Rhetorical Techniques

The cultural artifact I’ve chosen to analyze is an advertisement by the M&M Company. The image appears in a magazine as a blank white sheet with a collection of M&M’s that form a large computer keyboard. Instead of the iconic “M” on each candy piece, they have their corresponding QWERTY keyboard letter on them. Upon analyzing this advertisement, I chose to look at it from many different sides. Two of the strongest rhetorical techniques I have found are the size and placement of the image as well as the image itself. The keyboard is placed in the center of the page since that is where the eyes automatically look, and the image is large enough to cover most of the page. The background is plain white while the M&M candy pieces are brightly colored, drawing all of the attention to the candies themselves. The M&M logo appears very small all the way at the bottom of the page. I believe this is because M&M’s are so popular that they are widely recognizable and people don’t need to see the actual logo to know that they are M&M’s. Aside from the placement of the image, the fact that the M&M’s form a computer keyboard is a genius approach to gaining the attention of teenagers and adults who use computers. Anyone could recognize a keyboard, and can relate to this ad because nowadays we all use computers. I think a combination of these two rhetorical techniques plus everything else that is done in this advertisement help make it really successful.