Milk is refreshing, muscle building, and nutritious. “Got milk? ” uses this advertisement to get this point across. It consists of Taylor Swift, whose portrait is in the center of the ad, flirtingly leaning on her dark red guitar lined with a light tan rim. Her smooth pale face is slightly tilted to the right as she is seductively gazing into the camera with her starry brown eyes. She has a gentle, small, pearly white smile, which is adorned with the white stain of milk. She is wearing large hoop earrings, one of which is covered by her slight hand, leaning on her graceful neck, and a silk bracelet.
Both are jewel studded and colored light brown to compliment her blondish tan spaghetti strap dress that matches her flowing slightly curly golden hair. In the background is a rusty red brick wall that is blurred to bring the focus to Taylor Swift. In the upper left corner of the ad is the slogan, “got milk? ” Beginning 2/3rds up the ad on the right side is a series of statements with different sized white font, but all center-aligned. First, is the phrase, “Swift pick. ”, in a slightly bigger font hovering over the rest of the text.
The main lines of text read, “In this business, you’ve got to be decisive. So I choose milk. Some studies suggest that teens who choose milk instead of sugary drinks tend to be leaner, and the protein helps build muscle. So eat right, exercise, and drink three glasses of low-fat or fat free milk a day. Music to my ears. ” Underneath that, in at least three times bigger font, is the logo, “body by milk” with the “by” placed on its side in between “body” and “milk”. Just below that logo, in half the size font of the main body of text, is the website address www. bodybymilk. com.
The ad is persuasive because it uses a celebrity as the face of its campaign, but also because it uses scientific research and the promise of being healthy. The “got milk? ’ advertisement uses Pathos, Logos, and Ethos to be persuasive. First, it uses Pathos, which is an emotional appeal to the audience, when it states that drinking milk will give you results. These results are portrayed as helping you become lean, thus attractive, build more muscle, thus stronger, and be more decisive, thus more successful.
Second, it uses Logos, which is the reasoning part of the argument, when it tates that if you eat right, exercise, and drink three glasses of milk a day instead of sugary drinks, then you will be lean and build muscle. The ad makes this reasoning more persuasive, by stating that studies have shown this to tend to be true for teens that do it. The phrase “tend to” helps to make this statement more logical by eliminating the absolute and permitting their statement to not be true in some instances. Finally, the ad uses Ethos, which is the credibility and the way it comes across to the audience, as its strongest persuasion technique.
Taylor Swift is the Ethos that the ad uses. They want the viewers of the ad to see that if Taylor Swift drinks milk, they should, also, and then they could have the chance of becoming like her. However, what is the audience that the ad is trying to reach? This advertisement was found in a celebrity news magazine. The most likely viewers of this magazine are multi-racial, teen/young adult, females of lower to middle class, but the ad specifically targets those of this group who are into music, specifically country and pop music. Drink milk and be like Taylor Swift, young, famous, pretty, and rich.
In the task of persuading this audience of their message, the ad commits two logical fallacies. The first of these is Non Sequitur, the fallacy of drawing a conclusion that does not follow from the evidence. This happens when the ad concludes that the teens in the studies got leaner only because they drank milk instead of sugary drinks. The second one is the Post-Hoc Fallacy, this assumes that because one event precedes another event, it is the cause of that event. This is evident when the ad states that after teens began to drink milk instead of sugary drinks, they began to be lean.
Hence, drinking more milk makes you lean. In conclusion, the “got milk? ” campaign is a very persuasive work of advertisement. It uses Logos, Pathos, and Ethos in its persuasion very effectively to target its specific viewing audience. Although it does commit a few logical fallacies, it attempts to base itself more realistically than the majority of ads. The ad would do its job of persuading me to drink milk, or at least give up the habit of drinking sugary drinks, in order to be healthier and leaner. If anything, this ad persuades us to reevaluate our nutrition in order to be better human beings.
