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Brittany Smith
English 101-05
October 22nd, 2018
Professor Arini
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbpFpjLVabA

Commercial Analysis

Commercials are used to sell a product or a service to those who will be seeing the ad.

Advertiser’s use different approaches to entice the viewer to buy whatever they products. They

use ethos, pathos, and logos to convince you that you need their product and or service. Ethos

focuses on ethics and tries to convince someone of their credibility. Pathos, unlike ethos, uses

emotion to sell their product or to get their point across. They can tug on your heart strings, by

using pity or sadness, to convince you by using an emotional approach. As well as, using a

comedic approach to make the viewers happy while watching their advertisement. While logos

focuses only on logical reasoning and facts.

Looking at the Snickers commercial, “You’re not you when you’re Hungry”, they use

pathos to persuade the audience to buy a Snickers bar. It starts out with a group of guys playing

football with Betty White. She is an older, smaller women who is playing the role of a younger

male. He is being portrayed as an old woman and he’s not doing well in the game. She is tackled,

causing her teammates to give her slack about her performance in the game. She then explains

she is hungry. This immediately gets your attention because it is abnormal for an old woman to

play tackle football.

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The ad’s main argument is that when you’re hungry you act totally different. The man

that is playing football is acting like an old woman because he is hungry. She is his “hungry

self”. He’s off his game and the other characters around him come into play. As the other players

tease him for acting like an old women, another character comes in saying he needs to eat a

Snicker bar because he’s hungry and doesn’t act like himself when he is hungry. Advertisers can

aim this towards anyone who likes Snickers, everyone can relate to acting strange when they’re

in need of food.

When it comes to the mood, in the beginning it was draining because the actor was low

on energy and will power, but as soon as he ate the snickers bar the mood is lifted. He becomes

himself again and Betty White (the old lady) disappears. The bar gave him enough energy to

power through the game. Again, this ad is made using pathos because they made this commercial

funny. When something is funny it usually leads to happy emotion creating a feeling of euphoria.

It could also be a little of logos because it is known that when someone is hungry, they are low

on energy and act very different from their normal selves. The soundtrack of an ad can also

create a mood, but there is really no soundtrack, just the other men yelling at the women for not

being on their best game.

The advertising community probably created this ad the way they did because it’s funny

to watch. Also, they used a very popular actor in the creating of this which will make the ad

become more known and seen. The outcome that they want to see is that when they think of
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Snickers, they think of the catchy slogan they created, “You’re not you when you’re Hungry”.

They also hope for viewers to get a Snickers after they see the commercial and boost sales.

This isn’t the only ad that Snickers uses with the same slogan. There are many other

commercials just like this one where someone is acting like a completely different person, then

eats a Snickers and goes back to normal. The outcome of this commercial is very positive and is

probably what the company was hoping for while creating it. “The past six and a half years,

Snickers’ "You’re not you when you’re hungry" has won awards at every major creative

gathering, including Cannes Lions, The One Show, D&AD and the Emmys. It has also scooped

every major effectiveness award, including two Effectiveness Lions, an IPA gold, and global and

local Effies and AME Awards.” (26, 2016, Paragraph one). They not only won many, many

awards, but, “In its first full year, "You’re not you when you’re hungry" helped increase global

sales of Snickers by 15.9% and grew market share in 56 of the 58 markets in which it ran.” (26,

2016, Paragraph two).

Snickers commercial just further proves that using ethos, pathos and logos does affect the

overall sales and want for the product being sold. That by using just one of the devices can

improve sales tremendous and also win the company awards for their commercials. Since then,

Snickers have become known for these ads and always will be known for it.

Work Cited
26, 2016 October. “Case Study: How Fame Made Snickers' 'You're Not You When You're
Hungry' Campaign a Success.” Campaign US, www.campaignlive.com/article/case-study-fame-
made-snickers-youre-not-when-youre-hungry-campaign-success/1413554.