Surprisingly, it actually took me a very long time to find an advertisement that I found to be good enough for this blog post. Many of the ads that I came across were already used in class discussion so I was unable to use them. I eventually settled with an ad that is advertising Sony headphones. The image is of a woman on an airplane with a child sitting behind her. The women is wearing a pair of Sony headphones and looks very relaxed, as the child behind her has his feet up on her chair and has a gaming system in his hand. In advertising many companies choose to include one of Burke’s four master tropes which include metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony.
In this particular case Sony decided to use a metaphor, which is seeing something in terms of something else. Instead of using an actual human head Sony replaced the young boys head with a mega phone instead. The company did this to show that there headphones are the best at blocking out all noises that could interrupt the peacefulness that comes when a person purchases Sony headphones. The child is a metaphor for something loud that could possibly ruin the experience of the headphones but does not because the headphones are of such good quality. For this advertisement the tenor is the child, or Childs head and the vehicle is the megaphone. Also by having the advertisement take place in an airplane was a positive choice for this ad Airplanes can be stressful and loud and no one wants a loud noisy child sitting behind them irritating them for the entire trip. Sony shows how they can help rid of something like this happening. I think in a sense this ad also includes some metonymy, loudness is not something that can be drawn, is needs a symbol of some sort in order to portray loudness. The megaphone is the symbol used. I think that Sony did a good job with their ad and defiantly got their point across of how well the headphones work. It is an easy metaphor that most people can understand at first glance. 