In the Doritos 2016 Super Bowl Ad, the commercial begins with a woman and her husband at an ultrasound appointment. As ultrasound appointments are special and can sometimes be emotional, the woman directs her attention to her baby on the screen. She is smiling and focused on the images of her unborn baby, until she turns to her husband, and finds him snacking on Doritos. The remainder of the commercial consists of her husband teasing the baby with the Dorito, as he waves the chip over the ultrasound, causing the baby to kick around inside his wife. Ultimately, the ad uses an absurd, unrealistic, yet humorous scenario to get across to the audience just how good Doritos are. Through humor and a solid combination of ethos, pathos, and logos, Dorito's creates a rhetorical argument as to how delicious they are.

In order for a company to air a commercial during the Super Bowl, it must have the means to pay what it costs for just a short ad. A standard thirty-second advertisement that aired during the Super Bowl this year costs a total of five million dollars, which averages about $166,666 a second. Because of this, the companies that usually air ads during the Super Bowl are well known, established, and successful companies. This is why the Doritos commercial is already a credible source long before the ad even plays. The name brand, and all things associated with the Doritos company makes for a credible source that convinces an audience that it is a legitimate company, which constitutes the ethos of the argument. 

The first ten seconds of the ad are a great example of how the pathos of the argument comes into play. What the pathos of an argument does is generates an emotional response or appeal. In this case, the setting plays a big part in causing the viewer to become emotionally invested in the ad. Although not everyone can directly relate to being in the position of the woman in the commercial, most people can relate to it in some other way. Anyone who has ever had children or knows someone who has children can understand and relate to what the woman in the commercial is experiencing and in doing so creates some kind of emotional response. In this way, the commercial does a great job of targeting a wide and diverse audience of both men and women, and people of all ages. The ad takes a situation that should be special and deep, and instead makes it very funny. By causing the audience to laugh, Dorito's has accomplished its goal: to capture the attention and focus of the audience.

The final piece of what makes this Doritos ad a great rhetorical argument is the logos of the argument. The logos of any rhetorical argument is the logical piece that causes the audience to make sense of the commercial, and have it make clear and logical sense. In this case, the husband is holding up a Doritos chip over his wife's stomach which causes the baby to gravitate to wherever the Doritos chip moves to. The husband is obviously amused by it, however his wife is not. In the final ten seconds of the commercial, the wife grabs the chip from her husband and launches it across the room. There is a split second pause, and then the image of the baby vanishes from ultrasound screen, as the baby was to go wherever the Doritos went. The ad ends with screaming and the woman about to give birth. Although this is not at all a realistic or logical scenario, it is not necessary for this ad to be logical. Although the logos of an argument is without a doubt equally as important as the ethos and pathos, The Doritos ad uses its creative license to choose to leave out the logos part of the argument and instead replace it with humor.

The 2016 Doritos Super Bowl commercial is a good example of a rhetorical argument because of the combination of ethos, logos, and pathos, in addition to its use of humor. Although the commercial was absurd and unrealistic, it caught my attention which is the purpose of any commercial. I did not care for the Doritos ad; However, I did find myself paying extra attention to it and even laughed because of how absurd and ridiculous it was. Although I did not enjoy watching it, I watched it nonetheless. 
