Ms. Wall
English 1301-14
1 April 2012
Luring you in with advertisement
Advertisement is the promotion of any kind of product or, item that a company is trying to sell to the public. Today’s world is wrapped around advertisement whether it is on the radio, television, and buildings or even in magazines. Trying to advertise is an enormous competition in a dog eat dog world. The advertisements can be persuading by emotional, physical or even mental states of the mind. There is always a picture like in Satrapi’s graphic novel or detailed words to help persuade you into buying their product. Companies will come up with almost any, and everything to encourage people to buy their product.
It is quite obvious that “advertising media have become increasingly competitive, advertisers are resorting to a variety of tactics to attract and retain consumers’ attention to their message.” One touching way companies do this by emotional advertisement. A great example is the commercial with a baby coughing because she has caught the whooping cough from her mother. This advertisement is reaching out to concerned parents to make sure the parents are healthy so their babies do not catch anything. Seeing this poor infant helplessly sick is emotional because, no one wants to see their little prince or princess in pain. Emotional advertising touches the audience’s heart to the point they feel it is a need to go purchase this product in order to prevent whatever the advertisement is trying prevent. In this case they advertise that children get whooping cough from a sickly parent or sibling, therefore the companies are trying to persuade them to go get this certain shot to prevent whooping cough. Since there are many companies competing these businesses have found numerous ways to get into the viewer’s heart in order to make them feel like they need the product.
Have you ever thought that you were actually a walking persuasive advertisement? There are physical advertisements that have working people dressed up in funny or eye catching costumes or attires. These walking advertisement not only represent the company’s product but it shows that people are willing to risk their popularity and embarrassment to represent a certain product. These physical or visual advertisements also allow the audience or customers to actually encounter their reaction to the product as in the scene where the little girl talks about not liking the veil; in the picture it shows a sad facial expression and her opinion of the veil with items around her. There being many ways to show advertisement and in this case the little things count, just from that picture you would consider she is unsure what the veil is actually for and find out things she relate the veil with. Persuasive advertisement happens so much that we barely realize it; just like in one of the scenes from Satrapi’s graphic novel her mother was demonstration and didn’t realize she was making a difference until her photo was on every European newspaper.