Rhetorical Analysis of Olay AD in People Magazine

There are so many advertisements nowadays. They can be found on TVs, radios, in a magazine, on a billboard, on computers, phones, and social media. They are found almost anywhere there are human beings and there is no way to avoid them. The ads we see around are meant to target a specific kind of audience who will buy their products to help increase the company’s productivity and income. Advertisement is trusted by most well-known companies because they use techniques that are effective in persuading the audience into buying the product. Most of the techniques are connecting the product been advertised to something or someone the audience may find desirable. They also use claims that already exist to convince people to buy their products. For an ad to easily convince its audience they need to appeal to them strongly by using rhetoric. A good convincing ad has ethos, pathos, and logos to appeal to the other senses of their consumers apart from the eyes. The Olay company is known to be a beauty skincare line that ensures the skin is moisturized and blemish-free. Their ads are meant to appeal to the female population but can also appeal to other sexes. This is because most people, both males, and females, long to have good looking skin.

People Magazine is an American magazine that focuses on celebrity stories and topics that interest people. In the magazine created on September 2017, there is an ad by Olay. The Olay ad is a moisturizing body wash that attracts mostly women of all ages who seek to have moisturized skin at all times. This ad is starred by a white female model with flawless skin. The dark background used makes her stand out because white normally pop out more when placed on black. Figure 1 depicts the use of the color white on a black background as the prevailing color to emphasize the message more. Aside from using the white color they use large, capitalized fonts to articulate the text to consumers. The word “OLAY” is written in white, large fonts. Below the word “OLAY” are the words “Elevate Moisture. Enhance Skin”. Right beneath those words are the words “EXPERIENCE OLAY” which is written in a larger font compared to the words right above it. At the bottom of the page, there is “Olay Ultra Moisture Body Wash”, the name of the body wash, underneath it is the sentence “Lock-In Moisture Technology works with your skin to make it stronger, so skin holds more moisture. Visible results without a coated feel”. At the bottom left corner, there is the body wash bottle and a bath sponge next to it. The sponsor of the ad is the Olay Company and its main claim is to persuade young old women and most men who are seeking to gain moisturized skin. There are a lot of body washes that guarantee to add moisture to the skin or make the skin look better but the Olay company is assuring extra moisture if when used.

Advertisements are able to get poeple to buy a product because of the appeals they use. Most ads appeal to pathos, which is the emotional appeal of their audience, logos, the appeal to logic, and kairos, the appeal to a situation in a timely or appropriate manner. In addition to these appeals ads also use fallacies to persuade their audience. According to literarydevices.com fallacies can be defined as “a display of faulty reasoning that makes an argument invalid.” Fallacies make the product that is being sold seem more pleasant or it makes the audience feel as if they are meant to do whatever it is asking them to do or buy the product by making them think they are patriotic or by using scare tactics, nostalgia, snobbery, false authority and many more. Stuart Hirschberg states, “In the Rhetoric of Advertising”, “It can encourage the audience to discover meanings and to correlate feelings and attributes that the advertiser wishes the product to represent in ways that allow these needs and desires to become attached to specific products”. Hirshberg makes us understand that advertisements that we see make us believe more than they are truly about. The Olay moisturizing body wash ad is effective because it relies on the use of a flawless looking model on a dark background, specific word choice, and color to appeal to ethos, pathos, logos, fallacies, and color.

Ethos is the appeal to the credibility of the ad. The ad is found in the People magazine which is said to be the most read magazine by Americans. It mostly covers news of celebrities and other human interest topics. This magazine mostly appeals to 71% of women with a median age of 49 and 29% of men. The olay body wash is perfect where it has been placed because according to the National Institute on Aging “many older people suffer from dry spots on their skin, often on their lower legs, elbows, and lower arms”. As older people look through the magazine and see the ad they would think that could be a possible solution to their problem and purchase it. There are many other advertisements in this magazine that may interest the people who may read it like a wrinkle fade cream, makeup to cover wrinkles completely, a few of them are hair products, clothing brands and many more. The contents of the magazine and the ads portrayed in them make one think that the audience of the magazine cares about their appearance and the trendy stuff in the world. These people would like to look good and would not like to have rough, scaly skin. The Olay Company being a skincare line in America that has made its main goal to be providing moisture and the necessary oil for the skin while still looking good. Olay through the ad and the magazine placed in is able to appeal to its demographic goal.

The model on the picture, the colors used in the ad, the font size and color can appeal to the audience or consumer’s emotion. The Olay ad is meant to stand out from other advertisements and from the magazine’s content. This is accomplished by placing the picture of a white model on a dark background. This creates a contrast between the black and the white. Aside from the model being on the dark background, she is also smiling and looks happy with the skin she got. A person looking at this would think that they too would be happy or satisfied when they achieve a moisturized, and good looking skin. Figure 2 is also an ad for the olay company, but this ad is not appealing to the audience’s emotions as strongly as the first ad did. The smiling model that we see in figure 1, that is the first ad, is not found in the second ad, figure 2. This makes it difficult for the viewer or consumer to relate to the ad. The image brings out the feminity of the reader because looking at someone with perfectly good skin and thinking that could probably be you once you use the product not only encourages you but forcibly urges a person to get it. The colors used in the ad makes it seem simple and calm to look at. The white, large font used appears clearly in the background making it easier to read. The colors of the bottle are also easily seen on the black background. The contrast helps to capture the attention of the consumer. The model naturally elicits a response to the women who read the article. The Olay company not only do this to attract consumers, but they also use word choice cleverly in their ad to connect with the image of the model. They use the phrase “Elevate Moisture, Enhance Skin” to correlate with the model with perfectly enhanced skin. Therefore not only does the image of the model appeal to the emotion of the female consumers and male consumers, but it also shows them what to expect and the effectiveness of the product on their skin. This does not only reflect the appeal of the ad to the consumers’ emotion it also shows the choice of words, weasel words, to lure consumers in.

Aside from appealing to ethos, and pathos, the Olay ad appeals to logos, the logical appeal of the ad to its consumers. In Figure 2, there is a stamp that affirms the Olay brand validity. In the red-colored stamp there are the words “allure, The beauty expert 2017” and around the round stamp it says “Best of beauty, award winner”. The language used is to achieve the consumer’s trust based on the award they gained in 2017. If consumers know that the brand is trusted and awarded the beauty expert of all the beauty products around they are more likely to presume that the product will work on their skin. Mentioning the award the product obtained in the ad makes the consumer think the brand is accepted by experts strengthening the validity of the product as a trusted skincare brand. By providing the award they received in the ad, the Olay brand is able to provide confirmation that what they mention in the ad of providing moisture is possible. Consumers are incited after they see that because they now have a valid reason to believe that the product will work effectively. The ad clearly shows consumers that they can trust the product to elevate moisture and enhance their skin.

The Olay brand in their ad mentions that the “Lock-In-Moisture Technology works with your skin to make it stronger” by stating that the brand is allowing the consumer to think and understand that the product works with the skin and that it would not do something the skin will be against or will not work to cause harm to the skin. The Olay company uses a certain and straightforward language rather than using complex scientific words in their ad which makes it easier for consumers to understand the purpose of the product on their skin.

The goal of this advertisement is to convince consumers to buy their products. The Olay company is able to effectively accomplish this purpose by using different factors in their ad. First, they appeal to their specific audience in the People magazine by using the picture of a flawless looking model placed on a dark background to cause a contrast that is appealing to its consumers. The Olay ad is also able to use their words and language to attract the attention of their consumers. The ad emphasizes the word moisture quite a lot as it is said for about 5 times making consumers aware of how serious they are at providing moisture to its users. They use the credibility they have of being the best of beauty in 2017 to draw the consumer’s attention to its reliability, credibility as well as its purpose.