Analysis of Video Commercials

Analysis of Meaningful Beauty

Rhetoric-

This commercial for Meaningful Beauty products uses the persuasive technique of ethos to appeal to customers. The commercial uses beautiful famous models and celebrities like Cindy Crawford and Ellen Pompeo to endorse the products. Ellen Pompeo, says, “Trust me, it’s worth it!”

Overall message-

The commercial is trying to sell a system of beauty products from Cindy Crawford’s company called Meaningful Beauty. The commercial has several different settings including a red carpet premiere, a dressing room for tv stars, a beauty shop, and Cindy Crawford’s bedroom. She is trying to convince us that we need these products to help our “trouble areas” and Ellen Pompeo is promoting Cindy’s products for her. The objects in the commercial are the skin care line as well as two free gifts- a skin renewing facial tool and wrinkle smoothing capsules. What happened in the commercial was that Cindy Crawford walked the red carpet and then revealed the secrets to her beauty were the Meaningful Beauty products. An animation of the products working showed them seeping into the skin and plumping the wrinkles up. Cindy also pretended to use the skin renewing facial tool.  

Production-

The cultural codes they are using are that women do not want wrinkles and they all hope to be as beautiful and youthful looking as Cindy Crawford and Ellen Pompeo. The commercial creators want us to believe if we buy their system of skincare products that they will make us young and gorgeous.

Distribution-

This commercial was shown on a weekday during a commercial break from The Price is Right tv show at around 11:15 am. The people most likely to watch this show are stay-at-home moms, which is the target audience for wrinkle-erasing beauty products.

Persuasive techniques-

A visual technique that the commercial uses is an animation of how the serums seep into the skin to plump up the cells under the skin. Another technique they did was to show a before and after picture of the wrinkles around the eyes diminishing. 

This commercial uses the aural techniques of celebrity endorsements and testimonials.These both back up the thought that if you use these products you will be as beautiful as a model. The narrator also tells us we must act quickly and order now to get the free products. Results are guaranteed or your money back!

Reflection-

In this module I learned from the readings that Aristotle defined three types of rhetoric or persuasive techniques- pathos, logos, and ethos. Pathos is an argument that evokes an emotional response. Logos is an argument that uses logic and reason. Ethos appeals to credibility and uses a trusted spokesperson or celebrity endorsement.

It is important to know persuasive techniques because it makes you a more informed consumer. If you educate yourself on these techniques you can recognize them in advertising and not fall prey to feeling like you need to buy things that are advertised that you may not really need just because you were convinced that you need them by the commercial.

In my art classroom I could have students bring in examples of how color influences people to buy products. For example, food with green packages is promoted as “healthy” and “natural”. Students could do a study about whether using complementary colors makes products more likely to be bought in the store. Complementary colors are across from each other on the color wheel and really stand out together. They are red/green, blue/orange, and yellow/violet. Often cereal boxes, holiday decorations, and candy use complementary colors.