Fallacies Used In Advertising

Fallacies are statements that weaken arguments. However, fallacies have the opposite effect in marketing. In virtually every magazine or advertisement, there is an extensive use of fallacies throughout. This is because fallacies work to sell products. Fallacies appeal to people’s emotions and desires, and they can manipulate a person into buying a product, often times without the person even realizing they’re being manipulated. One magazine, the April, 14, 2014 edition of People, uses a wide array of fallacies throughout their magazine in an attempt to sell as many copies to people as possible. On the cover of People magazine, the main headline is about the divorce between Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin. The headline features statements

One fallacy used in this advertisement is Hasty Generalization. The advertisement features statements such as “Find New Favorites And Help End Child Hunger,” and “Child Hunger Ends Here,” written in big, bold letters. This sends the message that by simply purchasing one of the special products and entering a code, a person can help end the issue of child hunger. This makes it seem that even though ending child hunger is a huge and very complicated issue, their products provide the easy solution. The advertisement also uses Appeal to Pity when it states, “more than one in five kids in America come from food insecure households.” This use of Appeal to Pity works to promote the ad because it generates a feeling of sadness from the reader, who would most likely feel a great deal of pity for the children who don’t always have access to food. While the message of the advertisement seems selfless, it is actually selfish as the marketers are using Appeal to Pity to manipulate people into buying one of their specially marked products. The Appeal to Pity and the Hasty Generalization work together in this advertisement to promote the products. The Appeal to Pity saddens the reader and makes them want to do something to help the cause, while the Hasty Generalization gives the reader a sense of actually being able make a difference.

The main fallacy used in this essay is Appeal to Pity. Even before the readers begin the article, they are faced with a picture of the young boy, Lucian Olivera, on crutches and in leg braces. This immediately evokes a sense of pity and grief, as readers begin to feel sorry for this young boy who is going through something that no person, let alone child, should ever have to endure. This sense of pity is continued throughout the entire article, as it goes on to describe the struggles of not only Lucian, but also another young child, Sofia Jarvis, whose left arm was paralyzed from the same disease. The Appeal to Pity in this article is very effective for the purpose of selling the magazine copies because is appeals to people’s emotions, which is an extremely powerful thing. Readers feel sorry for others who are going through underserved pain, and they feel even more sorry if those people are children. At the same time, readers are intrigued by this story. The emotion that is evoked by this Appeal to Pity peaks a reader’s curiosity, and they feel the need to keep reading the article to find out all the details of the story, such as how the children got the disease, how they were affected, and how they are coping with it. In addition to Appeal to Pity, another main fallacy used in