Logical Fallacy In Advertising

In today’s world filled with advertisements, political campaigns, news articles, and information overload, we are surrounded by logical inconsistencies everywhere we look. Many examples of logical fallacies can easily be found when we look at all the media that surrounds us. One example of a logical fallacy in an advertisement is the well-known “Faulty use of authority” fallacy. In this fallacy, “an expert in one area is used as an authority for another unrelated area” (Goshgarian, 53). Faulty use of authority is used in innumerable commercials. For instance, while I was watching the super-bowl halftime earlier this year, one of the T-Mobile commercials featured Drake, a well known rapper, who parodied one of his popular songs to advertise

This is an example of faulty use of authority because Drake might be credible in the field of music because of his experience as well as his successes in the industry, but might not be as reliable when it comes to cell phone services and their pros and cons. Nevertheless, many celebrities and well-known icons advertise for certain ideas, even though that is not their field of expertise. They are only called to assist the advertisement since they are convincing to a majority of audiences, especially teenagers. Another example of a logical fallacy that I found was in an ADT security system commercial. This commercial appealed to the audiences’ emotions and used the ad misericordiam fallacy. The advertisement portrayed how ADT could help keep a family and their home safe from theft. In this advertisement, the advertisers did not include many statistics or solid evidences, but rather appealed to the audience’s sense of fear and their desire for personal safety. This usage of ad misericordiam fallacy creates a weak and unreliable argument, because it has no basis in evidences but rather has a basis in the emotions and desires surrounding the