5 Hour Energy

So I was just watching The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and the 5 Hour Energy commercial came on.  There are a lot of different ones, but this one always bothers me:

Just kidding, I can't find it on Youtube.

Anyway, this particular commercial that I'm talking about starts out talking about all of the things that we do in the morning to get our coffee such as "fuss with it, carry it, make it, wait for it," etc.  During this they show people spilling coffee on themselves, waiting in the longest lines you've ever seen, and just being extremely over dramatic.  Then it goes on to tell you how fast and easy 5 Hour Energy is.  They show a guy drink it, look at his watch, and sit down to read a newspaper, or something along those lines.

Now clearly the rhetoric is trying to convince you that coffee is very difficult to have in the morning, and 5 Hour Energy is the obvious solution to this hassle. 

That would be all fine and dandy, but it just doesn’t work in the commercial.  At least not for me.  I’m not a big coffee drinker, but occasionally I’ll make myself a cup in the morning if I’m feeling extra tired, and sometimes I’ll stop at a coffee shop and pick one up, so I know that it’s really not that difficult.  Plus their target audience in this commercial is people that are regular coffee drinkers, and I assume that they all have their coffee routine down pretty well (I assume this because even with how rarely I drink it, I can do it quite efficiently).  If my assumption is correct, this commercial is essentially trying to fix a problem does not exist.
I’ve seen other 5 Hour Energy commercials that focus on the fact that it gets you over “that 2 o’clock feeling,” and that there’s no crash, etc.  Those all make sense, and work to fix something that is a problem that many people have.  This commercial in particular just seems to dramatize something that I’ve never heard people complain about, and ends up seeming comical rather than persuasive. 

Movie Posters

This week I'm going to talk about the rhetoric of a couple of movie posters, because I'm in a movie mood right now.

The first one is the poster for Jackass: The Movie, since I'm also in a Jackass mood!

First of all, what a fun picture!  A bunch of guys crammed into an over-sized shopping cart racing down a hill being followed by a huge explosion.  This poster is basically promising fans that the movie will be a bigger, better version of the television show.  The shopping cart does this because anyone who watched the show knows they often ride around in them.  In the poster, they are literally in a bigger and better shopping cart than a real one.  Next, the explosion is huge, and bigger than anything they would have been able to do with the show, so once again, they are making promises of new and more exciting stunts.  It also has the recognizable "jackass" in all white written at the bottom, but written in red over top it says "with stuff you'd never see on t.v." once again convincing the fans that if you like the television show, you'll love the movie.  I think this was important for the movie because I'm sure there were doubt that the show wouldn't work out in a movie format because it's comprised of short clips, which you may not expect to work for 90 minutes or so.  Overall, I think this poster does a great job in what it wants to express about the movie; it is just like the show, but with more exciting and crazy stunts, which is just what fans would want to see.

Poster #2: Valentine's Day

I haven't seen this movie, because I'm not particularly a fan of romantic comedies, but that's beside the point.  The main focus of this movie poster is the celebrities.  You look at it and see a heart filled with faces, so immediately the target audience (mainly women) is drawn in.  Upon further inspection, we see the words "From the director of Pretty Woman comes a day in the life of love."  The entire poster is focused on boosting the recognizable names.  Pretty Woman is an extremely well known romantic movie, so the poster tries to promise that this movie will be just as good as that one because it's the same director!  Then you look closer at the faces in the heart and realize that they are all extremely well-known and young faces in Hollywood.  You would be hard pressed to find someone that would not recognize at least one face in that group.  By doing this the poster is basically saying "Look at all the famous people we got to be in our movie, it MUST be good!"  All you really know about the movie is that it is about love, and it has a whole bunch of famous actors and actresses, but I think it works to get the target audience interested in the movie.

These movie posters are extremely different from one another, but both work for their different purposes.  The Jackass poster promises its fans that there will be more action than there was in the t.v. show, and therefore way more fun.  The Valentine's Day poster was released on Valentine's day, so many people were already looking for a romantic movie, and this poster claims to be the best by promoting all of the famous stars that it has. 

Ikea "Save The Lamp" Ad

So while perusing the internet for this week's ad to analyze, I came upon this gem from Ikea:

This is quite possibly my new favorite commercial ever... Well, probably second after the Darth Vader commercial.  Anyway, this commercial first manipulates our emotions by personifying the lamp then bringing us back to reality with humor.

The majority of the commercial is spent making the viewer connect to this old lamp.  We first see this lamp carried out of a house and put next to the trash.  The shot is very dark, it's windy out, and there's slow, sad music playing.  The commercial uses commonplaces such as windy, rainy nights to draw on our emotions.  We've all seen a movie scene where a character is left by themselves in the rain and forced to fend for themselves.  They also had the woman literally put the lamp out in the trash, which we easily equate to being rejected or broken up with by a partner.  They even show the woman in her house enjoying herself with her new lamp while the old one sits in the rain.  We relate these images and situations to being sad, but only because we connect them to our emotions and interactions with other people.  We imagine ourselves being thrown away, and left for another, better version of ourselves.  Because of this, we attach our own emotions to this lamp, and feel bad for it

Then a man walks into the shot, and suddenly the music stops.  Then he says "Many of you feel bad for this lamp.  That is because you're crazy!  It has no feelings, and the new one is much better."  Then the commercial ends with Ikea's logo and "unboring" written underneath it.  The first time I watched this I was shocked.  That was the last thing I expected to happen, and it really caught my attention, I had to watch the end again, and that is exactly what Ikea was going for.  In a couple of seconds they bring us back to reality and remind us that no matter how many personal emotions you attach to a lamp, or any other inanimate object for that matter, it is still simply an object.  It doesn't have feelings, and leaving it out in the rain because you got a new one will not make it sad.  This attempts to persuade us to go out and buy Ikea's new "unboring" items, because they're much better, and getting rid of your old things won't hurt anyone.

I think this commercial is extremely effective rhetorically because not only does it involve comedy to make its point, but there is a strong logos appeal in the fact that no matter how you perceive a lamp, it's still just a lamp.