Rhetorical Analysis Of 13quit Advertising

Improved Essays
Everyone is familiar with the dreaded feeling of losing someone. An advertisement for the website 13Quit which aired on television in 2008 plays directly from this ubiquitously felt emotion. 13Quit is a website created to assist people in quitting smoking cigarettes. This video received a lot of publicity when it first aired because the content of the video affected the viewers so greatly. Now available on YouTube, people continue to watch the sad story of the little boy lost without his mother. The profound emotional appeal presented in the commercial is the reason that it received the attention that it did. This video is rhetorically effective because it uses sympathetic music, imagery, and emotional appeals in order to convince smokers to …show more content…
They want their audience to believe that, unless they quit smoking, they run the risk of terminal illness and leaving their child alone. When the narrator speaks directly to the audience at the end of the commercial he says, “If this is how your child feels after losing you for a minute, just imagine if they lost you for life” (YouTube). The purpose of this is to cause the viewers to think about the health and safety of their children and to possibly guilt them into breaking their bad habit. In the beginning of the commercial, a young boy is walking through a train station with his mother. The writers of this commercial included the young boy for the sole purpose of wanting the audience to see him and instantly feel sympathetic towards him. Children generally evoke a feeling of compassion in people, and 13Quit uses this to elicit a strong emotional response from their viewers pushing them to …show more content…
It sets the mood for the video and is intended to heighten the feelings of pity in the viewer. Another detail about the commercial that enhances the mood is the scenery. The setting of the commercial is in a busy train station with dark and gloomy lighting. This creates a dreary atmosphere, which only increases the provocative power of the already emotionally tolling video. The sad music and colorless scenery only make the commercial more affective. This commercial focuses mainly on viewer’s emotions, however it also contains some logical reasoning. At the end of the video, the music stops, and the camera focuses on a sign that says “13Quit” with their website right below it. This is meant to be the moment that the audience realizes that their smoking habits can have negative consequences, and that they should visit 13Quit’s website to get

Related Documents

  • Decent Essays

    This ad focus so much on pathos that most viewers cannot contain their emotions when viewing the video, especially when the father realize that his daughter knew about the other side of his life. The side where he is struggling to make end met and to send her to school. It’s compared the happy father while he is with his kid versus the emotional struggle he has to deal with when he knew that he cannot make end meet; his frustration when he cannot get a stable job to provide for his children. He upset because he has to pretend to be a successful businessman while in fact he's begging recruiter to hire him and barely scraping by doing menial and temporary jobs. He exhausts himself working more hours or more physically challenging jobs than…

    • 174 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Superior Essays

    At this part of the commercial the puppy becomes the center of attention in the audiences mind because it reminds them of their own pets in their homes. With the puppy reminding the audience of their own pets, it establishes pathos because they are relating to events that occur in their lives. Emotions in the audience come from when they see the puppy, when thee mood of the music changes in the background, and when the dog is showing different expressions and body language. In the beginning of the commercial the music starts out cheerful because the dog is running around befriending the horse. Towards the middle, the music gets sad, the puppy starts to whine and it is…

    • 1316 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Typically, a viewer’s emotions lead them to act upon things, such as donating to a cause that they feel sympathy towards. The commercial purposefully takes note of the emotional toll that it will have on its viewers. The pathos contained in this ad effectively trigger a viewer’s emotions leading them to fulfill the purpose of the…

    • 912 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    This commercial started out with a little girl pulling pedals off of a flower while counting to ten. Then the little girl looked up and the camera zooms in on her eye until the screen goes black and the camera then counts down from ten and you hear and see the sound and vision of an atomic bomb blowing up. After that it moves to President Johnson’s voice, high over the image, saying, “These are the stakes—to make a world in which all of God’s children can live, or go into the dark. We must either lover each other or we must die.”…

    • 1304 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Mophie also tries to aim its advertising to teens because then in the future, these teens will likely develop a loyalty to their brand. Then these teens will buy their products without any question even if the product is not good. Furthermore, in "Can 't Buy My Love," Jean Kilbourne says, “Most little children can 't tell the difference between the shows and the commercials.” This statement explains that advertisers present their commercials with high quality visual effect skits to aim them at kids. These kids do not even know what they are seeing, and when they go to the store and see the same product that they saw on some commercial, these kids will likely buy that product.…

    • 1504 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “Life isn’t about finding your limits. It’s about realizing you have none.” In this commercial it uses ethos, pathos,and logos because it's trying to prove the audience that anyone can achieve anything in the future and there are no limits, making them feel motivated. Also its convincing people to “just do it” when they want to try or do something. This commercial is about the narrator talking through the commercial saying what each person will do in the future or what they'll achieve.…

    • 556 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Once every four years, many of the standard television advertisements are replaced with something much worse: political campaign ads. There are many different types of campaign ads. Among them are characters ads, which serve to establish the good character of a candidate, bandwagon ads, which serve to convince the public that a candidate is best choice because many other people are voting for them, and evidence ads, that use facts to convince the public that a candidate is the best choice for office. There is, however, one type of ad that sparks more controversy than any of the others, the attack ad. The attack ad seeks to dissuade voters from choosing a certain candidate by attacking their character or track record.…

    • 1051 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    More than 480,000 people in the United States die from tobacco use and secondhand smoke, which makes it the leading cause of preventable death in our country (American Lung Association). Anti-smoking advertisements are seen everywhere, either it be on the side of the highway or on tv commercials. The purpose of these advertisements are to persuade you to stop smoking or not to smoke, by showing you horrible graphics and facts about tobacco use, which are often ignored especially by the people that do smoke. This advertisement shows a very dark picture of a little girl blowing bubbles out of a bubble blower, but the bubbles are cigarette smoke. In the bottom right corner it also says “You smoke.…

    • 891 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Animal lovers are the most easily notable targeted audience through this commercial. The commercials main story line is a young girl loving her dog from the moment she met her to the last final hug. Every animal lover will have at one point in their life been through that same experience which makes the commercial easy for animal lovers to connect with. When you take a look at the parental aspect of the commercial it is simple to see where parents will be affected by the commercial. First off, as the commercial brings about the milestones of a child’s life you can always spot the proud parents smiling from the sidelines, strongly portraying the relationship between parents and child.…

    • 1039 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Companies know they only have thirty to sixty seconds to make an impact on their viewers, and they have to devise ways to capture the attention of the audience. For example, Geico and Direct TV both use humor to captivate America. There is no better way to make the viewers feel warmer and happier than including an adorable puppy, an attractive man, and a stately horse. Budweiser successfully produced one of the most extraordinary commercials in television history, and they won the hearts of millions of viewers on the most watched television airing of the 2014…

    • 925 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    This is so with the ad for Tipalet brand cigarettes. When the audience…

    • 1267 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    According to a research done by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an estimated 443,000 people die primary from smoking and another 8.6 million live with a serious illness caused by smoking each year. People who smoke, ignore or do not fully know and understand what smoking does to your body and social life. In the past there was a lot of money and assets involved on the tobacco industry. There was very little movement of change on not using tobacco; however, in recent years a lot of organizations are doing ads to prevent or to reduce tobacco use. These ads target mostly the youth, the use can change and have a renewed generation.…

    • 878 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    This commercial is emotional as it takes the audience through the love journey of this couple. It appeals to my emotions as I watch them smile and kiss and laugh; I feel happy for them. It is it apparent that he is in love with her as he watches her sleep and draws all the memories on the wrappers. This also affects my emotions because I want someone to be in love with me the way he is with her. At the end the video shows tears come down her face as she sees all the wrappers that he saved and she relives the memories.…

    • 1067 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Smoking Advertising Essay

    • 1450 Words
    • 6 Pages

    What this ad really anchors on to get readers attention is the use of pathos, emotional appeal. Almost any time a baby is used in an advertisement, it is in an effort to stir emotion. This ad uses the baby as a tool to grab the reader’s attention and gives something which mothers can relate with. The use of a baby to deliver the message also serves to give the ad some credibility, which is an example of ethos. Babies are seen as innocent and honest, so if a baby is saying something it must be true and commonly known.…

    • 1450 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Viewers of the advertisement would respond, “Hey, if this is going to clean up her child’s mess, it will clean up my child’s too.” Sparking an emotional connection is a major…

    • 1152 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays

Related Topics