Steve Harvey's Commercial 'T-Mobile Drop The Balls'

Improved Essays
The T-Mobile "Drop The Balls" Super Bowl Ad made its appearance on television during Super Bowl 50. In this commercial, the cell phone company T-Mobile is advertising their cell phone service. This commercial is only 30 seconds long which didn’t give much time for the advertisement to persuade the audience. The audience targeted was anyone who has a cell phone, pays for a cell phone plan, or is a Verizon customer. In this commercial, the primary appeal the producers used was pathos. The other two appeals—ethos and logos—were used in this advertisement as well, but they were more of a secondary persuasion method. The recent event that influenced the commercial was the mistake that was made at the Miss Universe pageant. The producers of this …show more content…
In order to gain credibility with the audience, T-Mobile used a celebrity figure. Most people know Steve Harvey as a highly successful comedian who has hosted multiple TV shows. His impressive background even further convinces the audience to believe the argument that the commercial is making. Even though Steve Harvey was also used as a form of humor, he is still someone who can gain credibility with the audience. When you have a celebrity promoting any product people tend to be more persuaded to buy the product. In today’s culture, most people think if a celebrity trusts a product or service, then they should too. And this is exactly what T-Mobile accomplished with their commercial.
Logos was the other secondary rhetorical device used in this commercial. The producers have Steve Harvey state facts about T-Mobile’s service. He states, “Look, those were last year’s numbers. It says right here, on the card, T-Mobile doubled its LTE coverage in the last year. And with more LTE towers than Verizon, T-Mobile reaches pretty much everyone they do.” It’s difficult for an audience to argue with simple facts. These facts got the audience to start comparing their current cell service to what they had just been told. By stating these facts, T-Mobile has successfully used logic to persuade the
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The set of the commercial is a copy of how Verizon’s commercial sets have been over the last few months. The producers wanted to trick the audience in the beginning of the commercial into thinking this was a Verizon commercial. Then they reveal that it’s actually a T-Mobile commercial and this grabs the audience’s attention. By tricking the audience, this peaks their curiosity and keeps them watching. The rest of the set was particularly plain and simple. There were basically no elements that could have distracted the audience. This kept the audience’s attention on Steve Harvey and the information he was telling

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