Week 2, Discussion Q. 3
I am going to talk about fallacies, focusing on the appeal to authority. I think the appeal to authority is used so often and it's such an attention getter and completely silly, if you ask me. These are appeals that use authority figures who are basically irrelevant and not qualified with the issue. Chris Brown had a contract with Doublemint Gum, dancing in their ads. Kim Kardashian is eating burgers in her bikini in Carl's Jr. commercials. These fallacies are appeals to authority because they really have no real place to make you believe that their product is good. Kim Kardashian eating a burger is not a real reason to go out and try the new sandwich at Carl's Jr. because she is not a chef, a professional food critic, or even in culinary school. She has no true authority in this position, but because she is a celebrity and people follow her and mimic the things she does, they go to Carl's Jr. This is a common sales tactic, and you can catch many celebs in many ads or representing certain products that do not pertain directly to what is being sold or talked about.
This is a great post on fallacies. Your post helped me understand fallacies better by your use of creative examples. I understand that advertisements are using celebrities since there are fans that will sometimes do things that celebrities are seen doing on television. I have seen the Chris Brown gum commercial and I definitely believe they pay him a lot just to do a 20 second gum commercial in order to get people to buy gum. I do agree that there is no real reason to believe that Carl's Jr sale great burgers even though Kim Kardashian pretends to enjoy the burger in the commercial. A smart sales tactic in order to get fans to eat it.
ReplyDeleteMany companies use celebrities to endorse their products to gain popularity. Consumers would say, “So-and-so uses this product, and so should I”. It’s somewhat saddening to see that such tactics actually work because consumers think a product is good just because of celebrity endorsements.
ReplyDeleteAlso, reading this post about fallacies and appeal to the authority instantly made me think of those Old Spice commercials. The man in the commercial is speaking to women but the real focus is on men. He describes many things that make a man “manly” and using Old Spice products will make one “manly”. Using Old Spice products do not make a person “manly” at all.
I'll have to agree with you in this post. Products with interesting ads tend to sell better than things that are not advertised at all. Cereals appeal to children and teens like Chris Brown so they'll buy the gum. I was reading an article about the yogurt shop Pinkberry and one of the things that they highlighted was the fact that Paris Hilton and Lauren Conrad are frequenters of Pinkberry. People want to see what the hype is all about. And because celebrity exposure they became super popular. Even though it wasn't advertised by them, people still followed the celebrities.
ReplyDeleteYour examples about appeal to authority I felt were solid. They were easy to understand for anyone I would think as well as being informative. Companies use these celebrities for their products because it generates more "buzz" about their product. Your Carl's Jr. example about Kim Kardashian eating their burger in her bikini is spot on. She does not have any intelligent knowledge referring the actual burger because she has no culinary experience or anything, but she was simply used in order to gain more attention from consumers. you made good use of relevant and current ads for your examples.
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