Advertisements, subtle or not, can be found nearly everywhere in daily life. America is easily influenced by jingles, slogans, celebrities, and unbelievably attractive women and men endorsing a product. The avenues of appeal used in advertisements can vary depending on the target audience and overall intent of the advertiser. In modern day propaganda, advertisers rely on three methods to interest consumers: ethos, an appeal to ethics; pathos, an appeal to emotion; and logos, an appeal to logic. Playtex and Kotex clearly exemplify these techniques in their recent commercials for tampons. The pathos appeal is meant to lure in a consumer on the basis of emotion. Humorous commercials, heart-wrenching commercials, or uplifting commercials fall under this category. A recent advertisement for Playtex tampons takes the pathos route. The advertisement is thirty seconds long and is marketed toward menstruating women. In the beginning of the commercial, a group of women dressed in all white are featured doing what appears to be a lazy jumping jack. Upon further analysis of the women in the beginning of the commercial, it becomes obvious that the women are meant to represent tampons, particularly tampons that are only able to open widthwise. At around the fifteen …show more content…
Appropriately titled Reality Check, the goal of the Kotex commercial is to mock advertisements similar to the Playtex commercial. The Kotex commercial relies solely on humor and satire to sell its product. The advertisement provides no facts or statistics about the tampon or its features, in hopes that tampon consumers in America will be able to relate to the media’s warped interpretation of menstruating women and purchase the product. Kotex hopes to engage consumers by sending out the message that women are sick of the false portrayals shown in the media of menstruating women parading around in white