Help with assgn due in 48 hours

Running head: GUIDED IMAGERY AND PROGRESSIVE MUSCLE RELAXATION

2

12

Nissan Advertisements & Gendered Marketing: A Comparative Rhetorical Analysis

Josephine Smith

Department of Nursing, South College

HUM2001: Critical Thinking

Professor Jones

October 10, 2025

Nissan Advertisements & Gendered Marketing: A Comparative Rhetorical Analysis

Advertisements are designed to do much more than sell a product. Advertisements tell stories, target emotions, and try to shift how people see themselves in relation to what is being sold. Two recent Nissan commercials show how the same product can be presented in completely different ways depending on the audience. One ad features actress Brie Larson and focuses on the emotional excitement of driving, particularly reaching out to female drivers who may have felt excluded from traditional car culture. The second, narrated by a male voice, is aimed at performance-minded drivers who value specs, precision, and control, which is likely a more male-centered demographic. While both ads make deliberate appeals to their audiences’ emotions, they take different rhetorical routes to do so. While both the creators of the Brie Larson Nissan commercial and the male-narrated performance-oriented Nissan ad appropriately appeal to their respective audiences’ emotions, the Larson ad is more likely than the performance-focused ad to succeed in accomplishing the goal of changing their audience’s mind about driving because the speaker presents herself as someone the intended readers will more readily identify with and offers evidence that her audience will find more compelling.

Brie Larson’s Nissan ad builds ethos and credibility by leaning into her public image as a strong, empowered woman. Larson is known for her role as Captain Marvel, a character associated with independence, confidence, and control, which are all themes that the ad wants to associate with the experience of driving. When she says that “driving used to be an act of freedom, inspiration” (Brie Larson, 2021, 0:05), she is not just selling a car. Larson is reinforcing a feeling that many viewers, especially women, may already associate with her. In a space like car advertising, which has long been dominated by male voices and imagery, Larson’s presence immediately feels different and more inclusive to her audience. Her celebrity status gives her ethos, but more importantly, it is her cultural identity as a figure of female empowerment that helps women see her as someone they can trust, making the ad’s message more believable and persuasive.

The performance-centered ad also builds ethos, but does so by leaning into a more traditional, voice-over male spokesperson that is typical of car advertisements. The speaker is not a recognizable face or public figure but is instead a voice that conveys authority through technical knowledge. He walks the audience through specs like “performance brakes,” “electric-assist power steering” (Nissan USA, 2022, 0:22), and suspension and shock absorber specifics, showing that he knows what he is talking about. For a target audience made up of car enthusiasts—people who value engineering, precision, and performance—this kind of credibility matters. It tells the target audience that Nissan knows what makes a car worth driving. However, this kind of ethos can feel limited because the speaker is anonymous and the tone is instructional. The message might come across as cold or inaccessible to anyone outside the performance-focused car world. There is less opportunity for connection or trust for casual drivers who do not relate to technical authority.

Larson’s ad may not use technical details, but logos is still present, and Larson makes a logical argument that fits her audience’s values through logical progression and connotations. Instead of focusing on how the car performs mechanically, she focuses on how driving used to feel. When she says cars were “our sanctuaries and co-conspirators” (Brie Larson, 2021, 0:10), she is tapping into a logical connection many people can make, especially women, between vehicles and personal freedom, safety, and independence. The underlying logic is simple: if driving used to feel exciting and empowering, this car can help you feel that way again. Her audience, one not swayed by specs and horsepower, is likely to make this jump in logic with her because emotional logic is more meaningful to this audience. It encourages them to rethink their relationship to driving in a way that still feels grounded in real experience, not fantasy.

By contrast, the second ad focuses on a more conventional kind of logos: technical details. Every line is filled with language about the mechanics and engineering of the car. Phrases like “twisty lane of asphalt that begs to be driven” (Nissan USA, 2022, 0:20) are paired with visuals of suspension systems, close-ups of tires, and precision driving shots. For car lovers, this approach is logical. It gives them the information they need to make a reasoned choice. The ad clearly speaks the language of drivers who care deeply about how a vehicle handles. But for a broader audience outside of the target audience, this kind of argument can feel too niche or overly specialized. If the viewer is not fluent in automotive specs, the message can feel confusing or irrelevant. The logic holds up, but it is only persuasive if you already care about the things it highlights.

What really makes Larson’s ad stand out, though, is its emotional appeal. From the very first line of “remember when driving was fun?” (Brie Larson, 2021, 0:01), she invites the viewer into a shared feeling of nostalgia. This is not just about selling a car; it is about recapturing a lost sense of joy and freedom. The ad is visually bright, with colorful shots of the car and confident, sweeping camera angles that suggest motion, freedom, and possibility. For women who may not have felt seen by traditional car ads, this message is affirming. The ad makes them feel like they belong in the driver’s seat, not just literally but symbolically. It repositions driving as a personal, even transformative experience, one that is about more than getting from point A to B. This advertisement is a call to reclaim something that many people, especially women, might have forgotten they missed.

The second, more performance-driven ad, uses emotion, too, but in a different, more intense way. It tries to build excitement through a sense of thrill and control. When the narrator describes a “twisty lane of asphalt that begs to be driven” (Nissan USA, 2022, 0:20), the ad invites the viewer to imagine themselves as someone who dominates the road. It is a more aggressive kind of emotional appeal, rooted in power and mastery. For the intended audience, likely male drivers who are passionate about cars, this feeling can be exhilarating. It feeds into the desire to be in control and to experience driving as a kind of personal challenge. However, this emotional appeal is narrowly focused. It does not invite a wide range of viewers into the experience, making the audience too narrow, and by proxy, the advertisement less effective. Instead, it speaks to a specific kind of driver, and anyone outside that category might find the tone too intense or exclusive.

In the end, both commercials are successful in their own ways, but the Brie Larson ad does a better job of opening the experience of driving to a wider audience and changing how that audience might think about cars. While the performance-centered ad builds authority and appeals to a niche group of car enthusiasts, its appeal feels limited by its technical focus and narrow emotional range. The Larson ad, by contrast, offers a message of inclusion, freedom, and empowerment, backed by a spokesperson that viewers can relate to and trust. Fifty percent of the car driving public is women, while those heavily invested in cars and their specifications make up a much smaller percentage of the general public, so the audience for Larson’s ad is larger from the start, making it have a higher chance of success from the beginning. Larson’s ad is persuasive not because it talks about the car in traditional terms, but because it reframes what driving means. It reminds the audience, especially women, that driving can be exciting again, not just in terms of speed or power, but in terms of identity and emotion. Larson’s use of pathos when discussing driving excitement paired with her credibility as an actress and speaker is what makes it more likely to succeed in shifting how its audience thinks: not just about the car, but about their relationship to the road.

References

Brie Larson Worldwide. (2021, June 1). Brie Larson presents The New Nissan [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StAPejF7KI8

Nissan USA. (2022, August 9). 2023 Nissan Z Performance and Handling [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RqL000AmfE