Meagan Hamilton
Ms. Cook
ENGL 1101- 8:00-8:50
March 2, 2009
Freedom, Independence, and Love Within a Picture
An advertisement is a way of public communication to promote a product or service and to persuade people to feel a certain way about what is being advertised (Fowles 73). In the article “Advertising’s Fifteen Basic Appeals,” by Jib Fowles, the author explains how advertisements affect people by examining their emotional and physical appeals (73). Fowles continues when he states, “That’s the immediate goal of advertising: to tug at our psychological shirt sleeves and slow us down long enough for a word or two about whatever is being sold” (73). Advertisements can be found in magazines, newspapers, brochures, commercials, and even on billboards. The Chick-Fil-A cow, for example, appears on billboards near highways and local roads to attract drivers to stop at the next Chick-Fil-A they sight. The objects, people, words, colors, and many other details in an advertisement can make the viewer feel a certain way, sometimes both positive and negative. Have you seen Victoria’s Secret, Comcast, and movie trailer advertisements on television? They each appeal to different audiences and try to advance the knowledge about their products and embed their persuasive message with factual information. The most recent forms of advertisement are the moving billboards, which are located on moving vehicles, and blimps, which place advertisements on rubber inflatables and are flown thousands of feet in the air to catch people’s attention. Instead of the most recent forms of ads, I chose to read more ordinary advertisements out of a magazine. The two advertisements that I chose are both promoting the positive aspects of perfume and were both found in a Cosmopolitan magazine, so people can assume that the intended audience is older teenage girls and women. Appeals such as affiliation, referring to a relationship, autonomy, referring to independence, and escape,...