The previous post was concerned with commercials of the 1950s & 60s and how meaning is created through the representation of the commercial. This post deals with contemporary commercials and the concepts of persuasion and rhetoric that already have been the concern of ancient philosopher such as Aristotle, Plato and Socrates. The two authors Simons and Sonesson be looked at to get a better understanding of the concepts and how they are applied. Later, I will give the example of the detergent brand Ariel in order to make my statements more coherent.

Persuasion can be considered to be the ‘art’ of convincing others of ones own opinion, to alter their ways of thinking. Linguistics are very important in the practice of persuasion. Only by using the right words and sentence structures, a persuasion works. Persuaders learn their practice by putting themselves into the position of the other. Simons (2001) puts persuasion into comparison with Inducement and Coercion (Simons, 2001, p. 8), in order to get a better understanding of the different nuances. Opposed to Inducement and Coercion, which are manifested in negotiation and extortion, Persuasion is softer and gives the person to be persuaded the illusion of having made that choice themselves. In the study of persuasion, social scientists focus sign the behaviour of the participants of a study and analysing their judgement (p. 15).  Persuasion is utterly important for marketing, as the consumer has be convinced to buy a certain product. Especially in our society today, the struggle of brands to market their products is immense and the pressure to compete on the market is high.

Without rhetoric, persuasion would not be possible. The ancient Greeks, such as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle already wrote on rhetorics and called it the art of persuasion. The opinions on rhetoric differ in the texts the philosophers. While Socrates and Plato look upon it in a negative way and call it corrupt (p. 3). Aristotle on the other hand is in favour of rhetorics and claims it to entail the ability of “giving effectiveness to truth” (p. 4). According to Sonesson, rhetoric consists of four parts (Sonesson, 2013, p. 8). The first is called inventio and can be refers to the topic that will be the matter of discussion (p. 9). The second Sonesson calls disposito. Here, the argumentation are being put in a coherent order (p. 9). The last two, eluctio and actio are being put together because of their interconnectedness. In this part, the arguments are being transformed and stylistically perfected. Rhetoric for Sonesson is does not only concern with the creator of a message. The mainly the creator, but also the receiver is the focus of rhetorics. The creator has to send a coherent and clear message. On the other hand, the receiver has to have a certain ability of understanding of the matter that is being discussed. While hermeneutics concentrates on the receiver as the main focus, semiotics puts the importance to the resources that are being discussed.

The commercial of the detergent brand Ariel from 2015, is set in a small town where a street festival is being organised. In the beginning one can read that this will be an experiment by the detergent brand. Next, two white sheet are being put on the ground on which later, the street festival will take place. people walking, dancing and spilling beverages on the sheets is the next sequence. After the festival is over, the a shot of the two dirty sheets is being shown, followed by one being washed in a machine with advertised detergent. The sheet comes out being as clean as it has before being stepped and spilled, followed by it being compared to the second, still unwashed sheet. The commercial is being wrapped up by the the brand being shown once again with the writing “excellent stain removal with the first wash” (Werbung Live, 2015). The detergent is advertised as very being very strong and as sufficient in getting rid of persistent stains with only washing the laundry once. The dimensions are taken out of proportion and the result is exaggerated. Ariel as the creator of the message is dependent on the ability of the consumers to understand the message and at the same time being convinced that the product is better than its competitors. What is especially interesting to see is that rhetoric and persuasion also works without the use of speech, as the whole advertisement only works with visuals and text.

References