fallacies in Pepsi's Vending machine AD

Fallacies in Pepsi's Vending machine AD

Advertisements are created to persuade people to buy a product or to sell them on an idea. Many advertisements use different strategies such as using athletes and celebrities to persuade the consumers. Companies spend millions of dollars to persuade us and to spend our hard earn[a] money. To persuade us they uses[b] a lot of rhetorical appeals. The main appeals they use is Ethos which is that they use movie stars, famous basketball player and singers to show that their product is valuable[c]. The main goal in every commercial is to feel a connection or emotion towards what their selling. In other words pathos. Ad also uses logos to be logical the way they expresses this is by using stats and data to prove persuade us. In the Pepsi vending machine ad the company uses just a little boy in their ad. Instead of paying a celebrity or a an athlete millions of dollars. Pepsi decided to go on a completely different route, they used a normal boy to promote us their product. The little boy is around 4-6 years old, maybe older but he walks up to a vending machine to buy a pepsi but he cant reach it so he decides to buy two coca cola and uses them as a stool to stand on it and then  proceed to reach and buy the pepsi. This advertisement is a very strange way to persuade us to buy a product. This advertisement uses different methods to persuade us as the audience. It uses Ethos, Pathos, and Logos to persuade the audience. It builds trust and uses feelings and logic to try to us as the audience to change our minds. The commercial target audience is mainly kids, teens and young adults at the age 18-25 to buy the better soft drink which is pepsi. It targets younger people who care about what is trending and that are on social media to find the cooler or trending option. Even though the ad uses a lot of rhetorical appeals they are many fallacies. The strategies they use to persuade us is pretty fallacious. 

One of the fallacies the Pepsi ad used was the ethos Ad Hominem fallacy according to Ramage an ad hominem argument is directed to the character of an opponent rather than at the quality of the opponent's reasoning. Ideally an ad is supposed to focus how good the product actually is  which is focusing on its strengths and explaining why the product s better than its competition. Instead showing why pepsi actually tastes better, or cost less the commercial attracts and disrespects coca cola. The ad show shows the young boy buying two cans of coca cola and uses at a stepping stool to reach the Pepsi. This is a visual ad Hominem by treating coca cola like trash instead of talking about why people like it.

Another fallacy the Pepsi advertisement uses is the pathos appeal to popularity-bandwagon fallacy. Ramage states that bandwagon is fallacious because “the popularity of something is irrelevant to its actual merits.” The pepsi ad tries to convince the audience that pepsi is cool trendy drink that everyone wants, encouraging younger audiences to jump on the bandwagon. By showing this the young kid ignored the coca cola and do whatever it takes to get a Pepsi, the ad tries to create the feeling that pepsi is the hot trend among younger generations. However just because an ad make a drink looks like its better than the other. It also gives no real facts, statistics, or proof about the quality or taste of the soda.

Non sequitur is a logos fallacy. A non sequitur is a mistake in logic where a conclusion does not logically follow from the information presented. The Pepsi ad shows that Pepsi is worth going out of the way to get because the boy puts extra effort into reaching it. First, the boy buys the two cans of Coke. He proceeds to place the two cans on the ground, and then he stands on them to buy the Pepsi. The commercial does not provide any evidence or explanation about the flavor of Pepsi. The commercial connects the boy’s determination with the idea that Pepsi is better; these two things are not necessarily related. Just because you worked hard to get an item in the vending machine does not mean that the item is better than the other item.

One of the fallacies the Pepsi ad used was pathos red herring fallacies. This fallacy throws an audience off the track by raising an unrelated or irrelevant point. When we as viewers watch the commercial it shows us a young kid stepping on cans to reach another can and it's pretty funny. The ad focus on the young boy stepping on the coke instead of focusing on the quality and taste. By showing this shows humor to get a reaction from us. The reaction can differ from how you feel about the commercial but however Pepsi doesn't focus on the real facts about the drink. It does not give any proof about the soda and how its better coca cola or have better ingredients. The ad uses this trick to make people look away from the evidence. The Pepsi commercial focuses on humor instead of answering facts about the product.

Overall the Pepsi commercial uses different fallacious techniques to persuade us as an audience that Pepsi is better than Coca-Cola. The ad hominem attack disrespects coca cola instead of providing us with facts. While the appeal to popularity relies on trendiness rather than quality. The ad also uses bandwagon where Pepsi tries to get us to hop on the trend of buying pepsi over coca cola without proving no real facts or proof that it has better quality. It also uses non sequitur where in ramage “non sequitur is a catchall term for any claim that does not follow from its premises or is supported by irrelevant premises. In conclusion using a young child in this commercial raises a lot of fallacy. The boy is young he is obviously not trustful.