Gerber Products Company's Ethos Pathos Logos

Since its start in 1927, Gerber Products Company has become a well-renowned baby food company in the United States, their endearing logo of a simple pencil drawing of the face of a baby is a household image that can be easily recognized today. Their history and heritage play a large role in how their trust is built with customers. On their website, it is evident they take pride in the consistent quality of product over decades, “Gerber heritage: Committed to healthy babies from the beginning,” a sub-title that introduces customers to a brief look at how their commitment and quality assurance has only improved overall. The advertising strategy for one of their video ads titled “Our Babies” is an aim toward the nutrition and quality of ingredients

Logos thus play a critical role in serving as a point of connection between a company and its customers.” The term “symbolic benefits” is a large part of why the Gerber brand logo, or any successful brand logo, is made to be memorable in the first place. In the terms of this reviewed magazine article, the Gerber logo of a soft and simple sketch-like pencil drawing of the face of a little baby presents the values of Gerber and clearly expresses the brand’s core values as a food product for children; it creates warm feelings associated with the logo over generations of consumers who grew up with it and connects them on a personal level, family-oriented shoppers whom may be reminded of their own child in seeing the logo. Similarly, on a separate journal article displayed on the website Emerald Insight, titled “Symbolic and functional positioning of brands,” they elaborate on the distinction of a functional logo and symbolic logo and how they convey a brand’s image, they state, “Functional brands satisfy immediate and practical needs. Symbolic brands satisfy symbolic needs such as those for self‐expression and prestige, and their practical usage is only

While the 2016 commercial “Our Babies” focuses on the nutritional value of their food, their older commercial from 2010 titled “United Babies” focuses on the importance of nutrition in the development of a child. The entirety of the older ad consists of a time-lapse type of stop motion animation where each frame is a different child, the movement in the animation corresponds with what the voiceover is saying. In the 2010 ad the voiceover states, “Together, we can create a healthier generation,” which sends a different message than the more recent commercial. While the 2016 commercial is more about promoting the quality of their ingredients, the 2010 commercial takes a more informative and logos based aim, such as when it states, “The nutrition children get in the first five years can affect their health forever.” Although both commercials have fun-filled visuals of cute kids, the difference in sales strategy lies in their