Professor Melanie Rudd
Zhanar Suleimen
MARK 4362
10/19/15
Persuasive Appeals: PETA and KayaKing
Because I didn’t have a particular advertisement in mind for this paper to begin with, it
was a very exciting and interesting task to search for it. With all the creativity and variety
of advertisements we have in the world today it wasn’t the easiest task as well. I have
debated on what to choose for this paper from the extremely wide pool of advertisements
today. When it came to the decision making process I thought that I should ask myself a
series of questions to narrow down my choices to two examples: what is an effective
advertisement for me? What kind of advertisement do I like? And how does it make me
feel? The answer to my simple questions were: an advertisement should be simple, with a
very distinct, clear message and the design (colors, size and shape) should be high quality
with appealing features that suit my taste. I also enjoy humor in advertisements. Once I
had my answers, I knew that the bad example will be everything that doesn’t fall along
these lines. Of course, I acknowledged that everyone is different, and what’s beautiful to
me might be not so beautiful to others. With all this in mind I came to the decision of
choosing the following two advertisements for this paper about persuasive appeals:
1. KayaKing jumbo peanuts print advertisement
2. PETA advertisement about a man embracing a vegan diet
KayaKing is a company that sells peanuts. The key strengths of this print advertisement for
me was that it was: humorous, high quality and the message was clear. The fact that the
company chose to incorporate humor helped them grab attention from consumers. The
company chose to take the stereotypical myth that elephants love peanuts and used it in the
ad. This ad is attention grabbing because the picture is something that we don’t usually
see. Most of us don’t see elephants on a daily basis at all, thus the advertisement attracts
involuntary attention and raises curiosity. But it’s not only that, the color scheme chosen
for this advertisement is also attention grabbing. Although earth colors are used, the
elephant figures are defined, dominant and clear. The attention is held on the main figures
and the background is simple and doesn’t pull away from the main figures. The brand
placed a picture of its pack of peanuts in the left corner in vivid colors, which surprisingly
