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The Dress


Recently, the South African branch of the Salvation Army organization released an advertisement which was to help show the severity of domestic violence. However, they do it in a very interesting and clever way. When ‘the dress’ debate began to spread across social media, the Salvation Army used this to their advantage in order to promote their advertisement. The advertisement shows an image of a woman whose body is bruised and is wearing a white and gold dress. This would surely capture the attention of anyone who was aware of the dress which went viral over the internet. But they would soon come to find that the advertisement was not forming an opinion about what color the dress was, but rather about informing people about the prevalent issue of domestic abuse against women.

I think what is especially influential about the advertisement is the message which goes along with it: “Why is it so hard to see black and blue? The only illusion is if you think it was her choice. One in six women are victims of abuse. Stop abuse against women.” This phrase shows the overall effect as well as the persuasiveness within the advertisement. The Salvation Army took unimportant internet content and used it to produce a meaningful message and to bring awareness to the widespread occurrence of abuse. I think this advertisement was very reasonable as well as logical because they took something which was already popular and used it for a greater purpose, which I think a lot of other advertisements lack today.
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Comments

  1. Kate weberMay 26, 2015 at 1:27 PM

    Wow. I find this advertisement to be very clever. I like that they used something popular in culture to bring awareness to such a big issue.

    ReplyDelete
  2. JeremiahJune 5, 2015 at 6:53 AM

    It's so sad to watch the news and see a story like that dress story, something completely irrelevant and silly, followed by a story about domestic abuse and people only pay attention to the dress story. Props to them for their wittiness and capturing the attention of the public

    ReplyDelete
  3. UnknownJune 12, 2015 at 9:51 AM

    It is such an interesting use of the seemingly Irrelevant Thesis fallacy. Well done.

    ReplyDelete

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