Links to rhetorical tools:

Here are links to the rhetorical tools used in this class:

Schemes & Tropes -- Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca -- Fallacies -- Burke -- Rhetorical Toolbox -- Conspiracy Rhetorics

Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Camel Santa #30- Emily Solis



1. Santa's red cheeks, white mittens, and open stance- these attributes show Santa to be trustworthy and welcoming. It is trustworthy because they are portraying a classic Santa image, with rosy cheeks, white mittens, and a big belly. His arms are out and that makes him look approachable and kind.

2. The style of these boxes are very confusing. Beginning with the 3-D boxes that seem to be popping out of the frame, and the house-shaped box that appears to be balancing unrealistically on Santa's arm. This could either be from poor editing, or effect. I haven't decided.
Bringing it back to the design of the boxes. Had I not been able to read any of the small text or heard of Camel, I would have thought these were cookie boxes. Nothing legible on the box or it's design implies that cigarettes are inside. It looks overwhelmingly festive, which is very attractive in this context, but without the words it would make me want to buy cookies, not tobacco.

3. The italics and cursive used in the 'Season's Greetings' and 'Gifts that are sure to please in beautiful Christmas wrappers' are reminiscent of handwriting (especially at that time) and make the words seem sincere and honest. It also helps the continuation and flow of the font used. It helps pull it together more cohesively.

4. Camel and Prince Albert are bold, capitol, and spaced out well to remind you what exactly they are selling. The words are present in the image eight times (not counting the paragraphs) and mentioned much more frequently that the word 'cigarette' or 'tobacco' to push branding.

5. If you look at the image as a whole, you will realize that there is not a single cigarette anywhere in this ad. They don't need to put one in there if you already know what the brands are selling. This is especially important because they don't want you to smoke their tobacco, they want you to buy it for other people for Christmas. It is advertising specifically for the special Christmas wrapped boxes.





Schemes

 

 

 

 

Alliteration

Consonance

more pleasure in every puff”

 

Repetition

Anaphora

“For those who... For more smokers”

Tropes

 

 

 

 

Personification

Prosopoeia

“There is nothing like Camel to say...”- Neither the brand, nor actual camels can talk

 

 

 

“Choice of the two handsome packages”- things that aren’t alive can’t be handsome

Visual

 

 

 

 

Perspective

Flat

It’s all a crappy Photoshop mess, plopping layer over layer of one-dimensional things. Although there is slight dimension on the Santa and the containers, the components are not existing in the same world.

 

Diagonals

Balanced

Santa is centered and almost equal attention is given to each side.

 

Space

Closed

Most space is filled, either with important things like the product, or the Santa, or the logo, negative space that would be in the background is filled with the wreath that has no other purpose than to add to the festive theme of the ad.

 

Angle

Eye-level

Santa is looking right at you with some side-eye that will either make him look like he knows something that you should know, or that he is trustworthy.

 

Implied Distance

Medium-shot

You can see from Santa’s belt and higher to show that he is Santa and that he supposedly holding the floating Camel boxes that are also sticking out of the frame.

Type

 

 

 

 

Style

Bold

Camels and Prince Albert Logo on the top of the ad and above each paragraph about them.

 

 

Italic

“Season’s Greetings” and the tag line on the bottom. These are italicized because the cursive letters and italics give it the feel of being handwritten, which implied that is sincere and trustworthy.

 

Legibility

Slightly Legible

It is illegible inside the bells in every version of the ad that I could find. This implies that this ad was probably in a magazine because it is filled with so much information and that information is written in such compact places.

 

Family

Serif

The paragraphs about the tobacco are serif, and I believe that the text within the bells is serif too.

 

 

Sans Serif

The Logos for Camel and Prince Albert on the tin and boxes themselves are sans serif to fit with the design of the boxes.

3 comments:

  1. The comment on how the boxes advance this argument more as a toy advertisement was well done. Additionally, the noticeable lack of cigarettes furthers that nicely.

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  2. All of your observations are solid and well written. Especially you noticing the lack of cigarettes in a cigarette advertisement. Now let's take these astute observations and focus them into a quality thesis. I imagine something stemming off of the lack of cigs is a good place to start. It is definitely saying something about the ad.

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  3. In your fifth point you mention that there are no cigarettes actually shown in the ad. You can expand on how that showcases the attitudes of the time and build an argument off of that.

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