book question # 3

Appeal to fear is a tactic that I described earlier in my blog post, and is something that is used quite a bit in todays society in order to get people to believe/buy something. While looking for ads to analyze for this prompt, I discovered that there were more ads that use this tactic than I could have imagined. The one that I ultimately decided to analyze for this assignment is a an ad for a medicine that that is supposed to increase health and lessen the risk of heart attacks. Instead of advertising themselves as such, they draw reads to the bold words on top reading “It was a year ago that I had a heart attack and died”. This statement is very misleading for many reasons. If you read the small print underneath it, the man in question did not really die, but rather his heart stopped for a small amount of time. This ad is very misleading in that sense. The ad draws readers in that the scary heading, and all of this is to convince the reader to buy the medicine. The medicine in no way prevents a heart attack, and through online research I learned it actually not not do a lot in terms of helping. The company knows that heart failure is something that affects many people and most of us have known family or friends who have suffered from it. The company is using this fear of it happening to us to sell their product, something that is unfair and unethical.