Vender la familia

Sell the family

Many things change as years pass by, and one of those is the industry of advertisement and how to persuade the emotions of those who will see it. During the paper we will be looking at two examples that will help us recognize some of those changes as well the difference of standards in life through the years. I will analyze the way in which pathos (emotions) and ethos of family change in ads from 1937 to 2011, showing a significant change in American attitudes towards family and the individual.

Looking to do so, I am going to compare two ads very distant in time. One of my advertisements is from 1937. It is a famous billboard in Louisville Kentucky. It shows the will of the government to raise the national morale over a huge recession in those years. The second ad is from the American Family Insurance launched in 2011 to encourage Americans to the American dream and the Olympics being held in Beijing in 2012.

Firstly, the family is one of the things that give the most stability to any human. It is “an essential goal of child welfare intervention with biological, foster, and adoptive families” (Harden 1). I believe that’s why it is a key theme on all adverts through the years.

In the first ad you can see that the main theme the car is portraying a “perfect” family to show that the American way is the best. This is like this in order to persuade you go and get a family and live like the real Americans, so that your life will be great. This is very effective as everybody wants to be loved on some certain way and a family is the best way to show that. “The family is the foundation of any individual’s ability to love and accept love” (Anonymous 1).

On the second ad we see a lot of images related to the family and this is done to make you feel like normal person who can fight for whatever you want. “It demands self-denial and rigid adherence to convention; we revolt through immediate gratification, instinct uninhibited, and liberation of the libido and the appetites” (Frank 1). Relating it to the Olympic Games, it makes you see that all American athletes are just normal people like you that went and fought for their dream. This is a great to show that with the effort you can get an outcome. All that hard work is then related to the last images when it shows the birth of kid or a woman dressed for a weeding. This is a simile made trying to enforce the importance of hard work. All of it will sum up to get an outstanding outcome.

Secondly, the emotions on adverts made a huge effect on the ads. Emotions are very important in advertisement as they make you feel something really deep in just seconds. “The generation of emotion is crucial for successful marketing” (Brown 1). In my opinion this is one of the key factors of a good ad, and therefore I am going to analyze them on both ads as they appeal to emotions somehow.

On the first advertisement, I believe it appeals to emotion as it tries to make you see that the best way to live is the American way. It appeals to you wanting to live as an American living the American dream. You directly see a family with two kids and a dog, all with smiley faces appealing to be having a good time. This is the standard of a happy and united family where everything seems perfect. This ad makes you see that in seconds and the big letters catches your attention, which leads you to actually believe in what you are seeing. "There is no way as the American way" & "World's highest standard of living" are two great statements closely related to the theme. However the ad tries to enforce the American way of living as the best one, I feel that looking at the context we can consider that at the time poverty was a very serious problem and doesn’t really look like reality. The people you can see below the image don’t look happy at all and this is because of what I just stated. The people have just lost their homes in the flood, can’t afford to buy a car and enjoy the time with their family as they are struggling.

The willingness of raising the morale of the population by the government made them do this ad. Nationalism and believing that your country is on a good path is very important for the citizens to feel happy and comfortable with the situation at home, even if it’s not very pleasant. This is a key point where the government always try to work on. We can see in this ad that it is really effective as on a hard moment as a recession is very important to keep the population on good mood. Therefore, this ad really catches the attention of the viewers and make them still believe in their country. They get even a bigger impact with the statements they make about the American dream. They make the significance of this nationalism

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