Monday, January 24, 2011

Advertisement



Cigarette ads are always interesting to look at. This advertisement for Camel cigarettes uses ethos to appeal to a wide audience. The handsome, healthy, happy go lucky doctor in the top right is adorned in the recognizable white coat and is smoking Camel cigarettes. This easily establishes authority and credibility between the speaker and the audience that smoking is healthy and Camel cigarettes are the medical professional's first choice. The small tagline on the left says that most doctors in every branch of medicine like Camel. It is the speaker's character that is being used as a mode of persuasion. The characters at the bottom only reinforce the ad and help to support targeting the ad's audience. When broken down the ad is a picture of an intelligent looking, middle-aged man smoking a cigarette. With the line “More Doctors Smoke CAMELS than any other cigarette!” the ad is implying that the cigarettes made by Camel are safer than other leading and competing brands. Also, the line “The Doctor’s choice is America’s choice” enforces the audience to feel patriotism for buying Camel brand cigarettes. The four pictures at the bottom reinforce the audience. They are successful, glamorous, happy Americans that chose Camel brand. The photographs act to offer visual evidence of the text in the advertisement. The ad chooses to leave out the doctors’ opinions that would state that smoking is bad for one’s health. One important factor, that I could not find, is the year of the advertisement. The ad is either from the early nineteen hundreds and the science of cigarettes is lacking in progress (most likely) or it is a rendition in a more modern age tip-toeing around the topic of smoking’s harmful effects. Either way, Camel has decided to speak to the audience from an un-objective stance. The ad is addressing two major points. One, Camel cigarettes are safer. Two, Camel is the American way.

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