Tuesday, January 29, 2008

rhetorical appeal of television ads

I watched television for thirty minutes with my mom last night. The show we watched was "Mystery Diagnosis" on Discovery Channel. While watching this specific show, when it came to commercial time, I came across two commercials that were pretty appealing. The commercials were Bank of America and Liberty Mutual.

The first commercial was for the Bank of America. I believe that Bank of America is wanting to influence mainly the adult audience to save up anything they have, such as quarters. They made it so the quarter was so powerful and that the quarter could do anything it wanted. They also made the perception that with saving these quarters, you can start a savings account at Bank of America. I figured this commercial was going more towards the adult audience because it was specifically a bank and more adults use banks than any other age. Also, more adults would be watching the “Mystery Diagnosis” show than any other age.

The second commercial was a Liberty Mutual commercial. The point of the commercial was to tell viewers that with Liberty Mutual insurance everything is fine and really nice. In the commercial, there were people doing really nice things for other people and no violence around at all. I had two sides to understanding the commercial. The first side was that with Liberty Mutual insurance, everything is nice and fine and the other side was that people with Liberty Mutual insurance are really nice and you could be one of those nice people if you got Liberty Mutual insurance. I thought this commercial was mainly for the adult audience too, being that many adults are the ones looking into insurance. And then again, the fact that I was watching “Mystery Diagnosis”, more adults would watch the show, which it would make since to have commercials that attack the adult audience.

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