The ad uses the rhetorical strategies of logos, ethos and pathos to persuade the female audience to buy Dove firming products and think of Dove company, as the one making women accept their bodies.
Who do you believe is the ad’s target audience?
The target audience for the above mentioned ad is the women, as it is seen from the people depicted in the picture. Women prefer to have real curves as described in the image, therefore the image tries to talk to the audience by introducing the product called the New Dove firming that is tested on the real curves. As it is implied that each and every woman would love to have nice curves, they are the target audience for the above ad. It also targets those, who are not satisfied with their bodies and want to improve them.
Another reason for the ad to target this particular audience is because the ad has only the images of the females, rather than the males; this is a clear indication that it targets women (Drewniany & Jewler, 2008). The target audience is of the age roughly from 18 to 30, as it can be seen from the images of women, who are not very old, and look as if they all are mostly below thirty years.
How does the ad use logos to appeal to this target audience?
The use of the logos is based on facts and logical reasoning. However, in this advertisement that is mostly visual, there is not a lot of place for logos. The appeal to logos is only implied in the phrase “tested on real curves”. The phrase means that it is not just a simple advertisement of useless product, but a range of Dove products that were tested and improved to meet the expectations of the target audience. What is more, the ad implies that the products were tested on “the real curves” meaning that real women took part in the study. However, it is not mentioned how it was tested in the ad, what experiments were conducted to prove the range is working and what were the results of the findings. Therefore, the use of logos is not that efficient and evidence-based in the ad since there is not a lot of proofs that the product is effective, as it is only mentioned that it was tested.
How does the ad use pathos to appeal to this target audience?
The use of pathos appeals to the target audience in the sense that the target audiences who are the females will benefit from the product, as the women depicted in the ad do. The women in the picture are not standard skinny models, but rather women of different body types. The ad is aimed to show that these women are beautiful, even though they do not conform to the unrealistic standard of beauty the ads usually promote. Real-life women are also not all skinny and for that reason are often dissatisfied with their appearance. Women, who are the target audience of the ad, can identify with the women in the photo.
The images of happy women evoke positive response from the audience, as they can finally feel that they can be comfortable with their bodies, as the women in the picture are. However, the ad primarily implies that Dove product will help the women to feel even better about their bodies. The use of pathos effectively addresses the main purposes of the ad by helping the audience to identify with the females in the picture and promote the product to make women feel even better about their bodies.
How does the ad use ethos to appeal to this target audience?
The ad uses ethos to appeal to the target audience, because it contains images of very beautiful women of different body types, races and age, who are shown to be happy with their appearance. These women serve as authorities to prove that the product is good, because they all are happy using it and it is suitable for every woman. The potential target audience will therefore assume that the women in the ad have been subjected to the use of the Dove beauty product being advertised. For this reason, most of the women will prefer the beauty product, as they trust the models that remind the women they meet in everyday life and the women they can trust. The image in the ad manifests the beauty of every lady, and this ideas appeal to the audience, as it seems trustworthy.
The ethos is very successful in this ad and in Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty, as it makes the company more popular among consumers and offers effective framework in comparison to Dove’s previous campaigns that were full of unrealistic beauty models.
What fallacies does this ad contain?
Another fallacy used in the ad is the indication that the ad has been tested on real curves; the ad does not have any single proof to verify that it has been tested on real curves. Another issue that can raise eyebrows is the fact that no one actually knows whether those women on the ad have actually used the product, the image could have been taken from a sample of very beautiful women who have not actually used the product. This is aimed at just attracting the customers by giving them a notion in the mind that the users of the product are actually beautiful. This can be a form of fallacy in the advertisement.
All in all, despite the controversies and fallacies, the rhetoric strategies employed in the ad are successful in addressing the audience and being persuasive to achieve the goal of the ad.
References
Drewniany, B. L., & Jewler, A. J. (2008). Creative strategy in advertising. Boston, MA, USA: Thomson/Wadsworth.
Figure1. Advertisement on new Dove Firming. Retrieved from: http://endormedia.co.za/the-real-beauty-of-brand-continuity-dove-does-it-right/
