Rhetoric of Health

Test.



The Jared ad campaign has been made so famous by the Subway corporation that Jared has become synonymous with the Subway brand. One cannot walk into a Subway sandwich shop without seeing pictures of Jared. His face is plastered on billboards everywhere one looks. He is on Television. He is on the radio. He appears in magazines and even newspapers. When one opens the Sunday newspaper his face is tied to the money saving coupons distributed to entice people to come in and buy a subway sandwich. We first met Jared several years ago when he lost over 100 pounds just by eating Subway Sandwiches. The ad campaign is all about healthy eating. We are to infer that since Jared as able to lose over 100 pounds eating Subway sandwiches, and it is healthy to lose weight that we can become healthier by eating Subway Sandwiches.

This appeals to the Logos argument. It is pure logic and is presented in such a way that it only makes logical sense that if we eat Subway Sandwiches that we will lose weight and be healthy. But hey, after all its just sandwiches and who the heck is the Jared guy? Really WHO is he? What is needed is to appeal to the Ethos component of making the sell. In my ad that I am showcasing, Jared is linked to movie stars and professional Athletes. It’s a three minute ad where the entire ad is Jared interacting with the likes of Tony Parker, of the San Antonio Spurs, Tony Stewart, pro race car driver, Michael Strahan, who has become a huge media darling, Reggie Bush and Mario Williams of the Houston Texans. All of these athletes are singing the praises of the Subway Sandwich and Tony Stewart even goes as far as saying his athletic training staff wants to get together with Jared and Subway to enhance their training program by eating Subway Sandwiches. Stewart suggests that because of the Subway Sandwiches he’s been eating that he has lost weight and feels better in the race car.

This ad is a “perfect storm” of ethos advertising because not only do we cover the male perspective we appeal to women by having Eva Longoria and Mathew McConoghey speak about how they eat Subway Sandwiches to be healthy and they go further to say how great they taste and how convenient they are. On the ethos argument, Subway has covered all of the bases. After all if it’s good enough for these people, who we all want to be, it must be good enough for us too. Further, during the commercial they are throwing up little captions and the last caption is not so subtle. It says “In our culture celebrity equals current”. How blatant can one get?? Eat the Subways and you can not only be healthy (logos), but you can be current too, like the celebrities (ethos).

Lastly, it’s the context of the advertisement that brings in the pathos component. It cleverly shows Jared laughing and joking around with the celebrities. On a very emotional level we are made to infer that Jared is friends with all of these people. We see him cutting up with Michael Strahan so it makes all of these celebrities as well as Jared are very approachable. It makes us FEEL good and feel like perhaps we could be friends with these celebrities too. It really closes the loop on all three aspects of advertising persuasion. The Pathos argument because the ad attemps, successfully, to bring us in emotionally to people who have a great deal of credibility, the ethos aspect.

I truly believe that in this ad campaign it is imperative to rely on the ethos and pathos because the logos is the most difficult inference to draw, because from a logical perspective it’s pretty tough sell to say “Eat Subway Sandwiches and you will lose weight and be healthier”, but they definitely want us to believe that. So in this ad we are distracted from that hard to make point by the fun loving celebrities. Actually it’s a brilliant use of ad selling technique and distraction, and since Subway is a hugely successful brand, it must be working??? Or maybe they just make really good sandwiches. Who knows?