AOW #9: Pillsbury Commercial

http://video.nytimes.com/video/playlist/business/1194811622255/index.html#100000001178641
This commercial was about the Pillsbury Dough Boy and all of his baking items that he sells. It was more geared towards the holidays because of the items he was showing (holiday cookies, breads, etc) as well as the sense of family and togetherness all throughout.
The source or author of this commercial would be the Pillsbury marketing team. More specifically, The J.M. Smucker Company is the head company that runs over everything for the Pillsbury items. I did some research on this company at pillsburybaking.com/legal and I realized that this company has been in business for over hundreds of years. I also realized that they’ve organized and ran many companies that are very popular today, such as: Smucker’s®, Folgers®, Dunkin’ Donuts®, Jif®, Crisco®, Pillsbury®, Eagle Brand®, R.W. Knudsen Family®, Hungry Jack®, White Lily® and Martha White® - which shows me they are credible because of the many successful businesses they’ve been running!
This context of this commercial would definitely be temporal. It would be because the commercial is filmed as if it is in the moment because the Pillsbury dough boy is watching the baking scenes right as they happen, and not as scenes of the past.
The purpose of this commercial, I believe, is to encourage families to use Pillsbury products because with Pillsbury, “traditions…memories… [and] holidays” are “made easy” (as shown in the advertisement in the last few seconds). I also believe that their purpose was to evoke a sense of homely-emotion or “togetherness” that can only come from baking together, as previously stated, because of the holiday-feel throughout the entire commercial.
The audience was more geared toward families – specifically the parents who set up all of the holiday festivities and make all of the food. I believe this because even though there were a lot of kids throughout the commercial, at the end, it said “Holidays made easy” and the only people who really make the holiday are the adults of the families!
The two main rhetorical elements that I noticed throughout the piece were pathos and communal memory. The first one, pathos, was directly shown through the expressions of the people enjoying the festivities of the holidays as well as through the music in the background. They both expressed to the audience that “at-home” holiday warmth feeling you get when you’re celebrating with the people you love. This make the items more appealing because that sense of togetherness seems to be coming from baking together and in order to get that feeling “Easier” they make you think you must buy the products! Communal memory is shown through this commercial through the generic holiday celebration: all of your family members at the table/mingling while something delicious is in the oven. Communal memory in this commercial allows the audience to emotionally connect to that specific event and want to buy whatever makes them feel this way.
Yes, they completely achieved their purpose. They did because they made the audience want to buy the product through emotional and “connectible” appeal. They created a sense of togetherness through “in-the-moment”, sensitive events.