Rhetorical Strategies In Super Bowl Commercials

Rhetorical strategies including pathos, ethos, and logos are stylistic elements often used as a persuasion technique to get an audience to either buy a product or participate in something. Advertisements almost always have at least one of these three components, and Super Bowl commercials specifically are renowned for their entertaining use of these strategies. Of the many Super Bowl commercials, two stood out to me for their in-depth use of all three of these rhetorical strategies. The first commercial combines the extreme measures taken by an overprotective dad and the new Hyundai Genesis. These two seemingly unlike ideas are brought together in a collaboration that effectively use pathos, ethos, and logos to prove the audience of their product. The second advertisement is what I would call a “comeback

The current meaning of pathos is having to do with emotions like happiness, sadness, and amazement. Advertisements often use pathos as a rhetorical strategy to get their audience to laugh and make their product seem more likable. Both the first and second commercials use an emotion that appeal to the majority of the population, humor. The Hyundai commercial highlights the humorous relationship between a father and his daughter’s date. Kevin Hart, the father, goes to extreme measures to “scare off” his daughter 's date using the car finder feature on the Hyundai Genesis. He uses the quote “A dad’s gotta do what a dad’s gotta do” which adds, even more amusement to the advertisement. The T-Mobile commercial alludes to a past humorous experience that Steve Harvey had while hosting the Miss Universe Pageant. He read the wrong name when announcing the winner of the pageant, so T-Mobile jokingly hired him to recreate the event for their advertisement. The humor that many spectators will find in this often makes them sway towards T-Mobile rather that its