A Rhetorical Analysis Of Quit Smoking

With the alarming number of smokers, agencies spend billions of dollars every year on anti-smoking advertisements. Anti-smoking agencies enlighten audiences of the negative consequences of smoking and try to persuade them to stop. The visual I chose to analyze is a commercial engendered by an anti-smoking agency called Quit. The advertisement, “quit smoking commercial” shows a mother and a son walking in a busy airport terminal. Suddenly, the mother abandons the child, and after he realizes he is alone, he commences to cry. At the end, a sticker appears that says quit and gives the logo and the website of the antismoking company that engineered the ad. The commercial utilizes rhetorical appeals to draw the audience in, then persuade them to stop smoking.

Quit’s aim is to reach older men and women who smoke and have kids. This is clear because they use a mother and child to convey their message. The commercial makes it

For the majority of the advertisement, the audience is with the child’s eye level. The perspective of the child creates a relatable mood and lets the viewers step into the child’s shoes. If smokers step into their child’s shoes and see the pain, then they will want to stop smoking to end the child’s suffering. In the beginning, the advertisement illustrates a mother and a young boy around the age of five, and once the mother leaves him he begins to cry. The audience becomes sorrowful for the innocent young child; associating that child with their own. Subsequently, a voice narrates, “If this is how your child feels after losing you for a minute, just imagine if they lost you for life” (0:48 “quit”). The statement leads the audience into thinking that the little boy’s mom will never return. Moreover, the quote is assigning guilt to the smokers who have kids, because if they smoke then they will leave family