YOUR ASSIGNMENT Advertisements are designed to persuade and convince a select audience to purchase a product. You will select a commercial that aired during the 2021 Super Bowl and take a position on how the ad attempts to appeal to its target audience and to sale its message as well as how effectively the ad accomplishes its purpose. You will write a detailed analysis and interpretation of the ad. To be clear, you will address how the ad uses logos (evidence), ethos (credibility/authority), and pathos (emotion) to persuade its audience and take a position on how effective it is. You will also provide an in-text citation when you refer to your commercial. KEY CONCEPTS Rhetorical effect of images. An image can be said to have a rhetorical effect whenever it moves us emotionally or intellectually. We might identify with the image or be repelled by it; the image might evoke our sympathies, trigger our fears, or call forth a web of interconnected ideas, memories, and associations. One of photography’s purposes is to create images that “have designs on” us, that urge us to believe ideas, buy things, go places, or otherwise alter our views or behaviors. Visual literacy. When you analyze images in order to understand their persuasive power, you are developing a skill often called visual literacy. Visual literacy refers to your awareness of the importance of visual communication and your ability to interpret or make meaning out of images and graphics. The ad analysis assignment will help you enhance your visual literacy. Writing to analyze. When you write to analyze, you apply your own critical thinking to a puzzling object or data and offer your own ideas. Your goal is to raise interesting questions about the object being analyzed – questions that perhaps other viewers of the ad have not thought to ask – and then to provide tentative answers to those questions, supported by points and particulars derived from your own close examination. Synonyms for writing to analyze might be writing to interpret, clarify, or explain. Citing your Sources. ~Be sure to use MLA. Approach. When you analyze and critique a commercial you focus on the images and the text, giving them the same close attention that an art critic gives a painting or a football coach gives a game film. This close attention can be with-the-grain, noting the effectiveness of the ad's rhetorical strategies, or against the grain, discussing what is ineffective or problematic about these strategies. An analysis might point out both the strengths of and problems with the ad's rhetorical strategies. Based on your analysis, you will create a thesis and support it with several points. You will develop support for your points. This will be the “meat” (main section) of your paper – several paragraphs that develop your analysis so readers understand how you arrived at your thesis. You’ll explain your points by drawing details from the ad. Analyze.In order to analyze the ad and arrive at a position on how it attempts to persuade its viewers, carefully examine the following aspects: Whom the ad targets; its audience (the audience for the publication the ad appears in) How the ad employs ethos, pathos, and logos If the ad is effective in targeting that audience and convincing them. -How visual elements of the ad are used to appeal to values the audience considers important, and what are those values (to which the ad appeals) -Whether or not it is appropriate or worthwhile to appeal to those values What the advertiser is showing you (or possibly not showing you) Ways in which reality has been altered in order to make the image more appealing How the text of the ad relates to the message begin communicated What type of responses the ad elicits; (fear? guilt? pity?) What assumptions the creators of the ad seemed to have about the viewers of the ad. Organization. Think about the “parts” of your paper. What does your reader need to know before you launch into your thesis? What background information might your readers need? Where will you locate your thesis? What will the rest of your paper do? How will you end the paper? Perspective.Although you will include a link to the ad to your essay, you should begin your prewriting with a detailed written description of your ad composed as if your reader cannot see the ad. By taking the time to complete this important step, you will generate many observations and details about the ad that will help you analyze it. In the paper, your description of the ad should be vivid enough to paint a word picture. The reader should be able to visualize the ad without having to continually refer to it. As you present your ideas, take an objective position. The readers know you are stating what you think because you wrote the paper; therefore, avoid using I think that, I believe, I feel that, or in my opinion, simply because it’s unnecessary and can make your writing wordy. Avoid using you in your papers, unless you actually are directly addressing a specific reader, which is not the case in this assignment. Decide who it is the you represents and replace the you with a more specific, appropriate noun or noun phrase, e.g., students, teenagers,adults, etc. For example, don’t say You should try to achieve a balance in your life. Instead, say Those who work long hours should try to achieve a balance in their lives. Thesis Statement. Your thesis statement should be an analytical thesis, not a descriptive thesis.In other words, it should not state WHAT the ad is doing, but rather HOW the ad is doing what it is doing. Support from Sources. For this essay, you will NOT incorporate sources other than the commercial itself.