Shayna Simona

Phil 25

Homework 1: Fallacies and Rhetoric Appeals

The video that I am choosing for my fallacies ad is the Michael Phelps Subway video. In

the beginning of the video, it shows Michael Phelps training. From there, it shows his mom

bringing him a foot-long Subway sandwich. Many claims are mentioned throughout the video.

This ad has three different types of rhetoric appeals and fallacies. It consists of ethos,

argumentum populum, anecdotal fallacy and false cause. By analyzing this ad, we can see the

many issues that make the argument of eating at subway, less convincing.

The first concept that is seen in this video is a rhetorical device. This ad consist of ethos.

Ethos is also known as ethical appeal. It is used to describe the audience's perspective of the

persons credibility. Michael Phelps is a well-known Olympic swimmer. Using him as the main

advertiser allows people to correlate health and fitness with the brand (Subway). The people

watching the ad already assumes Phelpss knowledge in health because of his fitness status,

being an Olympic gold medalist. He is considered credible enough to persuade people on what is

good to eat. This is an extrinsic ethos because of his public status. Extrinsic ethos is the persons

credibility based on experience, education, character, expertise, etc. There is also intrinsic ethos,

where the persons way of speaking (or writing) is what convinces the audience. I do not believe

that intrinsic ethos plays a part in this ad because people are mostly focusing on who he is. The

extrinsic ethos is very important to the creation of this ad, while the intrinsic ethos does not have
any negative or positive affect on the audience. Ethos is a powerful tool used in this ad to create

credibility in why people should eat subway.

After analyzing the ethos appeal, this leads to the next concept; a fallacy. In the video, the

narrator says, To perform your best, trainings got to be a lifelong passion, fueled by a foot-long

passion. Thats why Debbie Phelps is always there for her son, Michael, with his favorite...foot-

long subs. This statement is a false clause. A false clause is a problem with logic when one

assumes that just because an incident happened first causes the second incident to happen. The

video is saying that Michael Phelps has a passion for training, which is fueled by Subway foot-

longs. It implies to the audience that to train like him, you need to be fueled by Subway foot-long

sandwiches. This is also an anecdotal fallacy. An anecdotal fallacy is using personal experience

rather than a sound argument or compelling evidence. The narrators statement is all based off

one person. There is no supportive evidence that to perform your best, you must have a lifelong

passion that is fueled my Subways foot-long sandwiches. This may work for Michael Phelps;

however, this may not work for other people. There is no compelling or logical evidence to make

the argument sound.

Finally, another fallacy that I found is argumentum ad populum, which is popular appeal.

Michael and his mother claim, The official training restaurant of the Phelps family and athletes

everywhere. They are implying that athletes everywhere consider Subway to be there training

restaurant. Specifically, they are using bandwagon to convince the audience that subway is

healthy because Michael Phelps and athletes everywhere eat it. There is no proof that athletes

everywhere eat subway. The video implies that Subway is eaten as many part of athletes training

ritual; however, this is not factually proven. The only evidence that the audience has is from the
word of Michael Phelps. This leads to the bandwagon fallacy because the ad tries to encourage

their audience in eating at subway by telling them that all athletes are doing it. The argument is

based off biased opinion with no credible evidence.

Identifying the audience is important to this analysis because then we can see who these

rhetorical appeals and fallacies are directed to. Since a star athlete, Michael Phelps, is used as the

main source of advertisement, and the reference of all athletes having Subway as there training

restaurant, suggests that the ad is directed towards health-conscious people. Health conscious,

referring to people who care somewhat for their health, including fitness and diet. Health

conscious people do not only apply to athletes and models. If a person is not somewhat health

conscious at all, then this ad would have no impact on them. The producers target people who

want to be healthy; therefore, putting a star athlete on the ad would gain some attention from

health-conscious people. The psychological effect that this ad causes on people is a

disillusionment. It creates desire and unrealistic thinking in peoples minds; such as, I can be

more like him if I eat what he eats, disregarding that he was probably paid to do this ad. The

subconscious need that this ad plays upon is peoples desire to get in shape. It supports the idea

of getting in shape only requires a change of diet, yet, there are a lot more factors than what the

ad shows.

There is no logically justified reason on why someone should go to Subway based on this

video. All this video shows is a biased opinion based off an athlete endorsed to star in this ad.

The ad shows no evidence of any of the claims made. Throughout this video, we have come

across different rhetorical appeals and fallacies. One of the appeals, ethos, is used, where a

famous athlete, Michael Phelps, is used to advertise for Subway. Second, is a false clause, in
which the narrator tries to correlate training and a lifelong passion with eating subway. Third, is

an anecdotal fallacy because they try to provide evidence only based on their personal

experience. Finally, there is ad populum/bandwagon, where they use popular appeal (with no

evidence) as credibility. The only reason that the ad gives to convince the audience to go to

subway is, because Michael Phelps eats Subway. This commercial lacks any compelling logic

that an individual should pick Subway.

 Works Cited
Argumentum Ad Populum. (n.d.). Retrieved March 16, 2017, from
http://philosophy.lander.edu/logic/popular.html
Witt, J. (2014). Soc. New York.: McGraw-Hill.