Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Companies worldwide pay large sums in order to properly market
themselves. One category of products that has been known for its use of
use of shamelessly persuasive advertisements is the beer industry. Dos
Equis is one such company, who has found advertising success as a
result of expertly manufacturing a hyperbolic celebrity to endorse their
product. By doing such Dos Equis has personified their product, used
diction to persuade their target market as well as provide engrossing
visuals that tie the advert together while providing rhetoric appeal. The
advert “Being Boring”, is a great example of Dos Equis using this
strategy to be seen as a noteworthy and memorable product.
A well known technique in advertising is to use a celebrity to
endorse the product. This is known to have an ethos appeal; an appeal
made to give further credibility to the product in the mind of the viewer.
Dos Equis performs this feat in an intriguing manner, by manufacturing a
character with celebrity status. The Most Interesting Man In The World is
the resulting character in which his title alone triggers the idea of
importance. Furthermore, the character’s title in addition to his perceived
personality is ripe with hyperbole. This creates a humorous side of the
ad, and draws in the viewers with pathos appeal; an appeal made to
evoke an emotional response from the viewer. Finally, the captivating
nature of the character, is used to present a personification of the beer.
This helps to form the correlation that since the character drinks Dos
Equis, it must by extension be the most interesting beer in the world.
Through recurring use of the character across many advertisements a
specific worldview representative of Dos Equis beer has been created.
Specifically in this ad, Dos Equis presents their products view on being
boring.
In the advert “Being Boring”, diction is used in many aspects to
create appeal for the product. The title text “The Most Interesting Man in
the World on being boring”, engages the viewer into looking at the rest of
the text as it promises insight into what the character views as boring.
This demonstrates an pathos appeal as it causes the viewer to feel as
though the advertisement and by extension the beer, will help the viewer
not be seen as boring. Additionally, the character’s title is a synecdoche,
which BLAH defines as when “the name of a part of something is used to
refer to the whole thing” (Metaphor 127). This emphasizes that the most
important aspect of the character is the beer he drinks. The text
continues “Being boring is a choice. Those mild salsas and pleated
khakis don’t buy themselves”. The use of the word ‘choice’ in this context
emphasizes that being boring is the viewers’ choice, and implies that the
choice to drink Dos Equis is the choice to not be boring. Finally, the
diction of the slogan plays an important role in the advertisement. The
slogan Dos Equis uses is “Stay Thirsty, my friends”. This slogan
accomplishes two things. Firstly, as it is intended to be spoken by the
character, referring to the viewers as friends, causes a connection to be
made between the viewer and the character. Due to the aforementioned
ties between the persona of the character and the beer, this extends the
pathos appeal of the beer. Finally, by advocating the viewers to stay
thirsty, the ad provides a logos appeal; an appeal to the viewers sense
of logic. The logical appeal here is straightforward in that it centers
around the simple concept of beer drinkers wanting to drink beer.
The visuals used in the advert ties together the diction and the
character, as well as providing its own distinct appeals. By depicting The
Most Interesting Man In The World, all of the text in the ad is instantly tied
to the character. This is an anchorage relationship as the meaning of the
text is partially narrowed down by the context of the character (Words
and Pictures 142). This strengthens the rhetoric appeals discussed
earlier. Furthermore, it provides instant recognition of the ad to viewers
who are familiar with other Dos Equis ads. This instant recognition
implies the viewer has knowledge of the ethos and worldview of the
character and as such, the rhetoric appeals in the advertisement will be
magnified. Additionally, the ad uses framing to portray the character
centered in a typical nightlife setting which provides context to the ad.
This strengthens the theme of being interesting, as the character is
positioned in the center which portrays him as being the life of the party.
Furthermore, since he is surrounded by attractive women, there is further
appeal to the male viewers’ sense of masculinity, with an implied
association between drinking Dos Equis and being able to attract
women.
In whole, The Most Interesting Man In The World character, the
diction of the advert and the visuals used enabled the ad to successfully
portray the desired persuasive message of Dos Equis to its consumers.