Progresso soup has worked its way up to holding one of the top spots on the canned soup market and has given the well-known Campbell’s soup company a run for their money. This advertisement seems to be directed towards middle-aged adults who strive to live a healthy lifestyle but may want something easy to prepare for when you run home from work on your lunch break. It uses several techniques to connect with its audience and persuade them that their product is a healthy and appealing choice.
One way is by turning their product’s container into a can-phone. We all remember tying strings between two cups or cans when we were kids and talking to a friend who was a strings length around the corner. This is a good use pathos that makes the scenario fun and connects with the audience’s healthy youthful memories.
On the other side of the can phone is a chef in a kitchen surrounded by counters of fresh vegetable. Here they are trying to make the audience feel that the soup is freshly prepared, such as in a restaurant setting; and that the ingredients are not preserved frozen vegetables but rather fresh, ripe, and healthy vegetables.
The man proceeds to confront the chef about the fact that the soup contains 28% of the recommended daily intake of fiber. He is confused at how a soup with such a high fiber content, something we have been taught is healthy and nutritious, can taste so good. This seems to hint at the fact that many people make the assumption that if a food is healthy, then it won’t be the best tasting. The man repeats the word fiber several times in order to get the point across that the soup contains a large portion of fiber. Then he says, “but I like it,” emphasizing that he really enjoys the taste of it even though there is fiber in it. This is a great example of the use of logos; fiber is healthy, the soup contains fiber, therefore the soup is healthy.
The commercial ends with a series of vegetable falling into a Progresso can. This is an effort to re-emphasize that the soup is made with a variety of vegetables, which we have been taught since we were children are healthy, and that there is a significant amount of nutrition in just one can of Progresso soup.
Overall, I think the advertisement did a good job at bringing out the healthy qualities of the soup that people know they need to incorporate into their daily lives in order to maintain a healthy and nutritious lifestyle, while at the same time making it seem appetizing and fresh rather than just another prepackaged food item from the grocery store.
I agree that something that this commercial does well is that it sympathizes with its audience. When talking about health it is easy to run in to ethical situations; sympathizing with the audience is one of the easiest ways to not insult someone. Another thing that the commercial did well was that it recognizes that many people think that healthy food tastes bad; which the author mentioned. This is a good technique but seems to be the same as the "Fiber One" slogans; I would like to see something more creative. The logos is done well, making it easy to draw a connection but many people are not health literate, so they may not know what fiber is.
ReplyDelete