The Rhetoric of Advertising
Culturally specific Rhetorical Strategies in Print Advertising
Rhetoric of Advertising Homepage - Overview
Cross-Cultural Examples of Humor Conclusions and Annotated Bibliography
Humor is often used in advertising in The United States, but why is this the case? Is humor a better rhetorical strategy than other marketing gimmicks? Obviously, as seen by the above ad, humor is not limited to the scope of American advertisers, but may be very different across cultures in the global advertising market.
A Three Musketeers ad which reads: "Chocolate, done light"
Other Useful Websites:
Rhetorical Theory class websites
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Translation: “Do you love nature? Come take care of me at defipourlaterre.com” (Originally from www.whytraveltofrance.com)
Since rhetoric deals with the art of persuasion, advertising seems to be the most logical modern-day choice for rhetorical examination. Advertising has risen in Western civilization along with literacy rates since the invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century. Today, advertising comes in many forms—television commercials, radio blurbs, newspaper ads—you name it. Visual, auditory, even moving and changing advertisements solicit our attention every day. Companies thrive based on talented rhetoricians who are better known to the public as “market researchers” and “advertising executives.” What kind of rhetoric is most successful to American society today? What sells? Besides what many people would answer (a resounding “sex sells”), I propose that humor is the most culturally-based rhetorical strategy used in American advertising today. I am focusing my argument on printed advertisements—as opposed to television or radio ads—to examine how literacy may or may not affect the rhetorical success of any given print advertisement that uses humor. Historically speaking, words themselves have been the focus of the formal study of rhetoric. However, in a postmodern world, visual images have become prevalent in advertising and therefore deserve formal study equivalent to the studies of written messages in advertisements. Especially when humor is involved in an advertisement, often the picture is as important, if not more important, than the words. This is not always the case, but in most cases if written language is apparent, it is minimal. A few words, a punch line, or simply a picture is often enough to solicit a laugh out of the consumer. Once a humorous connection is made, often the consumer identifies with the product or brand, and is more likely to purchase that product. Magazine advertisements seem to be at the core of this phenomenon. Not to say that magazines don’t ever make for weighty reading, but the majority of magazines I can think of are simply “eye candy”—not intended for serious reading. They are mainly for perusal and as a sort of vacation from life. The magazines need hefty support from advertising companies in order to publish their product. This allows for an abundance of humorous advertisements, since the magazines want the readers of their magazines to be entertained throughout the entire magazine, not just in the content of the magazine. No magazine company wants a reader to be consciously thinking about how many advertisements are in the magazine (almost half of the pages are advertisements), so to include quality comedic solicitations is to the benefit of both the advertising companies and the magazine.
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