Critical Analysis Of An Advertisement Essay Samples

Many products all over the world find their way to the market but end up remaining on the shelves as the public is not well informed about their existence. As a result firms have found it useful to use commercial advertisements to campaign for their products. Market agents use both print and online advertisements to create awareness to the people about their products. This paper focuses on the commercial advertisement of skin whitening creams; the specific advertisement is the L’oreal Paris whitening cream (www.loreal.com) skin whitening Aishawarya Rai. This advertisement is selected because it is based on a controversial aspect among the societies all over the world. Some people are of the opinion that light skinned people are of a superior nature to their counterparts.
In this advertisement there are a range of products from lotions to creams and in bold letters are the words “WHITE PERFECT” a complete skin whitening range. The descriptions of what the products can do; regulates skin darkening process for smooth and fair skin. It further states that the products eliminate dark dead skin cells and reduce production of melanin the skin darkening molecules. There is a picture of a lady whose skin appears to be fair and smooth from it one can depict that the target market or audience for this product is the female population.
In this paper our main focus is to critically analyze the fallacies that can be drawn from the chosen advertisement. The three major fallacies that capture ones attention are the fallacy of hasty generalization, appeal to ignorance and the fallacy of “ad populum”. The advertisement states that the products being advertised “regulate skin darkening process” that is they block production of melanin. This cannot be entirely true as not all melanin production can be stopped by a mere skin whitening product. It gives the wrong assumption about what the product can do to a whole population based on the outcomes of a hypothetical or false sample used. This is a good example of the fallacy of hasty generalization.
Secondly we are able to note the “ad populum” fallacy this is usually used to manipulate the desires of most people. From the advertisement it shows the products are meant for skin whitening. This will basically capture the attention of people who have developed the notion that light skinned people are superior to other or are more beautiful and sophisticated. This will mostly appeal to the dark skinned persons both male and female who struggle to fit in with their white counterparts in the society. Finally we can also see that the appeal to ignorance fallacy has been incorporated in the advertisement. Since the marketers have done their research and realized what will appeal to the people they include have included words such as eliminates dark, dead skin and melanin block. The audience is probably not interested in knowing if it’s a true or false claim.
We could therefore conclude that the society is still vulnerable to accepting fallacious advertisements.