INTRODUCTION

“I don’t know the rules of grammar.... If you’re trying to persuade people to do something,
or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language the y use every
day, the language in which the y think. We try to write in the vernacular.“ David 0 gilvy

Advertisement is the tool used by many companies in order to inform prospective

customer about their products and services. We live in a world that is flooded with
advertising. In the car, on the metro or walking through the town we see it everywhere. We
read what we need to buy, do, need, cannot live without, we absorb all these often
unconsciously and do not pay special attention to it. Our mind often first work with visual
stimulation, such as pictures, colors and only then with letters, words and the messages,
therefore messages used in advertising needs to be short and unique to be remembered.
The goal of most media messages is to persuade consumers to believe or do something. In
movies special effects are used to make us believe that what we see is real. News stories use
other techniques, such as direct quotations to make us believe that the story is accurate and
truthful. In the advertisement variety of techniques are used to get our attention, to establish
credibility or trust to motivate us to the act of buying the product, vote for the right political
party or invest money into the particular service. As mentioned above our mind is more
focused on the visual part of advertisements therefore text and messages should be rather
short but they should provoke some kind of emotion and be memorable as much as they can.
For such a purpose, many companies create commercial slogans, short messages which,
however, are informative and memorable at the same time. Slogans usually represent the
whole company, such as Nokia Connecting People, Nike Just do it or Adidas Impossible is
nothing. Slogans are very powerful marketing tools, they support brand and create brand
awareness of customers. The best slogans are instantly associated with the company without
need of saying the name of the company, such as ’m /ovin i—/ the majority of people is able
to recognize McDonald Company immediately. We see millions of messages and
catchphrases everywhere starting with print media to online media, on TV, we can hear them
on the radio. There are slogans that we know by heart but others we have hardly noticed.
What stands behind the successful ones? One of the key rule is positivity, it needs to have
positive factor that make us to look more times than just once, it needs to provoke some kind
of imagination and it needs to be original. According to the book "Creative Advertising" by
Charles Whittier: "A slogan should be a statement of such merit about a product or service
that is worthy of continuous repetitive advertising; is worthwhile for the public to remember;
and is phrased in such a way that the public is likely to remember it."
Slogans are short text messages that need to be kept simple; however, one word is usually
not enough. Slogans often use grammatical structure that would not be accepted anywhere
else except for advertising. This diploma thesis explores the structures, tools and
grammatical devices are used in advertising slogans to increase persuasive effect on
consumers.
The theoretical part of the thesis is devoted to researching what advertising is, the history
of advertising, what type of advertising is known and widely used. Further the work deals
with visual strategies of advertising, and focuses mostly on the linguistic characteristics
verbal and written messages.
The practical part studies the Fast Food industry, preferably American. The focus is on
what grammatical structures are used within their slogans, what is used most often, whether
there is any pattern used either within one company or among all of them. In addition, it
works with the perception of slogans characteristics. What they should include and what
effect they should have on the consumers.
The thesis should give an overall overview on advertising, primarily on slogans, their
grammatical structure and thus should be proven on existing slogans and advertisements.