Persuasive Analysis #4 - "Tobacco Free Hall County"

“Tobacco Free Hall County” is an anti-smoking advertisement that attacks secondhand smoke, one of the more dominant side effects of cigarettes. It features a disheveled, young soccer player sitting on a bench in what appears to be an empty locker room. His face is covered with grime and appears inwardly anxious, as if awaiting the outcome of a decisive match. To the left side of the athlete is a subtitle that bluntly says, “Secondhand Smoke Kills”, while underneath are some facts pertaining to the casualties of smoking. They point to chain smoking parents as the main culprits behind childhood asthma. In the bottom right-hand corner the advertisement offers two phone numbers, presumably so that the curious audience can discover more information about the plague of secondhand smoke.

In this pertinent advertisement against smoking and the collateral damage that it incurs, logical reasoning is relied on heavily to enforce the idea that smoking is deadly and has vast repercussions. It gravely states, “[secondhand smoke] increases the number of asthma attacks and the severity of asthma by 20%." Positioned at the forefront of the ad, these words greatly perturb the conscience of the reader, whether he or she is a smoker or a non-smoker, because the reader is presented with irrevocable hard facts that support the claim of secondhand smoke’s lethality. But while the inclusion of quantitative data helps in convincing the audience of the validity of the argument, there is some faulty logic present that is reinforced by obvious fallacies. The inventors of this ad are guilty of begging the question; it is apparent that secondhand smoke is portrayed as the ultimate, if not sole, perpetrator of asthma attacks. It leads the audience on to believe that smokers should be charged with spreading an epidemic of asthma, while ignoring other contributing factors like genetics and environmental pollution, thus predetermining the conclusion of the argument before the reader can do so.The severity of secondhand smoke is also overstated through the use of evocative imagery. In the advertisement the soccer player is sitting behind two barred windows, creating a sense of impending doom. This is a deft way of using ethos to appeal to the audience. Anyone with an open mind could easily be moved by such a harrowing representation of the hazards of smoking.

Source: http://www.jasonkobs.com/images/design/advertising_anti-smoking.jpg