Teaching Rhetorical Appeals with Commercials

by Meagon Clarkson-Guyll

Why Commercials?  
I like to teach using content students experience as citizens of the world and I adamantly believe that it helps tackle concerns about the value of writing and communicating beyond our classroom. For that reason, I enjoy teaching with news segments, magazine articles, viral videos, podcasts, and commercials. Out of all of these, commercials tend to by my favorite. 

Using popular commercials in many types of lessons has some major classroom benefits:

• They’re recognizable:  your students will be familiar with the texts.
• They’re entertaining:  you’ll usually have a captive audience. 
• They’re information-dense:  you can adapt these for multiple lessons and they rich with usable content. 

Rhetorical appeals 
Ethos, pathos, and logos are taught in several of our composition courses and are key to the analysis essays. Using overtly persuasive texts are a productive way to help students identify these appeals at work in a familiar setting. 
Challenge!
Students are reluctant to push past surface level analysis. They may need a nudge to consider why appeals are being used, which appeals are being violated (such as disrupting logical reason for effect), and why it works on some audiences but not others. 

Choose commercials that vary in length, message, and difficulty. I’ll offer suggestions for some that challenged my students this semester:

• Serena Wiliams’ Bumble commercial 
• Chance the Rapper/Backstreet Boys mashup for Doritos Flaming Hot Chips
• Jason Momoa’s Rocket Mortgage commercial

Activity Idea: 
Have students choose a favorite commercial and briefly state:

1. What happens
2. What is it selling?
3. Which appeals are used?
4. Why did(n’t) it work? 

Play some commercials in class by either bringing in those of your own choosing or letting students choose ones to view. I always add the “acceptable content for network tv” disclaimer. 

Easy modifications: individual or group activity, writing or discussion based, teacher driven lecture or open class participation.