème was attempting to sell their shampoo through the use of fallacies. By saying that Marilyn Monroe that tells you nothing about the actual product: it simply attracts you to the pretty face in the picture. Using this as an argument of why someone should buy your product is quite illogical. Just because Marilyn Monroe uses it doesn’t provide assurance of its abilities. They attempt using snob appeal by trying to make the audience believe that they could be like Marilyn Monroe if they use the same product as her. They use appeal to illegitimate authority by using Marilyn Monroe to promote their product. Although she herself is a customer, this is still rather irrelevant. She herself has no type of expertise in hair products and knows nothing t...

Is Hip Hop a Cancer or a Cure?

The speech I watched was a Ted Talk presented by one of my favorite music artists, who just so happens to be a Christian rapper.  This rapper’s name is Lecrae Moore, but he just goes by Lecrae.  Over the past five years or so, Lecrae has been able to break out of the small box that Christian music and Christian rap have been put in, and he has been able to get his music out to all types of crowds.  So I was actually pretty excited when I saw that he had spoken at a Ted Talk in Nashville.  The speech he delivered was titled, “Heroes and Villains: Is Hip-Hop a Cancer or a Cure?”  In this speech Lecrae talked about how it is easy to look at certain people in history and label them as heroes or villains, but he talks about how not everyone views historical figures the same.  Lecrae started off by defining where we get the words, “Hero” and “Villain”.  Knowing the origin of these words really gave good context for what came to follow.  He then went o...