Tuesday, November 4, 2014

PETA- Rhetorical Analysis Essay

Visual/Rhetorical Analysis

Gordon Miller
Dr. Chris Wielgos
College Writing 2
October 20, 2014
             Awareness of animal cruelty
    Over one hundred million animals, alone, die from animal testing a year. That's because we either don't know what happens behind the scenes, we just don't care, or there's nothing we can do about it. However, there are alliances and organizations     trying to stop this madness, as it is vital that animal cruelty gets stopped immediately.
    PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, is the largest animal rights organization in the world, with over three million activists worldwide (Peta.org, Web). They have been protesting for animal rights since March of 1980. With a global target, they target any location from SeaWorld to highly populated countries; they will take down any cult or government that believes in animal cruelty.. With so many active members and curious non-activist members, it is important to keep updated with the organization through social media.
    A vibrant blue color welcomes the audience to their home webpage. The blue is associated with depth and stability. Immediately, a Pop-Up ad appears asking to donate before time runs out for their exclusive offer. This ad is a bright red color with a white font. The bright red grabs attention, just like a stop sign. As the audience looks at the top left of the webpage, they notice the dark blue PeTA logo. The "E " is indented because they want to enforce the "ethical" in their acronym, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. To the right of the acronym is a light blue rabbit symbolizing they work with animals. As the audience looks to the top right of the webpage, they see the PETA slogan, "Animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, use for entertainment, or abuse any other way." Right away, the audience notices the bold font on the word "not." PETA wants to reinforce what they are about to the audience.
    As the audience continues to examine the webpage, more and more information arises. In the top center is the legend to choose where the audience cares to look at. Out of all the topics, only two of them are colored differently; home and donate now. "Home" is the color green and that's because it's the most restful color to use (colorwheelpro.com, Web). The "Donate Now" button is a bright yellow, showing that it is an attention grabber. School buses and taxis are painted that color for that same exact reason. In this case, PETA put bright yellow to direct donors to the donate section.
    Down below, is a slideshow of images from animal cruelty articles that simultaneously repeat. The audience is exposed to graphic photos, nevertheless, graphic text. Between text and visual, text is secondary and visual in primarily the focus. The texts in the articles are quite distinct. For example, " cats have holes drilled into their skulls and metal coils implanted in their eyes, and they're deprived of food and water"(Peta.org, Web). As the audience see's how gruesome it sounds, they are wanting to help the cause. Although this is reality, it is also a great strategic tool the organization uses to get more donations. This is an example of cause marketing. Cause marketing is marketing used to help a cause by donations or volunteering. Not only do they use this tool in their website, but also in their advertisements.
    PETA uses a fear appeal and persuasive element in their advertisements. They use the fear appeal because they want the audience to fear what goes on with animal cruelty and by gaining their emotional attachment; they then use the persuasive element to ask the audience to donate. It tends to work because of their strategic planning. Music plays an important role in their commercials, as well as, photography. Music sets the mood of the commercial while the photography is gaining the audience's emotional attachment. However, PETA is a global organization and with animal cruelty happening all over the world, they advertise the message about saving animals worldwide. Therefore, when the audience listen's to the message, they then head to the PETA website. That takes us back to what we were talking about earlier. Not only does PETA have an American website, but also in Asia, Latin America, Middle Eastern, UK, and China.
    There are not many differences in each website. The only differences are that there are different problems in different areas. Each website uses a target segmentation towards each target location. Whether it's a local town or a highly populated city, PETA sends the message out to anyone in that country. Anyone can go to their website, but the ones that mainly do, are the ones that have been exposed to PETA's advertising. They use geographic segmentation to reach their audience. When the audience examines the Latin American website, the format and medium is the same. The only difference is the language and the articles. Other than the audience, language, format, medium and articles being different, everything else stayed the same.
    PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, has influenced millions of people, even the people on the show on Discovery Channel, Whale Wars. I for one have been influenced as well. See, I never really cared about animal cruelty until I saw the horrid articles about it. It reminds me of my dog, Mia, that I had. We gave her away because of health reasons. The sad thing is, Mia died a year later from being mistreated, abused, and not taken care of. Thanks to PETA, I got to open my eyes and see the reality of how cruel society is. If we all could just open our eyes and help out in anyway. I'm not saying don't eat meat, but not buying products that have been animal tested or not buying fur jackets help the cause. Animals don't deserve to be tested on, whether it's a mouse or a giraffe. PETA is an organization that is the voice to all animals. Just like humans, animals should have rights too.
   



















            Work Cited
PETA. "Color Wheel Pro - See Color Theory in Action." Color Wheel Pro: Color Meaning. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Nov. 2014
Author, No. "People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA): The Animal Rights Organization." PETA. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Nov. 2014.

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