Watch the "Dove commercial" video under "Readings" on our main course page. Reflect on how this video demonstrates the persuasive power of visual rhetoric.
The dove commercial was clearly meant for an audience of women, but the actual audience is everyone who sees it. The author of the commercial was most definitely using pathos to appeal to a person's emotions, and was created by Dove, the soap company. The ad specifically hit at the concept of how a person thinks less of their self image than other people do. The setting was an art studio and most of the time we were seeing how these women were being described and drawn to the artist, in a very calming, clean setting. The message was that a person should think more of his or her own natural beauty and be more appreciative of that, because the women themselves after the exercise learned they didn't appreciate it as much as they thought they should. I personally think that the whole point of the commercial was to hit at an emotional cord about one's looks and make them go out and buy Dove soap to take care of their "natural beauty", without ever saying the word DOVE or SOAP once. I thought it was very effective because it made me think with a different part of my brain that wasn't logical, which is what I think they were going for, because they most certainly weren't going for a logical appeal to buy dove soap, hell they didn't even say anything about going out and purchasing a product, the ad itself was a story and not a sales pitch, which is the point.
The commercial represents visual rhetoric using a comparative argument to give the idea that women are more beautiful than they think. The commercial starts off with several women being asked to describe themselves to a sketch artist, who the sketch artist, has never met or seen. The video cuts to scenes in which the women critically describe themselves, one saying she has a "big jaw" and another saying her most prominent feature is her "fat rounder face." This constant stream of self-criticism along with light, somber music appeals to a sadder emotion or pathos. It is a struggle that the audience, all women, may have struggled with at some point in their life. It also adds ethical credibility using several women to establish this trend that women tend to be dissatisfied with their facial features. It is followed by scenes where people who've just met these women are asked to describe the women. Scenes are highlighted in this section where the women are described as more beautiful such as having a “cute nose” and “very nice blue eyes.” This "survey" if you will, in this commercial, is meant to play on the idea that 'we are our own greatest critic.' The way people see us versus the way we see ourselves is greatly different. At the end of the commercial, the women see these sketches in a side-by-side comparison, representing in physical form, the nature of this idea. The nature of the commercial is an attempt to tell women to see the beauty they have rather than what they don’t have. As keyed by one woman at the end of the commercial, “we spend a lot of time as women analyzing and trying to fix the things that aren’t quite right… And we should spend more time appreciating the things that we do like.”
Women in particular in today's society often self deprecate themselves because they think that, because they don't look like someone else, they don't look beautiful. The artist that draws them comes out to say that they are more beautiful than they think because everyone has their own features that are distinct to them that make them beautiful. This is shown through his drawing based on what other people notice in them that is more profound and beautiful, rather than what the women themselves see in themselves which is the things that are not perfect in their view. The video is persuading women to use Dove because they give the women a sense of self worth and that they are beautiful and they are trying to use the pathos to get the women to buy their product because it makes them believe that they are beautiful and that they should take care of their beauty with the Dove soap.
A lot of visual rhetoric is shown in the commercial. To tackle it frame by frame, the artist providing his background with the San Jose PD for over a decade shows a huge ethos appeal and lets immediately understand what he is doing when he begins the questions. All of the participants being women also makes the argument of self-loathing about appearances tending to be a trait among women within society, at least within American society. I'm not a woman so I can't deliberate on that argument any more. However, when the next set of participants give their opinions about the previous ones' appearance, the usage of only positive feedback to the artist begins to give an appeal to ethos, as we begin to see hints of the commercial's theme begin to show through. I also want to note how the one's describing themselves are only women, yet the group describing others consists of both men and women, trying to help establish a better appeal to both ethos and logos as having a group with both genders is a better representation of society at large, helping for the idea of our own hated traits to just be that; our own. The final scene of the reveals is whole heartedly an appeal to pathos with logos sprinkled, as it allows us to both sympathize and even empathize with the original thoughts of the participants, yet the reveal pushes us to really ponder our perception of ourselves and if it really is so bad or if it's simply us taking for granted what we never really notice. For the last thing, I want to point out the irony of how Dove, a company that specializes in beauty products, has sponsored this commercial. This commercial does absolutely nothing to help Dove's sales or any of its products, yet it does help with people's opinions on the company, as Dove was willing to put out a commercial that does nothing for their own products (if anything the theme hurts their products), yet its message does warm peoples' hearts and helps for them to appreciate that their perception of themselves is not the absolute truth, and that other people can see them as better than we ourselves ever could.
The Dove commercial demonstrates visual rhetoric by creating a self evaluating prospective that aims toward women, particularly with beauty insecurities. The director was very wise when he made this video because he used women rather than men, because this is s common issue among women. Every women sees her flaws, so by picking a topic in which all women could relate to was a very smart move because now it appeals to all women making Dove relate to the women. Also another smart tactic was that he chose regular everyday women, which relates to the audience even more. Another technique that I've noticed was the soft music. He/she really took a pathos appeal with this commercial by connecting to the viewers emotions. They tired to reach out to the viewers heart. The director related to every women's soft spot, and effectively comfort and corrected it with the logic of " you are more beautiful than you know." Honestly this could appeal to a man or a women, because I'm pretty sure men have some of the same issues. It mainly reaches to people with insecurities. The main argument that Dove is trying to portray is that women should embrace their own beauty. By the women in the video using words like "fat"and "round", the director exhibits how an average female doesn't see her own beauty. He/she shows how females look at themselves as undesirable . Once the video showed the two portraits of what what they see versus what strangers see, really shocked me. It was like a burst of astonishment and a sense of reality hitting me. Not to make this personal, but I instantly realized that I criticize yourself way to hard in the mirror as well. This commercial was very heart felt, and really did hit close to home. I know if it made me feel this way I'm sure several other females felt the same. This commercial would have really convinced me to buy Dove. If I were to enter the store and see Dove, I would reflect back on the commercial and instantly feel good because that was how the video made me felt. So the argument was very persuasive even to me, therefore, proving that this visual argument was effective from my prospective. BY using this electronic digital literacy as a medium versus a printed flyer, the director connected to viewer/customers more. Overall, this was a very effective video that I truly enjoy.
The message of the Dove commercial is very good I enjoyed it a lot. The commercial has a strong usage of pathos, it connects with you emotionally making you feel like you are about to tear up because of the message the commercial is trying to give. In the commercial they began by having an artist draw face of the people by the way they see themselves and then he drew how other people described them. At the end the people could see how much better looking they are when others described them showing that they are all beautiful, because when we describe each other we always tend to point out the bad features of our face and think that we are ugly. The way that other people described facial features of the others was much nicer and was showing how we are mostly insecure about our looks.Overall, the commercial's main point connects with the audience emotionally and also how relatable it is to people nowadays, and it was enjoyable.
Dove has always been a well known soap brand. They are known for quality products especially for women. This commercial takes a much different approach to beauty than that of many other companies. Dove appeals to people emotionally not by saying that we can make you beautiful but by saying that you already are beautiful and we just want you to stay that way. It uses pathos to appeal to the emotional insecurity that surrounds us. Too many people are not happy with the way they look. This commercial strives to give people confidence in the way they look. By bringing this positive approach, they are also using ethos. By telling people how great they are they will start to trust you. Being able to see how others reacted to the difference in how they saw themselves and how others saw them moved me. Visual rhetoric is powerful in that you can see emotion rather than just read about it. The Commercial would not have been the same if we were not able to see the emotions of the people in the commercial. Facial expressions of others enhance our understanding of emotions and the true meaning of the words being said.
The Dove commercial is one of Dove's many marketing pushes to raise the self esteem of women in the US. The commercial is highly influenced by visual rhetoric as people are trying to describe other people to create a portrait of themselves and another person. The portraits specifically are the main visual rhetoric pieces because they are used to create the argument that women do not give themselves enough credit for their beauty. This message can be empathized with a majority of women because they know they are too hard on themselves. This shows how powerful visual rhetoric is, because this project is the only way these women have been able to accept that they are more beautiful than they think. It is a common thing for women to say, "do you know how pretty you are", but judging by their personal statements they never truly believed others. It took this powerful visual argument given by the portraits to truly make them believe that they are more beautiful than they think. The commercial is a brilliant marketing strategy because it makes millions of women feel better about themselves and through pathos it bonds the women with the Dove company, which in turn increases sales and creates more loyal consumers. This makes Dove more than just a soap company, but a part of millions of women's lives all over the US, as every day they remember they are more beautiful than they give themselves credit for.
The point of this commercial is to show women that they are more beautiful than they think. All of the women they portrayed described mainly the features that stood out to them and "looked ugly" or possibly that they were insecure about. Dove uses our appeal to pathos to give us a little heart nudge. Using the appeal to pathos persuades us to buy Dove's products because they've tugged on your heart strings and they sound like a genuine company. Even if you don't go out on a store run planning to get a Dove product, having that subconscious emotional connection to Dove through the commercial will help your buying decision. Pathos is underlying evidence of persuasive action on Dove's part; The use of soft music and light/white color tones is concrete evidence. The use of the soft music makes one feel safe and welcome into "Dove's humble abode" and makes you happy inside. The light/white colors of the room and curtains and picture frames represent cleanliness (i.e. the cleaning power of Dove's product) and is much easier to look at than dark or sharp colors.
The thing I picked up on immediately after watching the video that was interesting to me is that visual rhetoric was used in two layers here. There was the layer of visual rhetoric in the sketches that were shown to all of the women which made an argument separately to those women, and the second layer was the video of this event which made an argument to a much wider audience through broadcasting. Interestingly, the two arguments were similar and were designed for similar target audiences, but the second layer was almost entirely composed of the first and was also less immediate than the first. Both layers argued for the importance of self confidence, as stated by the women in the video, and this argument was targeted towards women, but the appearance of a few men in the video and the broadcasting of the commercial led to the argument being received by all who viewed the video. The first layer displays the power of visual rhetoric in a much stronger way, as it appeals to the women through pathos. They are deeply moved by simply viewing the sketches and the way they are affected emotionally is at the core of their persuasion to change their self confidence. It is by recording the success of the first visual argument that the larger audience is convinced of the same message. This introduces an intriguing facet of visual rhetoric, in that it can be used in layers like this to where the portrayal of visual rhetoric in itself is visual rhetoric, and retains a high degree of potency in its appeal to pathos. This facet of visual rhetoric reflects how powerful it is persuasively, and the Dove commercial is effective in demonstrating that.
The Dove commercial's main point was that people have beauty that they can't appreciate. The commercial uses many visual elements to illustrate and prove their point. Firstly, the setting they chose was an empty warehouse. The surroundings are important because they can serve to enhance or distract. The empty warehouse makes sure the viewer is focused on what's in front of them so they aren't distracted by any other elements. The sunset-like lighting and the setting invites introspection from the watcher. In the commercial, the people are asked to sit down and describe their appearance to an artist. While speaking about themselves, they looked visibly pained so that the watcher would pity them and would want to tell them they're wrong. All these elements are appeals to pathos because they are meant to emotionally stir us into feeling sympathetic so that we can evaluate ourselves in a way that the commercial tells us to. The most important part of the commercial was when the portraits from the person who described themselves and another person they just met looked very different. This is an appeal to logos as the picture are meant to prove to the audience that people perceive themselves negatively.
The dove commercial uses a lot of visual pathos such as showing the emotion of the women who were drawn, the music in the background and simply the way the video is put together. The women described themselves as lesser than they really were, which is why dove had other people to describe them. People tend to find the worst in themselves and the best in other people, which is why the drawings turned out so different from one another. The commercial is intended to make women reflect on how critical they are, and let them know that they are beautiful in their own way, even if they don't see it. Dove wants women to realize that everyone has insecurities, but you can work through them. Dove wants women to realize that their products help other woman feel better about themselves even if its as simple as using a different body wash or other type of soap. The emotions seen in the commercial are enough to change the minds of women.
The dove commercial was clearly meant for an audience of women, but the actual audience is everyone who sees it. The author of the commercial was most definitely using pathos to appeal to a person's emotions, and was created by Dove, the soap company. The ad specifically hit at the concept of how a person thinks less of their self image than other people do. The setting was an art studio and most of the time we were seeing how these women were being described and drawn to the artist, in a very calming, clean setting. The message was that a person should think more of his or her own natural beauty and be more appreciative of that, because the women themselves after the exercise learned they didn't appreciate it as much as they thought they should. I personally think that the whole point of the commercial was to hit at an emotional cord about one's looks and make them go out and buy Dove soap to take care of their "natural beauty", without ever saying the word DOVE or SOAP once. I thought it was very effective because it made me think with a different part of my brain that wasn't logical, which is what I think they were going for, because they most certainly weren't going for a logical appeal to buy dove soap, hell they didn't even say anything about going out and purchasing a product, the ad itself was a story and not a sales pitch, which is the point.
ReplyDeleteThe commercial represents visual rhetoric using a comparative argument to give the idea that women are more beautiful than they think. The commercial starts off with several women being asked to describe themselves to a sketch artist, who the sketch artist, has never met or seen. The video cuts to scenes in which the women critically describe themselves, one saying she has a "big jaw" and another saying her most prominent feature is her "fat rounder face." This constant stream of self-criticism along with light, somber music appeals to a sadder emotion or pathos. It is a struggle that the audience, all women, may have struggled with at some point in their life. It also adds ethical credibility using several women to establish this trend that women tend to be dissatisfied with their facial features. It is followed by scenes where people who've just met these women are asked to describe the women. Scenes are highlighted in this section where the women are described as more beautiful such as having a “cute nose” and “very nice blue eyes.” This "survey" if you will, in this commercial, is meant to play on the idea that 'we are our own greatest critic.' The way people see us versus the way we see ourselves is greatly different. At the end of the commercial, the women see these sketches in a side-by-side comparison, representing in physical form, the nature of this idea. The nature of the commercial is an attempt to tell women to see the beauty they have rather than what they don’t have. As keyed by one woman at the end of the commercial, “we spend a lot of time as women analyzing and trying to fix the things that aren’t quite right… And we should spend more time appreciating the things that we do like.”
ReplyDeleteWomen in particular in today's society often self deprecate themselves because they think that, because they don't look like someone else, they don't look beautiful. The artist that draws them comes out to say that they are more beautiful than they think because everyone has their own features that are distinct to them that make them beautiful. This is shown through his drawing based on what other people notice in them that is more profound and beautiful, rather than what the women themselves see in themselves which is the things that are not perfect in their view. The video is persuading women to use Dove because they give the women a sense of self worth and that they are beautiful and they are trying to use the pathos to get the women to buy their product because it makes them believe that they are beautiful and that they should take care of their beauty with the Dove soap.
ReplyDeleteA lot of visual rhetoric is shown in the commercial. To tackle it frame by frame, the artist providing his background with the San Jose PD for over a decade shows a huge ethos appeal and lets immediately understand what he is doing when he begins the questions. All of the participants being women also makes the argument of self-loathing about appearances tending to be a trait among women within society, at least within American society. I'm not a woman so I can't deliberate on that argument any more. However, when the next set of participants give their opinions about the previous ones' appearance, the usage of only positive feedback to the artist begins to give an appeal to ethos, as we begin to see hints of the commercial's theme begin to show through. I also want to note how the one's describing themselves are only women, yet the group describing others consists of both men and women, trying to help establish a better appeal to both ethos and logos as having a group with both genders is a better representation of society at large, helping for the idea of our own hated traits to just be that; our own. The final scene of the reveals is whole heartedly an appeal to pathos with logos sprinkled, as it allows us to both sympathize and even empathize with the original thoughts of the participants, yet the reveal pushes us to really ponder our perception of ourselves and if it really is so bad or if it's simply us taking for granted what we never really notice. For the last thing, I want to point out the irony of how Dove, a company that specializes in beauty products, has sponsored this commercial. This commercial does absolutely nothing to help Dove's sales or any of its products, yet it does help with people's opinions on the company, as Dove was willing to put out a commercial that does nothing for their own products (if anything the theme hurts their products), yet its message does warm peoples' hearts and helps for them to appreciate that their perception of themselves is not the absolute truth, and that other people can see them as better than we ourselves ever could.
ReplyDeleteThe Dove commercial demonstrates visual rhetoric by creating a self evaluating prospective that aims toward women, particularly with beauty insecurities. The director was very wise when he made this video because he used women rather than men, because this is s common issue among women. Every women sees her flaws, so by picking a topic in which all women could relate to was a very smart move because now it appeals to all women making Dove relate to the women. Also another smart tactic was that he chose regular everyday women, which relates to the audience even more. Another technique that I've noticed was the soft music. He/she really took a pathos appeal with this commercial by connecting to the viewers emotions. They tired to reach out to the viewers heart. The director related to every women's soft spot, and effectively comfort and corrected it with the logic of " you are more beautiful than you know." Honestly this could appeal to a man or a women, because I'm pretty sure men have some of the same issues. It mainly reaches to people with insecurities. The main argument that Dove is trying to portray is that women should embrace their own beauty. By the women in the video using words like "fat"and "round", the director exhibits how an average female doesn't see her own beauty. He/she shows how females look at themselves as undesirable . Once the video showed the two portraits of what what they see versus what strangers see, really shocked me. It was like a burst of astonishment and a sense of reality hitting me. Not to make this personal, but I instantly realized that I criticize yourself way to hard in the mirror as well. This commercial was very heart felt, and really did hit close to home. I know if it made me feel this way I'm sure several other females felt the same. This commercial would have really convinced me to buy Dove. If I were to enter the store and see Dove, I would reflect back on the commercial and instantly feel good because that was how the video made me felt. So the argument was very persuasive even to me, therefore, proving that this visual argument was effective from my prospective. BY using this electronic digital literacy as a medium versus a printed flyer, the director connected to viewer/customers more. Overall, this was a very effective video that I truly enjoy.
ReplyDeleteThe message of the Dove commercial is very good I enjoyed it a lot. The commercial has a strong usage of pathos, it connects with you emotionally making you feel like you are about to tear up because of the message the commercial is trying to give. In the commercial they began by having an artist draw face of the people by the way they see themselves and then he drew how other people described them. At the end the people could see how much better looking they are when others described them showing that they are all beautiful, because when we describe each other we always tend to point out the bad features of our face and think that we are ugly. The way that other people described facial features of the others was much nicer and was showing how we are mostly insecure about our looks.Overall, the commercial's main point connects with the audience emotionally and also how relatable it is to people nowadays, and it was enjoyable.
ReplyDeleteDove has always been a well known soap brand. They are known for quality products especially for women. This commercial takes a much different approach to beauty than that of many other companies. Dove appeals to people emotionally not by saying that we can make you beautiful but by saying that you already are beautiful and we just want you to stay that way. It uses pathos to appeal to the emotional insecurity that surrounds us. Too many people are not happy with the way they look. This commercial strives to give people confidence in the way they look. By bringing this positive approach, they are also using ethos. By telling people how great they are they will start to trust you. Being able to see how others reacted to the difference in how they saw themselves and how others saw them moved me. Visual rhetoric is powerful in that you can see emotion rather than just read about it. The Commercial would not have been the same if we were not able to see the emotions of the people in the commercial. Facial expressions of others enhance our understanding of emotions and the true meaning of the words being said.
ReplyDeleteThe Dove commercial is one of Dove's many marketing pushes to raise the self esteem of women in the US. The commercial is highly influenced by visual rhetoric as people are trying to describe other people to create a portrait of themselves and another person. The portraits specifically are the main visual rhetoric pieces because they are used to create the argument that women do not give themselves enough credit for their beauty. This message can be empathized with a majority of women because they know they are too hard on themselves. This shows how powerful visual rhetoric is, because this project is the only way these women have been able to accept that they are more beautiful than they think. It is a common thing for women to say, "do you know how pretty you are", but judging by their personal statements they never truly believed others. It took this powerful visual argument given by the portraits to truly make them believe that they are more beautiful than they think.
ReplyDeleteThe commercial is a brilliant marketing strategy because it makes millions of women feel better about themselves and through pathos it bonds the women with the Dove company, which in turn increases sales and creates more loyal consumers. This makes Dove more than just a soap company, but a part of millions of women's lives all over the US, as every day they remember they are more beautiful than they give themselves credit for.
The point of this commercial is to show women that they are more beautiful than they think. All of the women they portrayed described mainly the features that stood out to them and "looked ugly" or possibly that they were insecure about. Dove uses our appeal to pathos to give us a little heart nudge. Using the appeal to pathos persuades us to buy Dove's products because they've tugged on your heart strings and they sound like a genuine company. Even if you don't go out on a store run planning to get a Dove product, having that subconscious emotional connection to Dove through the commercial will help your buying decision.
ReplyDeletePathos is underlying evidence of persuasive action on Dove's part; The use of soft music and light/white color tones is concrete evidence. The use of the soft music makes one feel safe and welcome into "Dove's humble abode" and makes you happy inside. The light/white colors of the room and curtains and picture frames represent cleanliness (i.e. the cleaning power of Dove's product) and is much easier to look at than dark or sharp colors.
The thing I picked up on immediately after watching the video that was interesting to me is that visual rhetoric was used in two layers here. There was the layer of visual rhetoric in the sketches that were shown to all of the women which made an argument separately to those women, and the second layer was the video of this event which made an argument to a much wider audience through broadcasting. Interestingly, the two arguments were similar and were designed for similar target audiences, but the second layer was almost entirely composed of the first and was also less immediate than the first. Both layers argued for the importance of self confidence, as stated by the women in the video, and this argument was targeted towards women, but the appearance of a few men in the video and the broadcasting of the commercial led to the argument being received by all who viewed the video. The first layer displays the power of visual rhetoric in a much stronger way, as it appeals to the women through pathos. They are deeply moved by simply viewing the sketches and the way they are affected emotionally is at the core of their persuasion to change their self confidence. It is by recording the success of the first visual argument that the larger audience is convinced of the same message. This introduces an intriguing facet of visual rhetoric, in that it can be used in layers like this to where the portrayal of visual rhetoric in itself is visual rhetoric, and retains a high degree of potency in its appeal to pathos. This facet of visual rhetoric reflects how powerful it is persuasively, and the Dove commercial is effective in demonstrating that.
ReplyDeleteThe Dove commercial's main point was that people have beauty that they can't appreciate. The commercial uses many visual elements to illustrate and prove their point. Firstly, the setting they chose was an empty warehouse. The surroundings are important because they can serve to enhance or distract. The empty warehouse makes sure the viewer is focused on what's in front of them so they aren't distracted by any other elements. The sunset-like lighting and the setting invites introspection from the watcher. In the commercial, the people are asked to sit down and describe their appearance to an artist. While speaking about themselves, they looked visibly pained so that the watcher would pity them and would want to tell them they're wrong. All these elements are appeals to pathos because they are meant to emotionally stir us into feeling sympathetic so that we can evaluate ourselves in a way that the commercial tells us to. The most important part of the commercial was when the portraits from the person who described themselves and another person they just met looked very different. This is an appeal to logos as the picture are meant to prove to the audience that people perceive themselves negatively.
ReplyDeleteThe dove commercial uses a lot of visual pathos such as showing the emotion of the women who were drawn, the music in the background and simply the way the video is put together. The women described themselves as lesser than they really were, which is why dove had other people to describe them. People tend to find the worst in themselves and the best in other people, which is why the drawings turned out so different from one another. The commercial is intended to make women reflect on how critical they are, and let them know that they are beautiful in their own way, even if they don't see it. Dove wants women to realize that everyone has insecurities, but you can work through them. Dove wants women to realize that their products help other woman feel better about themselves even if its as simple as using a different body wash or other type of soap. The emotions seen in the commercial are enough to change the minds of women.
ReplyDelete