Rhetorical Analysis: Visual Advertisements

Date: March 12, 2023

Professor: Erica Ivy
Name: Bronte Peel
This advertisement is for Vegemite and depicts a Vegemite jar with a Christmas theme. It

utilizes the brand’s colours in red, yellow and black, and they have also added in green to

create a Christmas theme in the advertisement. It includes the logo and company name on the

jar, and also portrays a simile that references an Aussie tradition on Christmas Day. The

message of the ad is to connect the product being sold by the advertiser to the Christmas

holiday and activities that occur at a typical Australian Christmas.

There are a range of various important parts in the advertisement that help in providing this

message. There is a juxtaposition between the contrasting colours in the ad which draws the

audience’s attention to a few components of the ad. It is an extremely simple ad with minimal

yet dominant colours, where the focal point of the ad is the large text in the centre of the

advertisement. The red background juxtaposed with the large white writing, makes the

writing stand out, and the audiences focus is immediately drawn to it. The outlier of the

colour green, also draws the attention of the audience and immediately makes them make a

connection to Christmas. Also, the Vegemite jar is represented in the centre of the

advertisement so that the audience immediately familiarizes themselves with the brand. It

references that it is ‘proudly made in Australia’ on each jar as Australians have a culture of

wanting to buy their own products as it is a way of supporting their own.

The text in the advertisement is also utilized to converse the message discussed above. The

main text in ‘Tastes like: Backyard cricket on Chrissy Day’ is the focal point of the

advertisement. It references a typical Aussie summer Christmas Day which is associated with

emotions of happiness, fun, and excitement. This is correlated to the taste of Vegemite to

encourage the audience to buy the product. Each Vegemite advertisement utilizes a new
‘tastes like’ slogan based on events that are happening, so therefore this provides insight to

the context that this is a Christmas advertisement.

The Vegemite creators want the audience to familiarize themselves with emotions that occur

on Christmas Day to enable them to also make the same connection to the product. Both

Vegemite and backyard cricket is an Aussie staple so correlating the two is easily achieved.

This is attained through creating similar emotions that are resonated with each aspect, and the

use of colours to connect the two. It creates a celebratory, holiday feeling, and evokes

emotions of happiness and joy.

Vegemite is an Aussie staple that is widely recognised throughout the country, and the world.

This staple plays on the familiarity of backyard cricket to everyday Australians to correlate

the two. It utilizes the rhetorical appeal of pathos to appeal to your emotions of happiness, fun

and joy when you think of their product. The advertisements ethos is depicted in its reference

to being ‘proudly made in Australia’ as it appeals to the audiences’ beliefs and morals on

wanting to purchase Australian made products. Its logos is evident in its reference to ‘B

vitamins’ as it has utilized factual data on their product to ensure to its audience that the

product is healthy and is a part of a balanced diet.

The rhetorical situation of the advertisement is targeted specifically at an Australian

audience. This is because it makes references that might be unknown to people who are not

Australian and it is also common that a lot of people who are not Australian do not like the

taste of Vegemite so appealing to them is a waste of resources and time. The ad therefore
appears on a range of social media platforms, television advertisements or in newspapers in

Australia. This ensures that it reaches its large target audience and is distributed nationwide.

The advertisement situated above is for the Australian product, Vegemite. It targets an

Australian audience and portrays a message of connecting the product of Vegemite to

Christmas time and different activities that occur at your everyday Australian household on

Christmas Day. It utilizes a range of rhetorical devices to depict this message to the target

audience, and although simple it effectively achieves this.