Michelle Carreto

Philosophy 025
Homework Assignment #3
The ad I have chosen to focus on is a recent Carls Jr thats used to promote their burgers. To
describe the ad a little, it showcases Paris Hilton, a well-known celebrity, wearing a sexy,
revealing black swimsuit eating a Carls Jr burger called a Super Star with cheese. On the right
of her, they show us an enlarged photo of the cheeseburger in question showing us all the meat,
cheese, and vegetables layered perfectly. The slogan is written on the bottom saying, Its gonna
get messy. and an argument saying Shell tell you size doesnt matter. Shes lying.
The target audience for this ad is males probably 18 and over who care about their appearances,
the opinion of women, and who can really understand the message the ad is trying to convey.
The ad places a psychological effect on its audience by making them question themselves and
how they size up as a man. Along with that they also look at the burger, how big it is in terms of
other burgers, and try to make that connection to their physique amongst other men that they
know. Now looking at the celebrity endorsing the product we can assume she enjoys the burger
and believes in the lines on the ad. Women like Paris Hilton would not be seen around men who
do not prefer their burgers to be like Carls Jr.
This ad plays on the desires of their audience in that if they want women like Paris Hilton they
should eat this burger, or burgers from Carls Jr to be more precise. It also plays on their
subconscious needs to stand out and represent as a man who doesnt need to worry about size.
The ad is using sex to capture its audiences attention. It does so by using innuendos, particularly
sexual in this instance, to sell their product. An innuendo is a device that utilizes suggestion or an
insinuation rather than directly stating what the author is really trying to say, he merely just hints.
(Softchalk 1) The words, in the context that they are now dont mean anything but imply
something that is sexual that brings a little humor to Carls Jrs target audience. Sexual
innuendos are very popular in advertising and over-used to get their product to sell faster.
Besides the text we also have the use of Paris Hilton which is a play on the use of Ethos to get a
celebrity to persuade the target audience in buying their product. Ethos is used when the product,
advertisement, uses a character, authority, or celebrity to persuade the audience. (Softchalk
1)With utilizing, her status as a celebrity, more people are tempted into buying the object
because people like her do. Using a familiar face that we see on television we are more drawn to
trust the product instead of having the usual reluctance when trying something new.
This ad is committing a fallacy known as appeal to emotion. An appeal to emotion is when the
author of the argument uses the audiences emotions and manipulates them in order to win the
argument without using any other evidence that pertain to the argument. The ad targets the main
weakness of their target population which is a mans ego. The argument to specify is whats
making a man question their ego when they read this advertisement. A mans ego is that he
wants to be the strongest, or as strong as other men. He doesnt want to worry about being
considered small or weak. The ad implies that if you are not eating Carls Jr burgers then you are
just that, small and weak. Men who are big in size eat at Carls Jr so if you think of yourself as
a man then you wouldnt eat anywhere else. Instead of giving any evidence of how their burgers
match up with other burgers in terms of size or statistics showing how eating a Carls Jr burger
shows that size does matter the advertisement tries to distract us and turn the argument against
us the reader.
The ad is trying to commit a bandwagonning fallacy. The bandwagonning fallacy is when
one decides to agree with a claim or do an action simply because one wants to be on the winning
side or the popular side. (Softchalk 2) The target audience doesnt want to be questioned by the
female population about their size. Therefore, the target audience would want to be on the
winning side, which is choosing Carls Jr burgers since they are implied as the biggest in size
compared to other burgers. If men want to attract women in bikinis that are hot as Paris Hilton
then they have to be getting Carls Jr burgers in order to achieve that. It could also be turned
against women in that if they want to look as Paris Hilton does when she eats this burger then
you too should get a Carls Jr burger. Instead of Carls Jr showing us proof of how they are best
and indeed the winning side to their target audience, they try to persuade them with women in
bikinis and how youre a winner if you have hot women on your side.
In conclusion, Carls Jr utilizes rhetoric devices well by using Paris Hilton in a bikini to attract
the male audience and a big juicy burger because we all know men like to eat and they eat a lot.
However, when it comes to fallacies, Carls Jr does a lot to attack the target audience using their
emotions and their desire to be on the winning side, cause men like to win, in order to attract
them to their product. Just looking at the advertisement, it looks like a winning argument by
having all the basic elements to capture the eye of the audience. As a critical thinker, we can see
pass this and analyze whats really behind the picture and avoid being tricked by the marketing
experts.
Softchalk lesson 1 Rhetoric and Rhetorical Devices
Softchalk lesson 2 Introduction to Fallacies