Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Visual Rhetoric and Argument





For my entry on visual arguments, I chose to analyze an ad campaign that ran in Germany in 2007. The campaign was for a company called "Jobsintown". There are 10 different ads that ran on the sides of machines such as ATMs, instant coffee/ice cream machines, jukeboxes, washing machines, and even airport security x-rays. The ads showed extremely realistic images of people cramped into the space of the machine working to produce whatever the machine provided. For example, the advertisement that ran on the side of the jokebox showed a man with a guitar and a microphone, and the ad on the side of the washing machine showed a woman handwashing clothes. The only words on the advertisement are "Das Leben ist zu kurz fur den falschen Job", or in English "Life's Too Short For the Wrong Job" with the company's website.




The advertisements definitely evoke a strong sense of pathos in the people who see them. In all of the ads, the person depicted looks exhausted and miserable while doing their job. People are likely to sympathize with the people in the advertisements because everyone understands being tired, especially at work. The realism of these advertisements are probably the biggest reason that they are effective. The pictures look so lifelike that viewers would probably feel pity for the worker shown on the ad even though they know that there is not actually someone inside the machines! The ability to evoke pathos in viewers is one way to tell whether or not the advertisement can be considered successful, and by that standard these ads would definitely be considered effective.

The ads would especially resonate with people who are not completely satisfied with their own jobs (this is after all the point of the campaign). Because they are so relatable, the ads do a great job at evoking emotion in onlookers and in conveying their intended message about bad jobs. They also cause people to reconsider their own jobs because of the emotion the advertisements evoke. This is very significant because this is the entire point of the ads. If the ads successfully make people reconsider their own jobs, then hopefully those people will then proceed to visit the website of the company. If those people do indeed visit the website, they will be generating traffic to the website and will hopefully use the website to find a new job. This will increase the revenue of the company, and the company will know the advertisements were effective. These advertisements actually were very effective as the company's website actually did see a dramatic increase in traffic after they were produced.

The tagline itself also does a good job contributing to the overall visual argument. This advertisement obviously relies mostly on the image of the worker in order to convey its message. However, the tagline is necessary in order to explain the purpose behind the image and to show the reasoning of the advertisement. The company decided to keep the tagline short, which was an excellent idea because it contributes to the image instead of distracting from it. In only 9 words the company is able to make the reader consider their own job, which is really impressive because it is such a simple phrase. I think the combination of the simple tagline with the realistic, extremely creative image has a significant effect. The viewer takes a lot away from only one image and 9 words. It is one of the best advertisements I have ever seen, because it is able to present a creative visual argument that makes the viewer think.



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