Family Values and the Stimulation of Purchasing, Essay Example

In the contemporary world, where profit and interest become predominant in one’s business-making, and various universal services become commodities,the art of attractingcustomer’s attention and motivating people buying desired goods and services is of demand as never before. In this regard, the ability of advertising successfully can be a pure art or a very strict science. The aim of this paper is to analyze a chosen ad in terms of its triple structure, purpose and impact on the target audience.

The chosen advertisement for this analysis is the advertisement of a new tablet RealPad by AARP. The visual aspect of the ad demonstrates a family sitting in the green of the garden in front of a table with glasses and pitcher full of lemonade. Mother and father in casual clothes are sitting in the chairs observing their little daughter dancing in a beautiful pink princess dress. Both parents are laughing and clapping in the admiration of their child and father makes video of their daughter’s dance. In terms of the verbal aspect of the ad, it states that the main benefits of the new tablet include 24/7 support, it is easier in use since there numerous tutorial videos, simpler graphics. The convenient applications make it easier to connect to the internet, take photos and make videos, send emails and play games. The main slogan of the ad is “Real Ta-da: It’s your time to connect, share and enjoy”. In terms of the outlined aspect of the ad, the main function of the ad is that it appeals to the family values of the middle-aged customers and visually demonstrates what they can achieve with the advertised product, supporting it with the verbal argument for the simplicity of use even for people who are not IT proficient and are conservative in their views.  Thus, the ad suggests what the new product can bring to one’s life and that it is quite easily achieved from technical and educative perspectives.

According to the stated above message of the ad, it appeals well to ethos, pathos and logos. In terms of ethos, the ad demonstrates a middle-aged couple smiling at the dance of their daughter. The choice of characters is very straightforward. From one perspective, it demonstrates the target audience it is aimed at – middle-aged families with kids, who are motivated by simple joys of life in a family environment. By their clothes and lack of sophistication in the interior it can be concluded that they belong to the middle class, which is the target audience of this add, and who could effort buying a tablet for $189. From another perspective, the appeal to logos is in their racial belonging. It is difficult to identify to which ethnic and racial group these characters belong to. They have dark olive skin and curly hair, but it is difficult to know for sure who they are. The main rationale for this choice of characters is in their universality and the ability to appeal to diverse ethnicities across the entire spectrum of cultures and perceptions. In this regard, the audience can associate with the characters either in terms of ethno-cultural similarities or in terms of universality of married life and family values across cultural borders. A particular feature of the ethos is that child’s face is not shown. From a psychological perspective, the main rationale for this is in making the audience pay attention to parents and associate with them. Through this association the audience can imagine themselves in the place of this couple making videos of their children; psychologically, the absence of child’s face stimulates further imagination of one’s own children (Green 47).

Regarding pathos, the main appeal is to family values and parents’ joy and pride for their children. In this regard, the audience can easily relate to the parents, and the feeling of happiness expressed on their faces. It is the simplicity of family environment and traditional girly princess dance in front of parents that appeal to audience’s perception of simple family joys. Additional emotional stimulators triggering memories of a family cozy environment include the garden settings, comfortable chairs and most of all glasses and pitcher full of lemonade. The addition of lemonade glasses appeals to the traditional perception of a family garden gathering with a glass of lemonade or soda water in 80-90s. Thus, the ad appeals to the childhood memories of the target audience; it triggers their memories of family values (Green 45).

The logic or the logos of the ad is more reflected in its verbal part. In this regard, the main rationale for the target audience to buy this product is at the stressed simplicity of its use and relatively cheap price for medium-class customers. In combination with the effect ethos and pathos had on the viewer, the logical chain of through will be the following: “This family looks really happy. My family is also like that, we have plenty of great moments. It would be great to take picture and videos. It has 24/7 support, so when I need assistance with any application, I can ring them. It is simplified in graphics, so would be easy to see and use, and it is relatively cheap.”  Consequently, the first two elements are aimed at creating a context for the logical considerations; they also assist in stating a purpose of the purchase to the potential customer (Leiss 75).

Overall the correlation between elements suits the purpose of the ad perfectly well; however, it has one fallacious appeal to logos. It argues that this product is easy in use and is suitable for the target middle-class audience without profound IT skills. The problem is that nowadays IT skills are a must on various jobs and most of the middle-aged people with families or not will be proficient in using new gadgets, and they might be way more demanding when choosing a tablet (Green 63). Another aspect of logos is that traditionalist people are really keen on using cameras or smartphones in order to take pictures or videos, so simplicity would not be enough for a logical choice of this product. However, emotional context compensates a lot for fallacious appeals to logos.

The main unstated assumptions advertisers made about their audience include that appealing to one’s personal life can make the product more sellable. In this regard, it is assumed that using universal family values can appeal almost to anyone with the target middle-class audience. Another assumption is that the target audience is exquisitely American, and thus the direction of sales is for the local, national market (Leiss 75). This statement is based on the use of images traditionally related to the American traditional family: garden picnic, glasses of lemonade, pink ballerina/princess dress of the girl. All these elements are symbolic in the context of the American traditional family and would be quite alien for the European or Asian markets, for instance.

The main rationale for the audience’s predisposition to its persuasion is because the ad appeals to the values that are crucial for this particular audience. In other words, certain groups of people are characterized by similar interest and this interest can be used in order to stimulate a certain action of this group (Leiss 72). Another reason why the audience is so perceptive is because unlike the ads that aim to target various markets and audiences and tend to be universalist in their approach, this type of ads and products are aimed at a particular audience and a particular market and they suggest what the a target audience might want or rather what society and business considers that audience to want. In this regard, a crucial factor is the environment of economic prosperity and consumerism that middle class has accepted as their reality and which advertisers use to manipulate the target audience (Green 39). Thus, the ad is persuasive because it appeals to what is important for the target audience and it is stated in a very contextual manner rather than straightforward statement that would be perceived as a compulsion or selling values.

In other words, it can be concluded that it is exactly the interrelation between the elements of the ad make it persuasive. In this regard, the logic of stimulating a purchase is contextualized by emotions about family values and what is essential for the middle class. Thus, the ad makes the audience think about the context first and only then about how the stimulated action would fit into that context. The success of such advertising largely depends on knowing the target audience, its behavioral specifics and value system, appealing to people’s feelings and emotions, can sell almost anything, but it has to be done in such a way that the audience does not see it coming and think that it was a unique personal motivation for the purchase.  That is why the balance between three elements of an ad is so important.

Works Cited

Green, J. Advertising. New York: Rosen Publishing. 2011. Print.

Leiss, W. Social Communication in Advertising: Consumption in the Mediated Marketplace. Oxon: Routledge. 2005. Print.