Saturday, April 7, 2007

Post 13 - Cool or not Kool?

Here we have an ad of a guy with one cigarette in each hand, two in his coat pocket and one right above his left ear. The guy’s body language is communicating to the audience, “look how cool I am because I have cigarettes”, which in reality the audience is thinking he is an utter fool. The ad is making fun of Kool cigarettes.



The ad uses a selection of rhetorical strategies to communicate its message across to people. One rhetorical strategy is comparison-contrast. Comparing what the observer of the ad is thinking of the guy to what the guy in the ad is thinking of him self. The words utter fool represent what the observers are thinking of the guy, and the guy represents just the opposite of the words, he thinks he is super cool.

Cigarette companies try to relay the message that if one smokes, than they are cool. For example, the real ad seriously advertising kool cigarettes shows an individual riding a bike, which state that he must be cool. Since he is cool, he must be a smoker. The ad poking fun at the kool company relays the truth about smoking, which is that if you smoke to be cool, you really are an utter fool. There is absolutely nothing cool about smoking. Smoking is an addiction that causes sickness and gives people bad breath and a series of other unwanted effects. The ones that are most vulnerable to becoming victims of cigarette ads in our culture are adolescents. Adolescents that are unaware of what the negative seriousness of smoking is, do to lack of proper knowledge.

2 comments:

Michelle Brake said...

I think this could also be categorized under illustration because it's saying how much better the guy's life is because of the cigarette. And yeah, he's actually the fool for thinking it's cool. It's definitely appealing toward our emotions, not for our health. The company's just want more money. And I agree totally that cigarettes are so disgusting and I don't know why people think they're cool.

Jordan Lopez said...

I think that this ad is hilarious! I always crack up when I am looking through a magazine how fantastic cigarette companies make their product seem. I think that using the word "fool" employs pathos because it would be upfronting and you would take it really personally if somebody called you a fool. I think it is amazing that virtually everyone knows that cigarettes are terrible for you but cigarette sales remain stable.