Superbowl Advertising 101

The Superbowl is the top spot for commercials and advertisements each year. The cost to have a spot during the Superbowl is astronomical, so the commercials that are aired need to be effective to make up for that price tag.

One example of a great Superbowl ad was the Tmobile Data Stash commercial shown here:

What makes this commercial a great one is that it uses all of the appeals needed for a persuasive argument. The first one that Tmobile uses is Ethos. The person speaking in this commercial is Kim Kardashian who is huge right now. She get's a lot of publicity whether it is for good or bad, but she knows how to take the spotlight. Even if she isn't a credible figure, she is well known which will get people to watch just for that aspect alone. Once potential customers are watching, Tmobile makes use of Pathos but in a ironic way. This commercial is set up like a stereotypical charity commercial would be where they are asking you for money. It seems like it would be sad, but what Kim says makes it funny and keeps the audience watching because they want to see what happens next. Tmobile wraps it all up with Logos. Even though this commercial is funny, it makes a good point. She starts by providing a fact that "millions of gb of data is taken back by wireless companies." Then she mentions that it is data that the audience is paying for. No one wants to pay money for something that they will use, so it is logical that the audience would want to switch to tmobile so that they won't lose their unused data.

This commercial is a brilliant because it is funny enough to entrance the audience but still provides a compelling argument as well.