Jib Fowles 'Advertising Fifteen Basic Appeals'

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A Good Source Have you ever seen an advertisement and suddenly felt compelled to buy the advertised product without needing it? This urge is provoked by the emotional human motives that many advertising companies appeal to when selling their products. The main sources of this urge, advertising schemes, are thoroughly explained and analyzed by author Jib Fowles in “Advertising Fifteen Basic Appeals”. In Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum, the article, “Advertising Fifteen…” which was published in 1982, dissects the psychological facet of the advertising industry. In this article, Fowles reveals the many ways advertisers appeal to one’s emotions and deep-lying desires, while simultaneously giving the reader tips on how to escape these seemingly under-handed schemes. Fowles goes into great depth about each of the fifteen appeals; the meaning of them, how the…show more content…
In “Advertising’s Fifteen…” the most entertaining and arguably one of the most vital parts of the article are the examples. In his article Fowles gave several examples for each appeal that illustrated the ideas he wanted to portray. For example, Fowles tries to show how some advertisements use the “need to affiliation” to catch the eye of the consumer by saying, if we don’t use Scope, we’ll have the “Ugh! Morning Breath” (Fowles 663). This example shows how Fowles’ examples are very vivid and shows how advertising companies try to actually use many of these appeals to grasp our attention as well as our wallets. Many of the examples in the article are very clear and the messages portrayed with them are easily understood. Fowles uses many examples to sometimes show how ridiculous some advertisements actually are: “There goes all the guests when the supply of Doritos’s nacho chips are exhausted” (Fowles 663). Fowles’ examples in this article show how simplistic, yet, effective these advertisements

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