Persuasive Formal Oral on Advertising

What would the world be like without advertising? Popular advertisers such as Coca Cola influence the public with their creative advertisements to buy their product, Coca Cola earning up to $11 billion per year! That’s a lot of dough! Now what’s advertising? Advertisement is the communication of information paid by individuals and companies influencing the public to buy their product. Advertising is ubiquitous; it can be seen on TV, on bus stands, on internet sites and even in toilets! Advertisement uses and exploits stereotypes of muscularity and femininity to manipulate the public. By the end of this speech you most certainly will agree that advertising uses deception and misrepresentation of gender to sell their product. I will be analysing two advertisements to prove this thesis. Advertising sells the image not the product; people are manipulated by this image to buy the product so they can become this unrealistic image, this distortion of natural beauty.

The first advertisement I will be analysing is the Lynx Dark Temptation advertisement. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCZ-6y2UEfM) The techniques used to sell this product are; wit and humour, as no one can truly turn into chocolate. Sex appeal is also used as the chocolate man attracts various attractive women and as the slogan goes “as irresistible as chocolate”. Bandwagon is used to make the audience think that without lynx women will not find you irresistible. The target audience would be male teenagers and young adults, age group between 14 to late 20s. The image is simply that there is a man made out of chocolate and that women love chocolate so they can’t lay their hands off him. The connotation is that lynx will make you irresistible and all women will want you. This advertisement creatively exploits that all women look attractive and relies on the technique of sex appeal to influence men to buy this product to be able to get attractive women.

The reading path is your eye always focuses on the chocolate man and how the many women interact with him. The way the chocolate man smiles every time shows that he is very happy because of lynx and how all these women love him. The camera is always showing the lynx man in front of the women signifying that he holds power and that he attracts all women. When the man waves, he waves pointing to the lynx product, this is juxtapositioning as they are right next to him when he waves forcing the audiences eyes to the product. This advertisement relies upon a stereotype that all women love chocolate and that all women look like that, women would not look hot and sexy if they would eat chocolate always.
The second advertisement I will be analysing is David Beckham – Men’s fragrance. The techniques used in this advertisement are testimonial, as David Beckham is a famous football player. Bandwagon is used to make the target market think without this cologne you can’t get hot and attractive women. Are you cool enough? Is also used to show that you have to be cool to use this and if you don’t you are indeed a nerd. The most effective technique used is sex appeal; it draws attention to the advertisement, to the female. The connotation is that David Beckham’s Men’s fragrance will let you get beautiful and sexy women like the one in the advertisement. This advertisement relies on sex appeal to sell its product.