Advertises' Strategies For Persuasion And Naming The Product

By Author: Apple
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People are culturally conditioned to recognize and respect certain argumentative forms and to accept certain forms of evidence. Advertisers can exploit this training by couching their claims in forms of argument and evidence their audience is inclined to trust. Thus, for example, instead of simply urging you to use our product, we might adopt the language of social science research and claim that "four out of five professors surveyed recommended that you read this book." We are hoping, of course, that our use of social scientific language will lull you into uncritical acceptance of the claim. The four professors in question are close friends who recommended it after we bought them an expensive dinner. Because you might be suspicious if we said that 100 percent of those surveyed supported one side, we didn't pressure the fifth professor. If she had endorsed the book, we would have found a hostile sixth professor, ensuring GHD IV MK4 Kiss that the claim would be phrased in a familiar manner. We used exactly five, but implied that "four out of every five" professors ...
... in a large-scale survey recommended our book. Similarly, in visual ads we might show glamorous, wise media moguls holding the book, in the hope that potential consumers would assume a necessary connection between the juxtaposed images.

Content analysis of 2,000 print ads from ten major magazines from 1900 to 1980, however, found that the informational content of ads has been decreasing. Ads have become more focused and present a more limited amount of information more dramatically than they did in the past.6
In this section, we will examine some of the ways in which advertisers use claims and evidence to prompt us to make the desired inferences about the product, its competitors, and its promises.

The name of a product may be misleading. Butterball turkeys, for example, contain no butter. Similarly, McDonald's Quarter Pounder, as served, does not weigh a quarter of a pound. McDonald's ads now reveal that the meat weighed a quarter of a pound be?fore it was cooked. This disclosure appeared only after consumer groups protested that the name was misleading.

Best Western is the name of a motel chain. By what criterion or standard are these motels the best? Who says so? Easy-Off is an oven cleaner. The name implies that the product makes cleaning your oven easy. The ads carry through this theme: "Don't put it off, use Easy-Off. Easy-Off makes oven cleaning easier." Easier than what? Some other product? If so, which one? Who found that Easy-Off made the job easier? When? Where? Or is it easier than using no oven cleaner at all? The ad has not disclosed the criteria for assessing its claim. If the claim means that it is easier to clean your oven using this cleaner than using no cleaner at all, then GHD Pretty In Pink it is a weak claim. But if it means that cleaning with Easy-Off is easier than cleaning with other products, then the claim is considerably stronger, and the burden of proof on the advertiser is correspondingly heavier. Without specifics, we must assume only the weaker claim. Of course, that is not what the advertisers hope we will do. They hope we will interpret this ad as a statement from some unseen authority about the comparative efficiency of Easy-Off.