The Samsung Galaxy S7 edge is an unsinkable piece of luxury. Samsung’s “Samsung Galaxy S7 Champagne Calls” ad is a video that shows a room with a celebrity with two friends and a bottle of champagne. Lil Wayne holds the Galaxy S7 and then suddenly pours champagne on it, showing off to his friends. The message is clear — everybody wants a new phone, especially if it is waterproof and used by Lil Wayne. In achieving its persuasive effect, the advertisement implements ethos through the inclusion of champagne and a celebrity endorsement, logos through advertising the phone’s qualities, and pathos through exhibiting the events that take place in the advertisement.
The most significant strategy at this ad is its incorporation of a celebrity endorsement. The famous rapper Lil’ Wayne is featured in nearly every shot in the advertisement, adding considerable ethos to the advertisement’s persuasive potential. In addition to the advertisement featuring Lil’ Wayne, champagne is also used as proof to show that Samsung is waterproof, so people will be both enticed by this feature and the added mystique of the ad’s use of champagne. The use of a celebrity endorsement is highly effective in gaining peoples’ attention. This is when, “a famous person uses their notoriety to help sell a product or service” (Lombardo, para. 10). As such, people remember this ad more easily because, “consumers are more apt to remember an ad that is linked with a celebrity endorsement” (Lombardo, para. 10). Subsequently, a celebrity endorsement is effective because it both results in people remembering the advertisement for its notoriety and because Lil’ Wayne’s celebrity presence provides credibility to the claims made in the advertisement. Similar to the use of a celebrity, the use of champagne also functions as a means of implementing ethos as a rhetorical appeal. The reason for this is that the use of champagne has the connotation of being something that is expensive and used by high-class people. Therefore, through exhibiting champagne being poured on the Samsung phone, the advertisers are making the claim that successful people and people of wealth will appreciate such a phone.
The advertisement also uses a persuasive appeal through its highlighting a new feature provided by Samsung in their Galaxy S7 edge. This new feature — innovative waterproof feature in Galaxy S7 – ensures that if a person using one of the Samsung phones gets the phone wet, it won’t result in the phone being destroyed. The “Pathos, Logos, and Ethos in Advertising” video indicates that advertisers approach the goal of persuading audiences through, “making emotional appeals, by building credibility and trust, and buy using logic and reason” (Pathos, Logos, and Ethos in Advertising, 2017). Through this particular advertisement’s highlighting this cutting-edge feature, the advertisers are incorporating logos. This is because the advertisement is making the logical appeal that purchasing the phone is the appropriate decision one should make because through their purchase they will not have to worry about ruining their phone if it becomes wet. Of course, such an example constitutes a use of logos, because of instead of appealing to the ethical integrity of a celebrity endorser, or to an emotional appeal, the advertisement is instead attempting to convince the audience to purchase the phone based on logic and reason.
In addition to the advertisement’s effective use of a celebrity endorsement, as well as a logical appeal, the advertisement also attempts to convince the audience to purchase the phone based on emotional appeals – or pathos. When the advertisement begins, one witnesses Lil’ Wayne partying with some of his friends. In a joking manner, he pours the champagne on the phone and then makes a joke about dropping the phone in the fish tank, which he shortly does thereafter. Arnold (2005, p. 26) argued that pathos as a persuasive appeal was so powerful that the use of it in, “persuasive messages is not only necessary for those persons specializing in promotional activities, but requisite for all who produce and use persuasion in daily life.” In this particularly advertisement, Lil’s Wayne’s partying, joking, and dropping the phone in the fish tank go beyond simply operating for a narrative purpose, but also serve the function of generating joyful emotions in the viewer. Such a technique is powerful in the context of the advertisement because it results in the viewer themselves wanting to be a part of this fun. As such, the advertisers are persuasively implying that if someone purchases this particular Samsung phone, then they to are following the sorts of behaviors that will result in their being able to generate these emotions in their own lives.
In conclusion, the Samsung advertisement is highly effective because of its use of a celebrity endorsement, logos related to the phone’s waterproofness, and pathos shown through the location the phone is featured. While not all advertisements will use these techniques, most will exhibit at least some combination of them. Ultimately, this advertisements effective use of all three of these logical appeals makes it a truly outstanding commercial.
- Arnold, V. D. (2005). The Importance of Pathos in Persuasive Appeals. Bulletin of the Association for Business Communication, 48(4), 26-27. Chicago
- Lambardo, J(n.d.) Celebrity Endorsements in Advertising: Definition, Benefits & Examples. Pathos, Logos, and Ethos in Advertising. (2017). YouTube. Retrieved 21 October 2017