SMELL- Oh my! Oh me!

Makers of commercials and advertisements continually find new innovative ways to sell products to their target audiences. The senders of these messages seek to entice potential buyers and to convince them that their product is the best on the market. Companies use a variety of ways of doing so. In their commercial for lunchmeat, Hillshire Farm employs catchy language and visuals to appeal to the ethos, pathos and logos of their audience to convince them to purchase their product.
Hillshire Farm, the sender of the message, uses ethos to persuade the audience of the commercial that buying their meat will make them a better person and that the company is only selling their product to help consumers, not to make a profit. The song sang by the actors in the commercial contains simple and rhyming language that portrays purchasers of the product as moral people. Viewers of the commercial will want to buy Hillshire Farm products so that they, too, can be moral people and so that they will have the ability to burst randomly into rhyming and catchy lyrics like “Special request! Cracked- pepper turkey breast!” All of the people in the ad are depicted as good people who consumers should try to emulate.
The maker of this commercial persuades the viewers to buy Hillshire Farm products by using pathos, or emotions, to make the viewers envious of the people in the commercial who have the lunchmeat. All of the people in the advertisement are of a higher status than the ordinary commercial watcher. The ad features a celebrity who calls the meat “glam,” upper-class women who deem it “bourgeoisie,” and secret service men and a politician. All of these people believe the lunchmeat is the best and endorse it, and their status as rich and upper-class makes viewers want to buy the food so that they can be like the people in the commercial. Viewers want to buy the product and be like the people in the commercial because they are jealous of their status and want to be more like them.
Hillshire Farm combines the use of pathos and ethos to appeal to the logos of the viewer to show them that their product deserves to be bought. Since the viewers want to be more moral people and they want to have a higher status and since eating this lunchmeat makes someone these things, the next logical thing to do is to buy and eat Hillshire Farm’s lunchmeat. Eating their food will make the customer happy and an altogether better person. When presented with the ideas behind this commercial, the viewer realizes that there is no better option than to buy their meat. Consumers want to be bourgeoisie and glam to be happy, and buying this lunchmeat will enable them to achieve this goal.
Hillshire Farm’s advertising techniques prove very effective in relation to this commercial. The song is very memorable and many people find themselves singing it to themselves and telling their friends about it, which is the exact aim of the company. When viewers remember a product, they are more likely to choose that particular item when presented with several choices at the store. By adding a catch phrase that is played at the end of every different commercial for the brand furthers the brand recognition for Hillshire Farms. The announcer encourages the audience to participate in the song by saying, “When I say Hillshire, you say Farm. Hillshire! Farm! Go meat!” This audience participation cements the idea of buying the product into the consumer’s mind, effectively utilizing the techniques of advertising.