Short Analysis of Visual Rhetoric in a TV Ad for a Mobile Device/ Social Network/Digital Assistant
Task:
This project asks you to develop an essay in which you rigorously analyze part of the rhetorical strategy of a TV ad for a mobile device, voice-activated “intelligent” personal assistant, or social media network. In preparation to write your essay, you should search your chosen ad for interesting details and think about how they are designed to persuade their intended audience. After you have identified a variety of interesting visual details and thought through their possible implications, you will narrow your focus in order to more closely examine the rhetorical significance of a particular visual element of the ad. Your essay’s goal is not to discuss as many visual elements as possible, but instead to zoom-in on a narrowly defined element of the ad (a particular detail or set of related details) and vividly describe and interpret it, revealing how it influences the ad’s overall message.
Things to aviod:
– Avoid referring to yourself in the essay: no “I” or “me”.
– Avoid indicating approval or disapproval of the brand/device/network; this essay isn’t about your own tastes or habits or loyalties.
– Avoid ads that depend on celebrity. Celebrity often functions as a black hole in an ad, overwhelming all other elements.
An excellent analysis would feature:
– A lean, lively introduction that orients the reader and offers a vivid, relevant glimpse of the ad.
– A clearly identifiable, bolded working thesis statement that initiates the essay’s evolving thesis.
– Specific identification of the ad’s target audience (or some segment of it)
– Precise, vivid description of the particular element/details of the ad that your essay is devoted to analyzing.
– Progression throughout the essay toward an increasingly sophisticated understanding of the rhetorical function or significance of the element you’ve chosen to examine.
– Original, insightful thinking throughout the paper that pushes beyond the obvious.
– A conclusion that establishes the essay’s fully evolved thesis (interpretation of the meaning/persuasive value of the visual element you’re analyzing), and then pushes a bit further still, briefly offering additional insight or expanded scope that amplifies the essay’s overall impression on the reader.
– A fluid, deliberate overall structure, evident respect for language, care in crafting sentences and paragraphs, and awareness of how the overall design of your paper impacts your overall appeal and authority as a writer.
Critique Prompts:
1) Does the analysis begin in a fashion that orients the reader (perhaps by identifying the ad under analysis and presenting a vivid glimpse of a relevant part of it)?
2) Does the draft establish an arguable bolded working thesis statement that initiates the essay’s evolving thesis.
3) Does the essay establish a sufficiently narrow and clearly defined visual element that will serve as the focus of the analysis?
4) To what extent does the paper effectively and persuasively support its working thesis? Where?
5) Where is the draft especially clear, vivid, articulate, insightful, or otherwise admirable?
6) Where is it dull, confusing, unfocused, or otherwise lackluster?
7) What deserves expansion? What should be trimmed or cut?
8) Does the draft challenge its working thesis by highlighting complicating data? Establish an evolved thesis that reflects a more sophisticated understanding of the meaning/function of X?
9) To what extent does the analysis push beyond the obvious?
10) Does the conclusion push further still, offering additional insight or expanded scope that amplifies the essay’s overall impression on the reader? (For instance, you might comment on how do you think the ad’s particular message might resonate with its target audience at this point in time.)
Ad Link:
Student Sample Essay:
In the dead of night, a young man is illuminated by the lights of cars passing by. He gets out of bed and grabs his skateboard and smart phone to begin journeying into the night. Along this journey the young man skateboards towards a lit-up gas station. As a deer slowly comes into focus, the man slows down his board and begins to walk slowly toward the deer. He pulls out his smart phone to capture the beauty of the wild deer bathed in the light of the gas station. This is a brief illustration of the 2016 iPhone 7 ad “Midnight”. Throughout the ad we see this young man along different points of his journey through the city stopping and taking snapshots of some of the beauty he finds along the way. The scene of the deer stumbling onto the roadside gas station is the most striking image, and it establishes the theme of the beauty of nature in an urban environment.
Typically, when a new phone or piece of technology launches, it is very common for companies to show off vast and futuristic visuals to try to get the sense that this new product is the way of the future. However, in this particular ad Apple’s marketing team decided to go the opposite direction, and the setting of the scene with the deer is very telling of this direction. Instead of a grandiose vibrant setting with a colorful sunset we are placed in a dark dinky gas station in the dead of night with the fluorescent lights flickering on and off. Having this distinction from the common path makes it clear that this setting is important to not only the ad but the story they are telling through it.
In an urban setting, skateboarders are often depicted as rowdy and reckless. Similarly, the quick marts that are associated with gas stations are commonly filled with grumpy patrons, from exhausted families on a cross-country road trip to brutish truck drivers who just got off a 12-hour shift. However, this scene with the young skateboarder and deer illustrates something different—the station is brightly lit but deserted and the skateboarder tries to be silent and cautious. As the man slowly approaches the deer, the animal seems to be pondering what to do next, and as the camera zooms in, it becomes all the more clear that the deer is out of place in this scenario. Throughout the ad and including this scene with the deer, the young man seems to seek out nature. He seems driven to go out in the middle of night to find the wonder of an environment that is unlike the one he is used to.
The focal piece of this scene that truly adds meaning behind all of this is the deer. The ad designers made an interesting deliberate choice when they decided to feature a deer rather than an animal more typical in urban environments. Creatures that commonly prowl urban spaces—possums, racoons, rats—tend to give off a feeling of dirtiness, ugliness, or danger, but that’s not what this ad is all about. The makers of the ad wanted to highlight a contrast between the animal and the environment it is in, so they featured a deer. When a person pictures a deer, they think of gentleness and gracefulness. So now we have this symbol of gracefulness and elegance in an environment that is almost the complete opposite, in a place that is dark, gloomy, and can even give the presence of danger. But now with the deer being highlighted in this new habitat, we are able to see beyond the darkness, beyond seeing just a gas station. We are able to see the beauty of it, and thus the simple gas station becomes as elegant as the deer.
Throughout the young man’s photography journey across the city, perhaps he wasn’t focused on the pieces of nature that are alive in the dead of night. He was focused on the beauty that was hidden away. While this iPhone 7 ad touches on the magnificence of nature where one won’t typically find it, what the creators of this ad are truly trying to show us is that beauty is everywhere around. And just as in the scene of the elegant deer, the ad implies how this unseen beauty can be captured through the lens of an iPhone.
