PPP

You are a college student now, so at this point in your life, I think it is safe to admit that you did it. No one is going to judge you because he has done it, she has done it; we all have done it. Even your parents have done it! You have to have clean clothes to wear right? Doing laundry is a task that is no stranger to any household. In college, students gain the responsibility of having to undergo this task alone, with no family to share the loads with. With this responsibility also comes the decision of what products to purchase, which can be a challenging demand to meet when trying to ensure that your clothes are as clean as they possibly can be with the small amount of time your quarters gets you. The Clorox® Bleach Company understood dilemmas such as that occur and saw it as an opportunity to present their bleach product as worthy, which is why they published the visual texts “The Laundry Timeline” and “Daddy.” These visual text, which share the common purpose of marketing the bleach product, approach doing so in completely different ways: appealing to members of different genders and conveying the underlying meanings about the people who actually do the laundry. By appealing to both genders, the company has attempted to produce what they hoped would ultimately appeal to a wide range of people, including the college students that now have to do the laundry for themselves.

In 2007, the Clorox Bleach Company released a visual text entitled “The Laundry Timeline” which intended to show the evolutionary progression of the process of doing laundry from the year 1913 to what would have been the present, 2007. The text began by showing a white (Caucasian) woman heavily dressed in a thick, long cloth dress, hand-winding a washing machine that looked similar to a big metal and wooden podium with two rolling pins. She placed the clothes she was washing in between the rolling pens and the barrel attached to the washer that was located in what appeared to be the kitchen area of a home. Moving along, as if time had been fast forwarded, the commercial then rapidly illustrates several instances of different women doing laundry, using the washing machines corresponding with their time period. Throughout the commercial, not only were viewers able to view the women change, but also their clothing, their homes and way of living, but most importantly, their way of doing their laundry. Even the quality of the video itself changed from the beginning of the text to the end; initially showing in black and white then eventually developing to a high quality picture in color. Adding this content introduced the rhetorical situation of one of the most inevitable factors in life, change.

In order to counteract the element of change, the Clorox Company explicitly depicted the women doing their laundry using the Clorox Bleach product through out the timeline to convince people about the consistency and reliability of their product over the years. Applying this strategy, the company persuasively stated that, “Although a lot has changed: the machines, detergent, even the clothes themselves, one thing [Clorox Bleach] has not,” allowing the audience to believe that this is true. In the visual text it was obvious that a lot of things had changed but because the product was still being used, it efficiently worked the way it was supposed to, even ninety-five years later. The viewer could assume that Clorox Bleach must be a reliable product to withstand the hands of time (YouTube). Applying such logos and slogan served as substantial evidence to support the Clorox Company’s claim that , “The bleach most trusted to keep whites pure white [since 1913] is still Clorox Bleach” because their history is what distinguished them from other bleach products (YouTube). The word “still,” implied that Clorox Bleach would continue to be used for many more years to come.

The cast within the advertisement was predominantly female, with the exception of “a man or two,” which explicitly indicated that this advertisement was intended to appeal to a female audience. Due to the fact that there were only two men shown doing laundry throughout the whole text, the visual text may have also sent an unintended message about gender roles within a household setting that could be viewed as offensive by the company’s female audience and potential customers. “The Laundry Timeline” mainly focused on women doing laundry and the changes that occurred within the setting and uses “pathos” to try not to add a sense of being just another house with people in it, but more personal and intimate than that -- a home. It was in this domestic setting that the lives of the characters flourished. Despite the warm emotions evoked by the home setting, the strong emphasis placed on women doing laundry, with only one instance of two men doing it, could be viewed as sexist. These women were not only washing but also performing other duties as well. This would be something to which I’m sure most women, mothers especially, could relate. Although it is probably true that within a majority of homes, women tend to perform the majority of the household duties, this could be offensive to some women. In the eyes of a feminist, this visual text of women washing, cleaning the house, and tending to small children, while men watched television, worked out, and drove sports cars would be considered degrading. I am sure that the female audience to which the commercial was trying to relate consisted of a large percentage of women with these beliefs. The advertisement obscure the historical changes that the women’s movement led to: i.e. men have, increasingly, been doing more domestic work, including laundry, since the 1970s. In attempting to create a sense of timelessness and nostalgia, the ad erases those very important social changes. The illustration presented the role of women as homemakers, regardless of the time period. Unfortunately, this also demonstrated a lack of change in this aspect as well on the part of the producers of the visual text. Most women would argue that a woman possesses more value than just being a homemaker and that the parental duties should be shared more.

Contrasting the stereotypical view of women doing laundry, the company also presented within the “Laundry Timeline” visual text, the “Daddy” concept in order to appeal to a predominantly male audience. Before the viewers even began to view the visual text, the producer strongly conveyed to the advertisement’s intended audience the title, “Daddy.” This commercial advertisement was centered on a conversation that occurred between two fathers who were cradling their crying infant children on a nice day at the park. This scene was a visual implication of the male audience for which the advertisement is intended and it is presented explicitly as well. While cradling their children, the two fathers began to have an intense conversation pertaining to a particular brand of Mini-van. Creating an interesting situation in which motherly/ feminine things (babies in arms/ slings and min-vans) become masculinized. Their interest in the conversation caused one of the fathers to ignore his older son who was trying to inform his father that he had to use the restroom before he had an accident and defecated on himself.

The conversation between the two fathers was significant because it included the use of expressions such as, “fully-loaded,” while describing the interior and performance of this particular Mini-van. These terms would be similar to ones used to describe a sports car thus appealing to the common notion that automobiles are an interest that males share. The Clorox Company used the scenario and the setting in which this conversation takes place to attract men and, specifically, men who are fathers. The Clorox company felt that by presenting such a conversation between two men in a scenario that is very common to all parents that they could capture this type of male of audience too. Also, whether the company was aware of it or not, because the advertisement lacked the presence of a motherly role, the company could also have made an appeal to single male parents, who lacked the support of having a mate to share parenting duties as well.

The “accident” that the older son experienced also revealed the ultimate persuasive purpose of the entire advertisement, which was to persuade people to use Clorox bleach over other brands through the use of logos and ethos. Accidents are unexpected events that take place and could happen anywhere, at any given time, and to anyone. They are not gender-specific occurrences. It is for this reason people are warned that it is beneficial to be prepared for the occurrence of the worst, possible thing that could happen at all times because there is no way of knowing when things could go wrong. Typically, the majority of people would assume that women are usually the ones who end up cleaning up the mess after children have had accidents; however, this commercial used the son’s accident to contradict yet another stereotypic view within our society. This commercial acknowledged and gave credit to men who also perform fatherly duties that, and I’m sure my own father would agree, seem to sometime go unnoticed from day to day. Clorox cleverly used the logos of the situation, which is commonly known to occur with young children, then applied ethos to warn the men, or the general audience, that they should be prepared for such an accident that could, and more than likely would, occur if they were parents of young children. The company then applied ethos to persuasively present their bleach as the solution to such an accident by showing a very muscular arm, which also has a masculine appeal because it presented the Clorox bleach as manly, and making the claim that “All it takes is three quarters of a cup.” The word “all” explicitly presenting the product as the best or only thing needed in such a situation.

Although much shorter and less sentimental, the visual text “Daddy,” along with “Laundry Timeline” shared the common purpose of persuading people to purchase the Clorox Bleach product. I would say that both visual texts effectively achieved their purpose. The Clorox brand continues to be known as one of the leading names among bleach products that are used in America to this day, even after 100 years of production. The Clorox Company cleverly used both advertisements as a way of appealing to all ages and both genders to help insure that their product is popular among people who could potentially be their customers. Unfortunately, the company failed to include the aspect of racial diversity among the people used in the visual text. Failure to include such content could severely affect their persuasive purpose. They could run the risk of not appealing to people of other races or ethnic groups, especially in situations when they try to use ethos: in the “Laundry Timeline” commercial, making statements like, “Your mother, grandmother, her mother, they all did the laundry.” (YouTube). Although it is more than likely true that generations of women of other ethnicities did do laundry, the lack of racial diversity among the people casted may lead some to believe that the product’s reliability is not pertinent or attractive to them. Women of color are and long have been disproportionately represented among domestic workers (including unpaid slaves but also low-paid household domestics, both African American and immigrants from Mexico, the Philippines, the DR, and many other countries), this racial oversight is especially problematic to the presentation of the text. Ultimately viewers of other ethnicities could lack the ability to make a connection to their lives and relate to the message Clorox was trying to convey unintentionally leading other races to view the company’s “Pure white since 1913” slogan as being literal and possibly offensive. Other ethnicities could perceive that the product was not intended for use of people outside of the white race as well.

Both texts were enjoyable and did a wonderful job of applying rhetorical principles to appeal to the different genders as a way of selling their product; however, they seemingly forgot that, as stated before, “everyone does it.” With this in mind, the producers should have remembered that there are other factors that contribute to the relevance of the product to the company’s potential buyers other than gender, such as race and age as well. Overall, there could have been more diversity amongst the characters depicted in the visual texts to ensure that they are reaching out to a very broad audience, which should be one of the general purposes of advertisement, but the visual texts were still cleverly persuasive and used the factors they did incorporate to their advantage well.

Works Cited

“Daddy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCuyMbyFE_U

“The Laundry Timeline”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZeQUxSjHwU