Moms Against Drunk Driving Persuasive Speech

Advertisements can be found all over the city no matter where you look. They can be presented by television commercials, print ads on billboards, Internet websites, and even the radio. The reasoning behind these ads is to persuade and argue why their product is more important than others. Sometimes these arguments can be used to persuade certain ideas that people think are right or wrong, and cause an argument socially, politically, or even religiously. Imagine this, it’s 1 a.m. and rearing to the end of the night with you and your friends. You call for a ride home, which shows up within 20 minutes and give them the address to drop you off. The driver of your car is sober, however the driver of the car that is going to crash into you is not. In a split second, your car is t-boned after an intoxicated man speeds right through a red light at an intersection. His blood alcohol concentration was well over the legal limit but he will appear to have only minor injuries. Your best friends are pronounced dead at the scene, and for you, well you will be handicapped the rest of you life never being able to walk again. Incidents like this happen way too often and are putting more and more lives in danger everyday. According to an advertisement that was painted on handicapped parking stalls at a local high school by Mothers Against Drunk Driving in 2000, “Every 48 seconds, a drunk driver makes another person eligible to park here.” This advertisement uses ethos, logos, and pathos to deliver a strict message of why drunk driving is so dangerous, whether you are drunk or sober. The advertisement is targeted towards every type of audience but most importantly would effect those on the road, whether driving or just passengers of cars. Basically, if you have ever been in a car on the road you could have potentially been injured from a drunk driver. The ad was physically painted on a handicapped-parking stall and then went out to become a print in a magazine, so for those who first see the ad in person I would assume they are probably a little shaken up because they could immediately think “I could be next”. The advertisement is obviously socially motivated because it’s trying to persuade the decisions you are going to make when you go out. I believe it is extremely effective when appealing to a person’s emotions, or pathos, especially those who have been impacted by drunk driving sometime in their lives. Drunk driving incidents have played an emotional toll on those who have been affected by them whether you were injured or not, so by seeing an advertisement that relates to the situation it is going to make you concerned. The advertisement has a strong emotional appeal because of the fact that it gets you emotionally involved with the situation, the situation being that you may be the next person who is threatened by a drunk driver even though you haven’t done anything wrong. Once you see the ad, it makes you ponder how many times this could have already happened to you and you just got lucky enough not to be part of the accident. Seeing that it happens every 48 seconds is also astounding, because it makes you wonder that if something like this happens so …show more content…
Personally, I think this campaign nailed it when it comes down to advertising the situation of drunk driving and was very successful. Mothers Against Drunk Driving used a different approach towards the topic than most other advertisements do which I believe is one of the reasons this ad is so effective. It not only tells about the harms of drunk driving, but it physically shows the situation that could change your life around if you are involved in it. The advertisements use of pathos makes it emotional for not only those who actually partake in drunk driving, but even the people who are just using the road. It uses a very logical fact to engage the audience of the time frame it takes to be struck by a drunk driver. By using pathos and engaging the audience in the disasters of this issue, it accepts the support from its sponsor and fastens the rhetoric