Rhetorical Strategies in Advertising: The Rise and Fall Pattern

Abstract

Throughout the decades, there have been changes in persuasive strategies used by advertisers. A study was carried out on 500 advertising slogans dating from the late 19 th century till the early 21 st century, spanning a period of over a hundred years. The slogans were selected from 13 multinational and established companies and arranged according to the year they were created. The companies selected were ones that existed from the late 1800s and which still exist today. A cross-section of the slogans were analysed qualitatively for the presence of rhetorical figures and various persuasive strategies in a pilot study. The trend of the use of rhetorical figures and communicative and stylistic strategies used throughout this period was also calculated using quantitative analysis. The findings reveal a rise and fall pattern throughout the decades of both rhetorical figures and communicative and stylistic strategies used in advertising slogans. The pattern is also present in the layering of the rhetorical figures throughout the decades. Therefore the study has discovered the presence of a cyclical continuum that involves the selection of certain rhetorical figures and persuasive strategies in a particular period but not in others.

Rhetorical Culture and Brand Slogan: An Analysis of the Slogans of all Commercial Banks from Nepal

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Chinese Clothing Brands Use Social Media to Frame Young Female’s Attitudes Towards Body Image

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“…Hierarchy or social structure is associated with using symbols in a way that makes the audience believe that a person is climbing the ladder of social status from lower to higher. Perfection is associated with using visual figures that makes the audience strive to belong to the elite (Christopher, 2013).…”

“…But within a visual rhetorical context, it is created through using an image of an established figure that is recognizable by the audience as being special or unique in a way or another. Finally, framing refers to how advertisers mold their visual messages and advertisements to make the audience see the world from a different perspective (Christopher, 2013). In the following section I will apply these strategies to analyze how visual figures in two ads lead to identification and long consumerism.…”

“…In order to do develop the aforementioned framework, I will adopt Burke's (1969) notion of identification which has been originally used in analyzing verbal rhetoric. In verbal rhetoric/advertisement formula, identification refers to the association between the advertised product/service and the advertisement target audience through naming, framing, symbol use, perfection and negativity principles, and social hierarchy (Christopher, 2013). Besides, identification has another dimension related to the very basics of modern advertisement theory which are: attracting attention, arousing pleasure, and creating recallable links between the visual elements together in an advertisement on the one hand, and between that advertisement and the audience on the other hand.…”