English Composition—Ad Analysis
Introduction
Marketing and advertising can be a very lucrative endeavor both for marketers and advertisers, and the people who seek these people’s expertise. The ideal situation in the end would almost always be a win-win situation for these two groups. The thing for ads and advertisements is that no two ads shall and can never be the same. And then again, it is the unique differences between ads for a certain product that can make the product of one manufacturing company from the other, which brings us to the topic of ad analysis. In the field of marketing and advertising, there will always be ads that are more appealing and attractive and in the same manner, there will always be ads that are less. This paper will focus on the comparison of advertisements of Two Sports Utility Vehicles or SUV. One SUV is from General Motors (Chevrolet Colorado) and the other is from Ford (Ford Everest). We will scrutinize various aspects of each and based on the selected factors, we will rule which among the two could drive more people into buying that product—advertisements main reason for existence.
This is a billboard ad of Chevrolet’s latest SUV, the Chevrolet Colorado. We can tell that the people behind this advertisement wanted the audience to think that this car is built for style and practicality, one of the main considerations that mainstream car users and enthusiasts consider these days, before buying a brand new car. Surely, GM wanted to have a larger share of the market. From this ad alone, we can tell that GM wanted to associate its Chevrolet Colorado with these two values.
The car can be for everyone but judging from the ambiance and the background environment surrounding the car in the picture, it seems that the target audience is the middle, higher, and elite members of society. This assumption can be supported by the presence of symbolic and rhetorical objects in the set. The carpet, for example, may be interpreted as a sign of prestige, gorgeousness, fame, and luxury. We do not usually see members of the lower class involve themselves with red carpets. Aside from the red carpet, the presence of devices used in photography such as the lights which gives the car its extraordinary shine and glow kind of says the same thing.
The ad is actually simple in itself. It is not too wordy, although most ads today use one liner instead of two separate sentences to convey their values and tease the audience, and it is not too busy either. All it has is the car, which is the main focus of attention, and three other visual entities namely the lights, the carpet, and the background. The ad also made a good way of spreading the word that indirectly says that this car is for those who could afford it only, simply because of the starting price posted underneath the two-liner message. It is not, in any way, misleading nor confusing for any audience in his normal state of mind. When it comes to rhetorical analysis, we can say that the advertisement focuses more on the credibility (ethos) and logicality (logos) of persuasion rather than on emotions. You can tell this by looking at the bluntness or plainness of the two-liner text. It is so blunt and plain that it kind of lacks emotion.
Elegance is the term that we can use to perfectly describe this ad. The use of the two-liner statement may somewhat be questionable, considering the norms of marketing and advertising we have today but this ad still shows promise, nonetheless.
Ford Everest Advertisement
This is one of the billboard and magazine ads that Ford has publicized to advertise the release of the New Ford Everest. Using the organization of the words in the ad as the basis, we could somehow determine that the value that this ad appeals is liberalism. Although the word “courage” was kind of used as the hook in this ad, liberalism remains to be the strongest value.
The target audience of this ad is the people who love to travel. We can further specify the nature of the audience by saying that they are travelers who are out of the ordinary—travelers who do not get contented of traveling in the streets and road-tripping with friends and buddies. These travelers want to travel to mountains and places that are unusually harder to reach. This can be evidenced by the background behind the car. It shows a tough, mountainous terrain that are usually traversed only be vehicles with strong engines and a 4 wheel capability. Someone with a weak engine, suspension, body, and basically mediocre features would usually not dare to travel in that kind of terrain. This was actually a symbol that they used in expressing their rhetoric. They wanted the audience to feel assured that there is no reason for them not to love the New Ford Everest because it is built to last and survive the direst of terrains.
The focus of this ad in terms of its rhetoric is pathos or the emotions. Although it is not literally emotionally, the ad conveys values such as courage and liberalism—words that invoke emotions. Pathos, unfortunately, is not a very commendable rhetorical device to be used in car advertising because people do not really buy cars to satisfy their emotions. People are after the more credible and logical means of transportation which unfortunately for Ford, GM, was able to successfully convey.
This ad is far more complex than the ad about Chevrolet Colorado. It is far wordier, which can oftentimes be considered a bad thing, considering the poor attention span of people nowadays. But definitely, the graphical features of the ad tell a lot more words, albeit the message it tries to convey is not clear.
Conclusion and Thesis Statement
After analyzing various features of two ads from two of the top ten SUV manufacturers in the automobile industry, we have come to conclude that the one which can really do its job as an advertisement—to persuade many audiences to go into sales outlets and acquire one unit of the SUV, is the ad for GM Colorado. It has the perfect mix of words, pictures, and other elements that makes it stand out against the New Ford Everest’s ad. The New Ford Everest’s Ads appeals more to the audience’s emotions. While it may not be a bad idea to do so, car buyers these days are after the more logical and credible choices, which the ad for Chevrolet Colorado clearly targeted.
Works Cited
Blitz, T. "Features of the New Chevy Colorado." (2012).
Martin, A. "The Latest Trends in Advertising." Oxford University Press (2009).
Yuri, U. "The New Ford Everest: Is it really built for strength?" Top Gear (2012).
