preview

PETA Advertising Rhetorical Analysis

Decent Essays

PETA Ad Rhetorical Analysis PETA, an animal rights organization, has been known over the past several decades to post racy ads. In June of 2013, PETA launched an ad with the purpose of getting its audience to go vegan. The ad is a photo of a toddler with a lit cigar in his mouth with the quote next to it, “You Wouldn’t Let Your Child Smoke. Like smoking, eating meat increases the risk of heart disease and cancer”. The ad included “Go vegan!” in the bottom right corner with the organizations logo next to it. PETA is trying to send a message to its viewers to stop eating animals. The attention drawing ad evokes an emotional response, contains logical reasoning and is from a credible source. The ad uses pathos, a rhetoric strategy to target the emotions of its viewers, by using a smoking toddler as the focus of it. Seeing a young child smoking a cigar will draw the attention of viewers of any age, gender, or race. The image will cause its audience to investigate the purpose of the ad. It makes people feel sorrow for the young, innocent child that doesn’t know what he is doing, and to feel disgust for his parents for their irresponsibility. Like most of their ads, PETA caused a lot of controversy with this image. Not only did people feel sad for the child but they were outraged at the ridiculous image. Now that PETA has their attention, they will investigate the purpose of the image. Its purpose could be of many things including: secondhand smoke, insufficient parenting, or cancer. When looking closer, they realize that the ad is meant to stop them and their children from eating animals by claiming that it results in the same physical diseases as smoking does. What they don’t realize is that using such outrageous content is how PETA gets their message across; The more controversial, the more people will talk about it and the more light that gets shed on the purpose of their organization. The second of the three rhetorical devices that this ad contains is logos; an argument used to convince its audience of something using logical reasoning. PETA is meant to conserve the rights of animals, so what does a smoking toddler have to do with that? Well, the organization is claiming that eating animals causes cancer

Get Access