Everyday, no matter where you look, you are constantly bombarded by advertisements, some as obvious and large as a billboard, others as discreet as a logo on a shirt. There have been many memorable advertisements over the years, yet only a small portion has become a part of our cultural history, and even a smaller fraction has changed history. On January 22, 1984, during Super Bowl XVIII, Apple Computers introduced a mysterious TV ad. An odd aspect of this commercial is that Apple does not even feature the Macintosh, the exact product it is trying to sell. So the question is, how did Apple manage to not only garner loads of attention towards its product, but also to get people to buy the Macintosh? The answer is through a strong emotional appeal, used almost unethically, to persuade the consumer to buy a product by linking it to a current, extremely dramatic historical event.
An appeal to pathos is a very effective method to persuade consumers, but it becomes unethical when the ad is no longer simply making promises it cant keep. These promises include false beliefs that the product can do something that it really cannot (like Old Spice commercials making men more masculine and desirable). The advertisers become unethical when they begin linking products to tragic events and, in essence, piggy-backing on the emotional reaction to those events. We already know that companies lie to us, but how can they take the loss of lives in vain? And what do you think about these ads?
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