Pandora Ads

Every day when I start my homework, the first thing that I do is put on music. There is only so many times you can listen to the same iTunes playlist, so I have to go to a different source for my musical entertainment. My favorite source for music is Pandora, also called the Human Genome Project. Pandora allows the listener to constantly stream music that relates to a particular song, artist, or genre that the listener has selected.

I have been a Pandora user for about four years now. When I first started to use the site, it was like heaven. I could listen to a bunch of music I liked, and discover a lot of music I had never heard of before, but the honeymoon period I had with Pandora ended shortly after I realized the business of Pandora. The site is supported partially due to revenue it collects from the ads that it promotes on its site. A large ad covers much of the main screen and audio ads run on the site about every six songs. Before, you could have Pandora running in the background of your party, and everyone thought you had really good taste in music, but now, the ads are a dead giveaway that you are as boring as the rest of the world who can’t generate a decent playlist of music. The advertisements work in a way that can trick someone who gets lost in the music. One minute you could be listening to Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 and the next minute you hear, “Hey, have you tried this scent of Axe yet?” Other commercials actually use music to trick you into thinking you are listening to a selected piece of music, when suddenly, someone is trying to sell you another useful product or 100 free business cards. The ads in Pandora really take away from the music listening experience, but then again, the creators aren’t really worried about you enjoying the music as much as them making money. 

Rhetorical Billboards

This week, my roommate was stumbling and happened to discover a very funny website which spotlights rhetorical billboards. One of my favorite pictures was of two billboards, which happened to be placed right next to each other on the side of a busy street. The billboard to the left is an advertisement from the car company Audi that reads, “Your Move, BMW.” The billboard to the right is a response from the car company BMW, which reads, “Checkmate.” Both of the car companies are trying to showcase their newest, coolest cars, and the companies are obviously rival luxury car producers. What appears to have happened is that Audi decided to take a shot at BMW with the billboard on the left, and BMW’s response to the advertisement was the billboard to the right, which probably went up quite soon after the Audi ad was put up.  This ad does a few things for me rhetorically, with the placement of the ads, the simple words, and the simple make-up of the ads themselves.

The placement of the ads next to each other is very rhetorically genius idea by BMW. When the Audi ad went up, someone from BMW must have come up with the genius idea of turning Audi’s ad campaign into a positive for BMW. The phrase, “Checkmate,” is simple, but also is the perfect response to Audi’s challenging words. The response, which refers to the game of chess, is a response, which most people would be familiar with, and upon seeing it would get a chuckle out of the witty response of the BMW ad. The appearance of the ads is very rhetorical in themselves, because although there are pictures of each company’s featured cars on the billboards, the billboards draw the viewers’ eyes toward the words with their black backgrounds and white lettering which beg to be read. Aside from being pretty funny, this is a great example of rhetoric at it’s finest.

 Works Cited:

Author Unknown. cSlacker.com. 2011. 17, March 2011.

http://www.cslacker.com/images/file/mediums/billboard_wars.jpg

The Rhetoric of television

The Office is a very unique television shows for many reasons. The show has a way of using rhetoric to portray comedy in a way that television has never seen before. It was one of the first comedies to not include a laugh track in the background of the episodes. This creates a rhetorical effect with the audience, because the audience is forced to really pay attention to the plot of the show in order to get the jokes. It plays on the idea of kairos, or an opportune time, because the audience has to find a time to laugh. There are many times during the show when a simple chuckle will do, but other times bursting out in laughter is perfectly acceptable. The exclusion of a laugh track also makes the audience realize that everyone has a unique sense of humor. Some people will find jokes funny, because it may play on a current event that they are up to date on, while another person might not find the joke funny, because they don’t understand the context of the joke. The Office has been revolutionary in introducing a new form of comedy, which gives the audience to find humor without the guidance of a superficial laugh track.

            The Office also uses the rhetorical element of logos, but in a twisted sort of way. The show plays on an office environment, which normally would not have many abnormalities, but the show turns the environment into a complete circus where any amount of credibility is thrown out the window. The show works so well, because it plays on the lack of logic in the work environment. Some viewers might have a slightly odd boss, like Michael Scott, or work with a socially awkward employee like Dwight. Rhetoric can be found anywhere in entertainment and The Office is another revolutionary asset to the entertainment business displaying rhetoric at its best.