Retòrica i publicitat. Apunts sobre criteris comuns

Abstract

Aristotelian pragmatics recommends that, in the exordia, one should expose the facts, while in the epilogue, one should summarize the arguments. Here we can recognize tools that are clearly those of advertising. The headline and the slogan, each with its own function, are normally the synthesis of what one wants to communicate. Like a brief and clear exordium, then, we want to point out that there are rhetorical criteria which are not only valid but in fact necessary for advertising, inasmuch as not everyone who knows advertising knows how to communicate. As in the past, advertising must study, first, the subject, which includes the topic, its pertinence and its meaning; and secondly, the elaboration, which deals with the question of the treatment which it must receive. Certainly, the advertising professional today, in addition to being familiar with the marketing of companies and institutions, with conventional media and below the line marketing, must demonstrate talent and expertise and practice authentic engineering in finding criteria, method and culmination in classical rhetoric, which considers above all the audience, topic, cause and circumstances as well as the arguments that are necessary or pertinent in each case.