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Ben Carver

English 487

Professor Sara Wilder

12/3/2018

Identification in Advertising: The Rhetoric of American Automotive Marketing

When one thinks of the American automotive industry, the ubiquitous car advertising

campaigns present on billboards, television, and at malls inevitably come to mind. The industry

devotes huge amounts of money and research every year to marketing and advertising;

according the Nielsen company, automotive companies spent more money on marketing than

any other sector in the United States: roughly 3.5 billion dollars combined in 2017 (Nielsen).

This massive investment in advertising techniques and talent has led to an extreme diversity of

rhetorical techniques being used in automotive marketing, but the rhetorical technique of

identification remains as a consistently strong and effective tool for automotive marketing

managers. The purpose of this paper will be to examine the different methods by which

modern automotive manufacturers use the rhetoric of identification to establish ethos and co-

substantiality with their target audiences, and ultimately persuade them to buy a car. This

paper will specifically examine three ways by which the Automotive industry use identification

to reach target audiences: identification by nationality, by class, and by gender.

First, it is necessary to discuss in exactly what forms this identification takes place. While

rhetorical identification is often traditionally thought of as an active technique involving speech

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and wordplay, identification in automotive advertisements can often take many forms: visual,

verbal, or otherwise. As Kenneth Burke states in the introduction to A Rhetoric of Motives,

“Identification ranges from the politician who, addressing an audience of farmers, says, ‘I was a

farm boy myself,’ through the mysteries of social status, to the mystic’s devout identification

with the sources of all being” (A Rhetoric of Motives 1324). The rhetoric of automotive

advertisements is no different, and the identification present in automotive advertisements can

often range from outright appeals to a common nationality shared between owners of a certain

vehicle, to more subtle visual displays of material wealth and social class implicitly shared

between the advertiser and their target audience.

The first form of identification we will examine, and one of the most prevalent among

American car manufacturers, is the identification of a national identity in common between the

company, its product, and its target audience. While this is common among several automotive

firms, Detroit-based Chrysler has leaned particularly heavily into this method of identifying with

its consumer base. The company has a long, established history in the United States, and it

regularly takes advantage of this history in the rhetoric of its marketing campaigns. Nowhere is

this more evident perhaps than in its oft-repeated tagline, “Imported From Detroit”. This tag

line originated in 2011 and has been a robust part of the company’s advertising strategy ever

since. The basic goal of this short tagline is to inspire a sense of co-substantiality between the

company and Chrysler’s target audience in the American middle class. It does this on two levels,

the first of which being the deliberate choice of the word “Imported” from Detroit. The clear

contradiction of the cars being “imported” from an American city serves to draw attention to

the fact that Chryslers are in fact not imported at all. They heavily identify themselves with their
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American customer base, and are a clear alternative to actual imports from international

manufacturers. Secondly, the choice of the word “Detroit,” rather than a less noticeable

alternative such as simply “America,” draws on the history of the city within the United States.

Not only are these cars not imported from outside the country, they are from the “motor city.”

The central purpose of this tag line is to identify Chrysler as co-substantial with American

culture in a fundamental way. More interesting still is that while Chrysler is one of the oldest

car companies in the United States, the tagline itself was coined by the Chief Marketing Officer

of Fiat. The large Italian car company has owned a majority share in Chrysler since 2011, and

Chrysler’s corporate cultural is not headquartered exclusively in the United States.

The language of this advertisement also calls to mind Burkes Writing on the nature of

“Terministic Screen” and its reflection, deflection, and selection of a particular reality.

Characterizing cars from Detroit as “imported” draws particular attention to the fact that

Chrysler cars are domestically produced, subtly drawing attention to different characteristics of

the vehicles. This brings to mind a particular passage of Burkes on terministic screens:

“When I speak of ‘terministic screens,’ I have particularly in mind some photographs I once saw.
They were different photographs of the same objects, the difference being that they were
made with different color filters. Here something so “factual” as a photograph revealed notable
distinctions in texture, and even in form, depending upon which color filter was used for the
documentary description of the event being recorded (Language as Symbolic Action 1341).”

Burke’s analogy of the color filter in this case applies directly to the use of the word “Imported”

rather than a more innocuous alternative phrase such as “Made in.” Rather, the word imported

simultaneously stresses the “American-made” nature of Chrysler cars in an ironic way, and

draws a comparison between Chrysler and foreign car brands that may actually import cars into

the United States.

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While this America-centric strategy employed by Chrysler is somewhat odd considering

their overseas owners, the same identification with American culture is common among most

of the largest automotive brands based in the country. GM, the parent brand of Chevrolet,

Cadillac, and Buick among others, engages in rhetorical identification to reach their domestic

American target audiences as well. This is particularly evident among brands with a large

selection of utility vehicles and pick up trucks such as Chevrolet and GMC, often identifying the

brand or vehicles with American culture on a fundamental level, similar to Chrysler. While truck

and SUV Brands might target a more rural audience than the generally urban, sedan-focused

Chrysler brand, identification with American culture is none the less and extremely common

strategy. The advertisement located below is a class example of this strategy in the context of a

more rural, possible midwestern American audience.

This advertisement clearly utilizes identification to connect the perceived interests of its target

audience of likely rural Americans to the product vehicle, as well as Chevrolet as a brand in

general. The language of the advertisement is one of the most immediate and distinct forms of

identification used within this page. Each line of text very intentionally uses possessive

pronouns when referring to both the “country” and the “truck.” The “country” being referred
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to is obviously America, and the “our” is meant to signify that the company is American at its

core, just as the target audience is American and also included in the “our.” This is analogous to

the “I was a farm boy myself” example that Burke gives of a politician speaking to his

constituents, granted it is written in more subtle, indirect language. Furthermore, the parallel

drawn between the “our truck” and “our country” identifies the product that Chevrolet is

selling, the Silverado, to be aligned directly with America itself. The goals of Chevrolet, and

thereby their product, are aligned directly with the goals of their rural American target

audience.

Also present in the above advertisement is identification through another avenue: the

visual background and surroundings of the product. Following the same theme of identifying

the product with America and American culture at a basic level, the Silverado in the picture is

placed against a backdrop of western plains and mountains. This image is perhaps even more

telling than the verbal rhetoric presented in the advertisement; Chevrolet wants their product

to be identified directly with the land of America itself. Continuing with the same analogy

presented by Burke, the backdrop of this advertisement is equivalent to the same rural “farm

boy” politician wearing work boots and jeans to appeal to his target audience of farmers, rather

than a suit and tie.

While national identification techniques are extremely common among American car

companies, identification of social class is equally, if not more prevalent among car

manufacturers worldwide. For obvious reasons this is most common among luxury brands such

as BMW, Mercedes-Benz, or Lexus. These brands primarily target the middle to upper class

individuals and households who can afford the sticker price of their products. In fact, the
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average household income of the purchaser of a new BMW off the lot was roughly $148,992

according to Forbes, or nearly 3 times the national median household income (Forbes). This

demographic profile is inevitably reflected in the advertisement strategies of luxury car brands,

and in turn the identification strategies they undertake. The advertisement below is an example

of one such advertisement and its goals.

The method of identification in this advertisement is primarily the text overlaid above the

background and the car itself. The phrase “Business Athlete” is evidently being used to refer to

the car itself and its capabilities. What is immediately noticeable about this phrasing is the fact

that text seeks to personify the car, or really to assign the desired personal characteristics of

the target audience to the vehicle. The car may be “athletic” because of its performance, but

presumably the marketers desire to portray it as business-like stems from the professions of

BMW drivers. The advertisement thereby uses identification to connect the product with their

target audience of affluent buyers. Additionally, while the background of this advertisement is

not as overtly identification based as the Chevrolet material, it does draw a stark contrast

between the two, and still goes some way toward identifying the product with its target
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audience. The non-descript city background is certainly not as evocative as a western American

mountain range, but it speaks to the presumably more urban based professional population

that BMW targets as opposed to the rural audience of the truck advertisement.

The last common type of identification used by automotive companies examined in this

paper will be identification by gender. While increased cultural awareness and sensitivity to

gender politics and divisive strategies has made this less common, it is still present in modern

advertisements, especially in cultures other than the United States. Below is an advertisement

for a new Toyota SUV that is set to be released in non-U.S. markets. This particular piece of

marketing material is from Toyota’s Middle Eastern division:

The targeted audience and tools of identification in this piece are fairly overt. The text of the

advertisement outright state that this car is being marketing with men in mind, very bluntly

stating that this car is meant for a specific target audience and gender. As in the other

advertisements however, the visual cues of the piece also tell a more nuanced story of the

advertiser’s rhetorical strategy. The car is backed up by a series of mountains an what appear to

be badlands, likely meant to signify the harsh, rugged terrain that the SUV is supposed to be
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capable of traversing. The man on the leftmost section of the picture also reinforces the male

focus of the advertisement as is so explicitly stated in the main text, but his appearance reveals

a further characterization of the target audience. He is a somewhat broadly built individual with

facial hair, and he appears to be in a forest of some kind. Broadly speaking then, we can infer

that target audience is men who are concerned with being outdoors, going off-road, and

possibly an appearance of “masculinity.” In this case, Toyota uses visual rhetoric to draw this

identification between their product, the Fortuner SUV, and the targeted male audience.

The automotive industry is one of the most marketing-centered business entities in the

modern world. Cars have a myriad of cultural, personal, and social connotations that inform

their use as well as the reasons consumers purchase them. Automotive Industry Marketers are

fully aware of these biases and employ a number of rhetorical techniques to boost sales among

their target demographics. Rhetorical Identification between a company, its product, and the

consumer base they serve is one of the most effective and widely used sales methods within

the broad field of automotive advertising.

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Works Cited

Burke, Kenneth. “Language as Symbolic Action” (Week 9 of class readings)

Burke, Kenneth. “A Rhetoric of Motives” (Week 9 of class readings)

N.A. “Advertising Fact Sheet September 2017” The Nielson Company, Chicago

I.L., 2017. Web.

N.A. “Comparison of Luxury Car Brand Demographics” Forbes, New York City N.Y.,

2016. Web.
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Reflection

This project has been a really interesting exercise in research for me, especially

applying some of the more dense readings from Burke to real world examples in media and

marketing. I Chose automotive industry advertisements initially because I knew the sheer

amount of effort and resources that car companies poor into their marketing departments, and

the consequent massive amount of material that springs from the industry. There is a huge

variety in the kinds of rhetorical strategies employed within automotive marketing, but the

rhetoric of identification employed by automotive companies stuck out to me as being

particularly divorced from the actual functional purpose of a car, as opposed to persuading an

audience that a higher performing car will be exciting, or a safer car is better for families with

children. In each of the three cases I outlined in my paper, I saw the identification strategies

being employed by these car companies as a kind of gatekeeper for the persuasion of buying

the car itself. For example, the ethos built by convincing a consumer that a certain car is more

“American” than another car opens the door to later persuasive techniques such as talking

about the performance or style of the car. Identifying a company or product with a nationality,

social class, or gender builds the ethos of the rhetorical artifact in the way that Burke describes

in “A Rhetoric of Motives.”

The three choices in visual car advertisements I made were based on their relatively

similar format which allowed for several common points of comparison. Each poster is laid out

in roughly the same manner, with the vehicle placed over a visual backdrop or landscape

alongside text. The often makes the more direct attempt at identification, as in the case of the

Chevrolet advertisement where the truck is directly compared to the land of America, but in all
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three pieces the visual elements play an important role as well. Each piece presented visual

information to back up the verbal association drawn within the text, increasing the overall

effective identification of the artifact as a whole.

I think I possibly could have explored Burke’s discussion of terministic screens in the

context of automotive advertisements more than I did in this paper. Terministic screens inform

the language of marketing and advertising heavily, possibly even more so than most in

automotive industry, but the visual as well as verbal nature of each of the pieces I chose to

analysis drew more generally down identification. Burke’s quote regarding how terministic

screens shape the way an individual may view a certain reality did inform my particular choice

of material to analyze as well. As I said, each piece that I chose generally followed a very similar

format in terms of layout and style, although the content of each advertisement was different.

This similarity of style of each advertisement illustrates how seemingly minor shifts in language

may change the connotation of the entire piece as is the case with a terministic screen.

I chose the three forms of identification for my analysis based primarily on their

prevalence with automotive industry marketing as a whole. Identification based on gender,

nationality, and class are common across seemingly most car companies, but even further each

of these types of identification is dictated by the audience it is trying to reach, and often the

kind of vehicle being sold. My discussion of nationality primarily focused on American

companies because of their particular need to reach American consumers, but also because

some types of American consumers may be more likely to respond to national identification as

is the case with the Chevrolet advertisement.