Super Bowl commercials have been celebrated and panned and given outsized importance in America's thinking about itself and about how consumers can best be manipulated... and this has been happening for half a century.
Yesterday's entries into this subjective competition seemed to focus on comedy and on "coming together." Both are primarily appeals to pathos in terms of rhetoric.
Ads are arguments, which is why the very same TV ad during the game created diverse reactions, at least on social media.
One of the most talked about ads is this two-minute essay on connection, narrated by Bruce Springsteen. It is the first commercial he has made in 50 years. I had no idea what the product or brand was until the very end and no clear "selling" is going on. There is almost no logos involved in this ad, but the ethos (Bruce!) combines with the pathos of the appeal to emotions to create a compelling message.
I did not do a scientific analysis of the Super Bowl ads, but would simply note that none of them relied on logos as their primary appeal (like, buy this and your life will be better in the following ways...).
For writers, the urge to make use of ethos and pathos is strong, and there are clearly times when these appeals can work for a particular message or time or brand.
But academic essays build from logos. The "perfect" argument likely would mix all three appeals in some effective proportions.
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