Argument Analysis

For more than a decade, with the explosion of modern technology, consumers have been approached and overwhelmed with multimedia advertising types and creative elements. This has brought not only a big concern about the effectiveness of traditional TV commercials but also many arguments over the time of TV commercials among many advertisers and marketers around the world. To address this matter, Jeri Smith, president and CEO of advertising research firm Communicus, has recently published an editorial called “Screen Time” in the Marketing Insights. In her piece of writing, she strongly supports the role of traditional TV commercials within an overall integrated advertising campaign which targets mass audiences and clearly points out that TV commercials just need to evolve. In order to convince her target audiences, advertisers and marketers, in her epideictic argument, Jeri analyzes and evaluates the power of TV commercials compared with non – traditional media types. She appeals her audiences by adopting logos with supporting facts and data, making her persuasion even more powerful.

Jeri opens her analysis by giving us a thorough background of current marketplace and her key observation on the performance of the traditional TV commercials today: “Interestingly, the traditional TV commercial is still around today, with U.S. marketers spending nearly $80 billion per year on TV advertising.” (para 1). This fact-oriented leading observation followed by more in-depth supporting facts successfully directs her readers to her strong statement without any doubt in mind. To further the persuasion, Jeri continues to discuss the unmatched power of traditional TV commercials versus other media types by praising the reach power of TV commercials while pointing out the inability of other media forms to achieve significant audience size. This is clearly that Jeri is using an epideictic argument approach with the presentation of facts and reasons in support of her analysis.

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