The advertisement is simple but striking: 6 young children stare up from the page with pleading eyes, each of their faces disfigured by cleft palate. Above them are the words “How Often Do You Get The Chance To Save A Child’s Life For $250?” The ad is a rhetorical masterpiece.
A complete rhetorical argument is meant to appeal to three distinct areas: ethos, pathos and logos. The ad, which asks to readers to donate money to fund corrective cleft-palate surgery for children in developing countries, effectively uses all three to appeal its message to readers on multiple planes.
The advertisement relies heavily on pathos, devoting most of its space to a large color spread featuring the faces of six children with cleft palate. The photos are purposely cropped to remove the background and focus in only on the deformed face of the individual child and their longing eyes. One cannot help but be taken aback by the condition presented in such a forward manner, or to feel a sense of sorrow knowing that children are suffering from the condition. The children pictured make-up a variety of races also, a technique that may have been done to create a sense of empathy in readers of a similar racial background or ties to a country.
Pathos is appealed further by the words the advertisement uses. A blurb below the photo describes the “desperate children” and the surgery is described as “ life changing” and able to provide “ not just a new smile but a new life.” Reading about the state of the children reinforces the sorrow the pictures initially created. But the words describing the surgery create a sense of hope that the children can be alleviated from their deformity.
The ad also utilizes logos to try and present a reason on why people should donate their money to help children with cleft palates, beyond pulling on their heartstrings with the image of the children.
The main appeal to logos the ad makes is the phrase “ How Often Do You Get The Chance to Save a Child’s Life for $250?” In other words, it tells the reader that by donating money it can save something that is often considered priceless. The logical appeal is pushed further in the blurb below the photo which repeats how a “surgery which takes as little as 45 minutes and costs as little as $250” can completely change a child’s life. All in all, the words are reasoning with the reader that by donating little, they can have a huge impact.
By appealing to logos and pathos the ad makes people ‘feel’ the need to donate money as well as so the reason of it. The ad uses ethos to show their own credibility and ensure the donor that any donations they make are going to a legitimate entity that will help children.
One way the ad appeals to ethos is by having SmileTrain, the name of the charity, in large font and in color at the bottom of the page. It shows people that an actual organization is behind the ad and they aren’t sending their money away to a nameless source. The credibility of SmileTrain is further enhance by a pulled quote from the New York Times about the charity that stands out from the page by being printed in blue. It says “…one of the most productive charities-dollar for deed-in the world.”
The ad also shows readers that the charity has the right information ‘tags’ of a legitimate charity: a website address that ends in .org, a toll-free 1-800 number, a P.O. box mailing address.
The ad itself appeared in an issue of Discover, a monthly magazine that covers stories on science, technology and health. The readership of Discover is overall an educated and wealthy bunch, with 56 percent having attended or graduated college and 44 percent making over $60,000 a year. 22 percent of Discover readers make over $100,000 a year ("Discover Magazine").
By putting their ad in Discover, SmileTrain ensured that their message would be received by a demographic with the funds to donate money and the education to understand that a cleft palate is a condition that can be fixed with a simple surgery. The demographic statistics collected by Discover also found that 9 out of 10 readers discussed what they read in Discover with others, potentially giving the ad’s message an even broader audience beyond Discover readers ("Discover Magazine").
The ad’s primary purpose is to convince readers to donate money to SmileTrain to finance cleft-palate surgeries. But in a more subtle way the ad also makes an argument about health.
A cleft palate is a condition that can make nursing, eating and speaking difficult. By disfiguring a person’s face it can also have effects on self-esteem and societal acceptance ("A.D.A.M. Medical Encyclopedia” ) ("SmileTrain") . That being said, it is not a lethal condition. However, the ad still equates fixing a cleft palate with “saving a child’s life.”
This choice of words speaks volumes about the perception of cleft palate by the charity and the communities the children live in. A cleft palate a condition that doesn’t prevent the individual from working or communicating or learning, can nonetheless be described in the same words as an actual terminal illness because of the rejection individuals with it face by society. Therefore, SmileTrain describes the surgery as a lifesaver not because it prevents the child from dying, but because it ensures the child will have a chance at a normal life.
In conclusion, I think the ad is extremely effective. It utilizes logos, pathos and ethos in a coherent and effective way to an audience that is very likely to respond to it. Although it may seem like an exaggeration to present cleft-palate surgery as a life-saver when cleft palate isn’t a terminal disease, I think that it is a fair description based on the stigmatization and limited opportunities those with cleft palates in developing communities face.
Works Cited:
"Cleft lip and palate." A.D.A.M. Medical Encyclopedia. US National Library of Medicine, 1 May 2011. Web. 16 Oct 2011. <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0002046/>.
"The Problem." SmileTrain. SmileTrain Inc. , n.d. Web. 16 Oct 2011. <http://www.smiletrain.org/the-problem/>.
"Reader Profile." Discover Magazine. Kalmback Publishing Co. , Fall 2010. Web. 16 Oct 2011. <http://discovermagazine.com/media-kit/audience/reader-profile>.
I think this ad's use of pathos is probably the most pronounced rhetorical argument utilized in this. Your attention is immediately drawn to the photographs of the children and for those individuals that have children this a very strong emotion appeal of sympathy for the innocent. I also feel that the images of the children is what the target audience would most likely remember about the ad. This pathos appeal is important for the ad because it give those that donate a moral reason and a sense of good for their donations.
ReplyDeleteThe most successful part of this blog post is the use of pathos. The sentence, "One cannot help but be taken aback by the condition presented in such a forward manner, or to feel a sense of sorrow knowing that children are suffering from the condition," is most effective. It appeals directly to the audience's emotions and makes us feel guilty and almost personally responsible if we don't feel sympathy for the children.
ReplyDeleteI think that the most successful part of this blog post in terms of writing is the very first sentence: "The advertisement is simple but striking: 6 young children stare up from the page with pleading eyes, each of their faces disfigured by cleft palate." Not only is this sentence an attention grabber, but it also captures the essence of the ad beautifully. Monica uses the colon very effectively to introduce the ad, and she really appeals to the pathos of readers.
ReplyDeleteHow does this ad directly affect readers' views on health? Connecting this ad directly to health would make the blog post more effective and relate more to the assignment. Sometimes in blog posts, you have to state the obvious.
ReplyDeleteI believe that the first paragraph is the most successful component of this blog post. The sentence, "The advertisement is simple but striking: 6 young children stare up from the page with pleading eyes, each of their faces disfigured by cleft palate." The advertisement immediately grabs the readers attention by using useful words that makes the reader sympathize with the children staring up from the page. It also makes us interested to read the rest of the post.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I think this ad does an incredible job at appealing to its audience across all aspects of appeals, I think a point of attack that this advertisement could receive is that while it does look at a variety of races, it does not incorporate a white American.
ReplyDeleteIn our past history, America as been synonymously tagged with whites. When most people picture an American, I am more than positive that a white human being pops up. Our population today, while it is diverse, it is still predominately a white country. With the lack of a white child in this ad, the ad may not be able to be relatable to a majority of the American society. This is because they may not see a white child on the ad, so it may be difficult to find a direct relationship between the majority of America and the ad.
@Hannah. Another way to read this is to say that by leaving out a white child, this ad makes the implicit argument that white children don't suffer from cleft palate. This is an example of logos, though it leads to a false conclusion. If we consider this, then the ad would be another example of an argument about health which implies that some people (in this case, white people, or people in developed countries) are more likely or even more entitled to be healthy people. This is the same kind of logic used in phrenology or the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. We saw how appalling that kind of logic was in the past, yet, I think this ad might show the persistance of pernicious arguments about who gets to be healthy. (Also, as Monica explained, this ad is soliciting donations to help "children in developing countries." So the images are supposed to depict children who are not Americans.)
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, I don't think it's true that "when most people picture an American," they picture a white person. Though this might be true of most white people.