Project One Draft
Child Friendly Advertising

Have you ever been somewhere in public and have seen, or overheard something in private, a person caring for a child acting so irresponsible that you worry for that child’s future? That is what this ad by the Child Friendly Initiative of Australia is appealing to, a problem that at some point, everyone has been a witness to. "Children See, Children Do" is the resonating message any viewer is left with after seeing the behavior that is a reality for many families and children throughout not only the United States, but the world. The rhetorical tool Ethos is used, as the audience watching knows that what both the children and the adults in the video are doing is wrong and that the adults are directly influencing the behavior of the children. The main rhetorical strategy deployed is pathos, as it is a strikes strong emotion in its viewers because of how unacceptable and out of place the behavior is. The ad is so strong because it takes something that is not often seen, the direct negative influence of a child's behavior, and makes it the subject of the ad. The music also plays a role in setting the mood early in the ad. It's soft tune includes the lyric, "...looks like rain again today...", which helps set a solemn mood.

When first viewing the commercial, one may become somewhat confused until the context of the advertisement is understood. The ad begins by what could be mistaken as a few children mimicking their parents’ daily activities: Walking to work, using a telephone, or waiting for a train; relatively weak pathos. However, as the ad progresses, the scenes become more out-of-place, as was seen when the woman and young girl smoked a cigarette or when the man carelessly littered with the young boy. As the woman and her son scream profanities out of a car window and a woman pukes on the side of the road with her daughter, likely because of her less than kosher lifestyle, it becomes very clear that this ad has a strong message that is not to be taken lightly.

Child Friendly Initiative begins using stronger, more direct examples of pathos with a higher exigency. The next scene of the ad is of a man and his son yelling bigotry at a dry cleaning business. The anger not only in the father, but on the face and in the voice of the boy turns the ad to a higher level of pathos. The continues scene of a women raging at a telephone with her daughter or a man and a boy throwing rocks at a caged dog only help to solidify the unspoken claim being made. That claim being made is that children are highly susceptible to influence, especially those from people of importance to them, such as parents, teachers, siblings, and other close family.

The climax of the ad is the scene in which a mother and daughter are screaming at a baby for crying and a man and his son is yelling and physically abusing his spouse. This kind of behavior is largely detrimental to children because it gives them the idea that it is okay to physically and emotionally abuse others and neglect those who require nurturing. These are very important issues that have numbers to prove it. Statistics by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Children’s Bureau shows that almost 80% of child maltreatment cases are categorized as neglect and almost 20% are categorized as physical abuse. Also, information form The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and The National Institute of Justice, Extent, Nature, and Consequences of Intimate Partner Violence, one in four women have experienced domestic violence in her life.

The very last scene is a powerful and refreshing one. A man and his son aid a woman who has dropped her belongings in a parking garage. This demonstrates ethos and the great point that children are also capable of being influence by kindness and good will.

Adam Klaser’s response

1. Is there a clear argument/thesis to the paper? Identify the thesis directly in the text or paraphrase it in your own words.

The thesis is kind of fragmented between a couple of sentences. In short, the thesis is that the ad uses the strategies of ethos and pathos to show how a parent can easily influence their children.

2. Does the paper have a clear exigence and purpose? Do you have a solid idea of why this argument is an important one and/or why it is or should be interesting to an audience made up of people such as yourself? What is the exigence?

The purpose of this paper is to show just how easily children are influenced by their parents actions.

3. Does the paper follow a clear structure or does it read more like a disconnected series of observations? I.e., do the different paragraphs or sections of the piece seem to follow from one another? Are there appropriate transitions between different sections and ideas? Is there any part of the paper that seems unnecessary - "beside the point" or unrelated to the overall argument of the project as a whole?

The paper is more like a disconnected series of observations. There really isn’t any transitions that connect any of the paragraphs together to make it have a clear structure.

4. Did any argument or analysis in this paper seem unwarranted or exaggerated (in other words, did you think the writer was "jumping to conclusions" at times or being unfairly judgmental or dismissive)?

No, the writer was able to analyze what was going on in the ad without being judgmental. For example, he makes the claim that children are highly susceptible to influence from people of importance around them. Here is not being jumping to conclusions since everyone knows that this fact is true.

5. What, in your opinion, is the strongest part of this paper?

The strongest part of this paper is the examples and the analysis of those examples. He does a good job of being able to analyze the examples and find a hidden meaning that is in them.

6. What, in your opinion, is the weakest part of this paper?

In my opinion, the weakest part of the paper is the thesis. There is one there, but it is spread out through the introduction making it hard to decide what exactly the thesis is.

7. If you were presenting a counter-argument to the paper (i.e., an attempt to argue against the thesis or central argument of the paper), what would it be? E.g., if you were asked to provide a counter-argument to the example paper we read on "Advergaming," you might argue that advertising in gaming is either not as widespread or not as problematic as the authors suggests (and provided reasons).

The counter-argument I would make would be that parents try and hind some of their actions that they know will be a bad influence on their children.

8. On the sentence-level, did you find the paper to be well written? Does it contain poor grammmar or sentence-fragments? Is it unnecessarily wordy at times?

The paper seemed to well written, with very few grammatical mistakes.

9. Finally, what grade would you give this paper if you were evaluating it as it is now?

As of right now I would have to give this paper a B- simply because of the fact that the thesis isn’t quite developed yet.