Observation of Ads

George Lewis Hughes

English 103: Accelerated Composition – Observation

Professor Richards

September 29, 2008

The Amazing ShamWow Ad in Depth

The universally dreaded ShamWow popup ad has most certainly succeeded in leaving its due scar in the memory of each and every American citizen who should so unsuspectingly frequent the television set. The commercial’s solicitor, “Vince,” is hyperbolically enthusiastic about the effectiveness of ShamWow, the magical product in question, to the extent that he should be addressed as less of a human and more of a pixilated computer program character. “Made in Germany,” he does not hesitate to mention, as if the very notion of a German-made product has burned into the American brain the implied mainstay of quality; in fact, he does not hesitate to say anything, which an average American viewer might digress to notice, since the “narrator” allows simply no breathing room for pontification regarding the product’s legitimacy.

In terms of comparison-contrast, Vince inanely proceeds to compare the results of the typical towel and the paper towel in a standoff with the ShamWow – a scenario of wiping up a countertop spill – in which the former two contenders stand not a chance in the face of the visually flawless sponge-work of the omnipotent wiping counterpart from Deutschland. Meanwhile, a strobe-like deluge of subliminal footage concerning the practicality of the ShamWow in all vocations of daily cleaning and wiping mechanics completes the purported goal to hypnotize the so-called “masses;” and, of course, to inadvertently piss off the intelligent minority as a side effect of its nationwide public effusion. Such horror can categorize itself under the literary device of example and illustration.

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The ad’s cause-and-effect strategy exudes to be more self-evident than its other rhetorical elements, if at all possible. Essentially, Vince most assuredly believes he has brainwashed corporate America into flaunting and idolizing the ShamWow as the end-all and be-all to every possible “messy” encounter, to be quite literal. Whether it be using the product as both a soap sponge and a towel to wash and dry one’s car or boat, as a staining-fluid absorbent, or as a carpet’s savior from fragrant saturation, ShamWow can be verbally packaged as none other than – according to one televised client’s description – “Sham Wow!,” for whatever that jubilee is worth.

From this vantage point, the highly redundant ad is as saturated in technical definition, process, and demonstratively visual description as one of those notoriously thirsty ShamWow’s up front, after having soaked up its monetary worth in a sadly wasted puddle of good Bordeaux. The final apparent persuasive strategy of classification and division particular to this commercial ultimately sums up the product’s long-term integrity with a generously ensured and insured ten-year warranty, to which effect Vince loyally follows up on the monetary equivalent to that ten-year exhaustion in paper-towel spending.

The only rhetorical devices thereof which legitimately influence me, if at all, is its hypnotic quality belonging to the house of the abrasively heretical canon of example and illustration. Tragically, I myself constitute one of the many who quite off-guardedly fall victim to the numbing embrace of the shallow, short-round bursts of visual footage and auditory salvos. In short, if it is loud and obnoxious, or if it just simply inserts the conduction of either an extremely attractive or extremely bizarre vessel, I will be sucked into its brain-frying overtones until its belated conclusion leaves me in a stupor of grumbling over my previously sabotaged

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train of thought upon its instant of brainwashing interruption. Otherwise, I am not at all convinced of the product’s integrity, since it is solicited in the package of an infomercial definitively from the very start.