Visual Rhetorical Essay. Rhetorical, Cultural Analysis.

Visual Rhetorical Analysis – Range Rover classic 1986 and Smart For-Two advertisements – by Fabian González.

Smart Automobile car and Land Rover are two car brands that use advertisements to persuade their audiences of the suitability of their products. This essay will analyze the effectiveness of their rhetorical appeals, the cultural context of each advertisement and it´s effect on their intended audience.

The first analyzed advertisement that we have is an ad from the Smart Automobile car brand, which is a division of the Daimler AG automobile manufacturer. The advertisement video starts showing a dried, sandy and deserted view that’s seems to be pretty much quite and still; there’s a fast, hard and redundant music playing in the background quite similar to a hard rock music’s beat. The music increases as an approaching car appears and turns out to be a small coupé vehicle. The Smart For Two coupé car rides on a sandy marked road, and stops suddenly because the road becomes uphill in a steep slope. The car’s engine sounds challenging and makes the sound as if it was accelerating in order to gain speed, then the car rushes towards the slope and tries to go uphill, but when it gets to the middle of the slope it can’t keep going ahead due to the pronounced angle; it seems to be giving its best try to climb it, but finally the car lets itself be carried away to the foot of the hill.

The Smart For-Two coupé car keeps riding on the deserted road and decides to deviate from it. It descends a subtle slope and heads to a puddle of standing water. The car tries to cross the pond but the water level is too high for it. The car gets stuck and sinks a little bit becoming unable to keep going forward, then the camera angle changes to the front of the car and the windshield wipers activate in an ironic and funny way.

A message stating ‘As good off road as an off roader in the city’ appears and introduces the next scene, which is an urban view. A serene and peaceful music starts to play as we see an off roader SUV car stopping at the side of the parking spot of a sidewalk as trying to measure if it fits in between the two cars that create that space, since the SUV is too large for the spot the driver decides to keep driving and gives up on the spot. The previous hard and redundant music beat disrupts the atmosphere and the small coupé car appears, swiftly and skillfully the tiny car parks into the small spot created in between the other two cars in a victorious pose.

Finally a second message appears stating ‘the smart for two, the ultimate city car’, followed by the slogan and emblem of the Smart Automobile brand.

The second advertisement is a 1986 ad from the Land Rover car brand promoting their then latest Range Rover off roader vehicle; the advertisement starts with the Land Rover and the Range Rover logos. A random vehicle is riding on a road outdoors the city and gets to a Y bifurcation, one of the roads is still paved and seems to be pretty easy to drive on, but the other one looks harsh, stony and full of obstacles, there’s actually a sign indicating that that particular road is not suitable for motors. The vehicle’s driver roots for the easy and un-obstructed road. The scene changes and we are in the interior of the Range Rover vehicle while a dynamic, encouraging and instigating music starts beating. The determined driver choses the difficult road and the music’s beat increases.  The Range Rover crosses easily the rocky road; it crosses deep ponds of water and rivers at a stable speed. Unpaved roads full of stones seem not to be a problem for the Range Rover as it passes over them really quickly and simply. Finally the Range Rover vehicle drives uphill a prominent slope and gets to the border of a cliff, the camera shows the magnificent view beneath the cliff giving to the Range Rover an epic and powerful moment, from the nowhere a warm and peaceful male voice says ‘now you know what people see in a Range Rover’ and the ad finishes with the Range Rover logo.

Even though the advertisements are dealing with the same issue, which is convincing the audience of their vehicles advantages, their products are aimed to reach different audience’s attention. While the Range Rover is a vehicle for people who like to drive outside the city, on the countryside or on unpaved roads, the ‘Smart for Two’ car is intended for people who spend their driving time mostly at city paved roads.

The Smart For Two ad shows the disadvantages of the small car and establishes that it is not a suitable car to drive off road, but it also shows that an off roader car is not suitable for the city because it was meant to be out from it exposing that the SFT coupé car is the best option for you if you want to ride in the city,

This advertisement starts by showing the product’s weaknesses in one context to specify its strengths in another context.

The Range Rover ad uses a similar technique of persuasion at the beginning of the video, which is to portray other car’s weaknesses to make its features look as strengths.   

The different time context of the ads is pretty noticeable when comparing the background music and the visual quality of the video. Both music and visuals are more contemporary in the Smart For Two advertisement, which is an important thing to determine the effectiveness of the ad on their intended audiences, in other words, the time context of an advertisement determines the effectiveness of persuasion on a specific audience in a specific time.

Both advertisements have cultural contexts and appeal to different elements such as Nationality, Social Classes, Gender and Music. For example, talking about nationality the Smart For Two car aims to people for almost every country due to the fact that almost every nation is urbanized, and thus, suitable for this kind of car. On the other hand, the Land Rover is shown to be more suitable for countries with rural, mountainous and urbanized areas where driving with regular cars is almost impossible.

Talking about social classes, both advertisements seem to be aimed for regular people, besides, they don’t look too fancy or expensive to be catalogued as cars for an exclusive or wealthy audience. If we talk about gender, the Range Rover would be more accepted by male audiences thanks to its rough shape and look, while women would root for the Smart For Two car better because it’s neater and cuter to the eyes; culturally, male population mostly does intrepid and dangerous things what are precisely the kind of things that the Land Rover advertisement wants to highlight from its product.  

When it comes to the type of music sounding, the Range Rover uses a more calmed music compared to the hard redundant music of the Smart For Two ad, and its kind of suitable for the ambient showed on the clip, which is mountainous, wooden and green the whole time. On the other hand the SFT ad’s background music is harder but is also convenient for its environment, which is a deserted area; it gives the audience a hard, independent and strong look even when the car is too tiny.