When first given this assignment to analyze some sort of visual rhetoric, my thoughts immediately shot towards comedy. I am not a comedy junkie who can spout out YouTube video after YouTube video of hilarious footage, but when it comes to advertising, those with humor seem to peak my interest the most. Thinking about funny advertisements, I started brainstorming some of the best Superbowl commercials I remembered from the last few years, and obviously this one had enough impact on me to want to write about it as my first blog entry.
This video was an advertisement shown mainly in 2008 for E*Trade Financial Corporation, which is an online discount stock brokerage service aimed for self-directed investors. E*Trade allows investors to buy and sell securities such as stocks, bonds, mutual funds, etc. Although the advertisement aims at the target audience of people of 18 or older who are interested in financial affairs, the ad greatly increases its range of viewers simply because of the comedy angle that it takes. It starts out with a baby in a high chair facing the camera with a wooden crib and several baby mobiles in the background. The advertisement then proceeds to have the audience watch the baby, who seems to be around the age of one or two, speak in a grown man’s voice. The baby shrugs off any assumed thoughts from the audience that might be strange (such as the manly voice coming from a baby), and then in one click he buys stock. “You just saw me buy stock, no big deal! If I can do it, you can do it” are said soon after, implying to the viewer that E*Trade is very to use, and even a baby can do it. Thinking about this on a deeper level, maybe the baby even symbolizes the baby boomer generation and that population is probably the bulk of the target audience.
The E*Trade Baby advertisement is an appeal to pathos because it obviously strikes the emotion of comedy and humor in viewers. Lightening the mood makes the people who watch them be more lighthearted and “more open to a proposal you have to offer. It’s hard to say ‘no’ when you’re laughing” (Everything’s an Argument.) This form of advertising is probably the most effective way of familiarizing people with the company, because in truth, many people find the subject of finance as a whole pretty boring. Therefore, the insertion of comedy into the advertisement can jolt people into laughing about it, talking about the ad with their friends at school, looking it up on YouTube the next day just to watch it again to get another laugh, and that is more and more times the company has it’s purpose displayed to viewers. This discussion of this advertisement has been focused on just one of these commercials, but E*Trade over the past few years has created many commercials that use the same baby, expanding to new settings and new lines of humor. I believe this corporation has done an excellent job of getting their name out there in the public and educating the viewers on its’ functions in the financial marketplace.
food for thought. 
AJ Van Grinsven said,
January 15, 2010 at 5:28 am
very well done babe. i like the layout of your posting and how it included the video. I dont know much about blogging and whatnot but this seems to be a great entry and i hope it receives high marks. very cool! 🙂