Official iPhone 5 Trailer

Rachel Yiyi Ge

Kitty Nard

English 113 A

09 October 2012

The Use of Rhetorical Strategies in iPhone 5 Trailer

Apple is one of the greatest companies in the world because hey are so brilliant at marketing. And the heart of marketing is communication, which is based on rhetorical strategies: logos, pathos and ethos. Logos means logic, facts, reasons and rationalities—the author must be thoughtful and provide good reasons and supportive evidences to persuade the audience that his or her ideas are valid, or more valid then someone else; Pathos is emotion, sense, memory and common experience—communicator need to make people feel the same way as himself or herself and more likely to say ”me, too!”; Ethos is credibility, quote, authority and judgment from professionals—the speaker should be considerate, trustworthily, knowledge or fair. In the official trailer of iPhone 5, all of these three elements are used in combination cunningly.

Rhetoric is an art, which people use to process the message we send and receive. The main purpose of the official trailer of iPhone 5 is to convince people to buy them. To persuade the customers to buy the new iPhone, the speakers—apple’s salesmen must know the need of their clients. In the beginning of the advertisement, Jony Ive, the Senior Vice President from the design department, give a speech to make people think about their relationship with their iPhones. “When you think about your iPhone, it’s probably the object that you use the most in your life. It’s the product that you have with you all the time. With its unique relationship people have with their individual iPhone, we take changing it really seriously.” He states that people spend a lot of time with their iPhones. People text to each other, post status updates on our Facebook or Twitter accounts, check Emails, read books or news and paly games on iPhones. To most iPhone users, who may pay more attention on the new iPhone, he was just describing their daily life. It seems that Ive was talking about the facts that could be considered as Logos, or he was using Ethos because he is an expert in designing iPhone. However, this is neither Logos nor Ethos, he was using Pathos, which could bring audience thought about themselves and feel in the same way.

Ive then start talk about the changes they made on the new iPhone, ”It has been completely re-designed. For the first assignment ever, we have increase the size if the display. By making the screen taller than not wider, you can see more of your content for still comfortably use it with one hand. And yet even with the larger display, iPhone 5 is the thinnest lightest iPhone we have ever made. ” For some people, they take their iPhone with them all the time, so they absolutely want it shaped more comfortable for them to hold by one hand—that is definitely what Ive is going to talk about. He knows exactly what the audiences want! And the video begun to show the audience the new features of the iPhone 5: larger screen, thinner and lighter body, new shape that is easier to hold in one hand, etc. Even though it’s not very specific but it could still be recognized as logos.

 Bob Mansfield, the Senior Vice President of Apple Company, gave the second speech. He focuses more on the specific details of the new iPhone. As a professor, he explained the new features of the iPhone 5. He was trying to show the audience his knowledge of the new iPhone 5 by giving detail fact and features. “18% thinner”, 20% lighter”, “LTE—faster speed of downloading”, “LTE& CDMA chip plus A6 chip—two times faster then the old iPhone”, “new cover glass”, etc. These technical facts support Mansfield’s opinion: the iPhone 5 is “the best product we have ever made.” and he even called the new iPhone an “invention”—that could be defined as pathos. In this part of the official trailer of iPhone 5, Bob Mansfield was using logos the most, and, because he is an expert, there was a little bit ethos.

The iPhone users are not only interested in hardware, but also focus on the software, too. Therefore, the video started to introduce their changes on software. Scott Forstall, the Senior Vice President from iPhone software department, was giving a speech about the awesome software that the new iPhone 5 has with it. He mentioned their new 3D map in the new iPhone. “You can look at things like fly-over” he was using his own feeling of using the 3D map so this is considered as pathos. He also introduced some other highlighted features: turn by turn spoken direction could bring you to your destination easily; the panorama feature could help you get panoramic photos by only use your iPhone; Siri could do more—find place to eat and even make a reservation; built-in Facebook and facetime over cellular data networking, etc. All the information above is supportive evidence to show that iPhone 5’s software is so brilliant and amazing. These are exactly logos. Besides, as Scott Forstall is the Senior Vice President, there was ethos using in his speech.

At the end of the video, Jony Ive showed again. This time he was using logos the most to let the audience know how great the new iPhone 5 looks. The video shows the procedures of making an iPhone 5. They use diamond-cutting technique to processing the surface and brand new material on their product. These are absolutely logos.

The main point of an advertisement is not only to offer information about the product but also to persuade the audience to buy the product. To achieve this target, the salesman must know their audience’s need. By using rhetorical strategies can help them reach their goal easier. In the official trailer of iPhone 5, the speakers are very smart. All of them are experts in their career. They were showing the new features of their production and talking about their own experiences or ideas on using the new iPhone 5. It seems like they were just talking about the facts of life with an iPhone, but it was not. They use three rhetorical strategies—ethos, pathos and logos as a combination.

In fact, rhetorical strategies are widely used in people’s daily life. Rhetoric is not only in advertisement and conversations, but also in body language and films. Most time people just use rhetorical strategies unconsciously, but knowing that rhetoric can help them reach their goal easier. Rhetoric is an art of communication; it can help people deliver their thoughts and ideas to their audience easily. Rhetoric is being used on you all the time. It can be used in any situation, whether you are watching a film or an advertisement. So that is why it is really important to know how rhetorical strategies work on us.