Throughout this election cycle we saw many attacks from Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump based on one another. In this video which aired during the Primary we see Donald Trump’s campaign taking multiple shots at Senator Marco Rubio.  Many times in politics we see other candidates take shots at the other side in response to that candidate doing well or threating to beat them. This campaign ad aired after Rubio had just beaten Trump in South Carolina. The producer of the ad uses a target audience, color in the ad, logos and a strong guilt factor to show us why we should not vote for Marco Rubio and how we should vote for Donald Trump in this political ad. 

The main argument of the advertisement is that Marco Rubio is basically very corrupt and will do nothing for you as President because he did nothing for the U.S. as a senator.  The ad using many different examples to get the audience to try and not trust Marco Rubio along with not believe what he tells you, because as the video says he is “corrupt.”  We see the argument continue to take shape when it begins to talk about all the money that he wasted or gained throughout his time as a Senator.  The producer was trying to evoke a position to force people to not vote for Marco Rubio and to vote for Donald Trump. 

The intended audience of the video is people who are Republican.  To narrow that down even more, it is Republicans who are on the verge of either voting for Trump or Rubio.  The ad. does a good job of trying to get all the voters on the edge to think about Rubio’s trustworthiness along with his ability to even be able to serve as the President of the United States. The intended audience would also be people who believe that Rubio is less of “money-guy” than Trump is.  But throughout the ad. we see countless examples of Rubio and how he wastes money. 

Throughout the essay we see the producers constant use of color and imagery.  The producer begins having an all-black background along with red captions coming up to disapprove of Rubio’s actions.  Then in red lettering it will tell you something bad he did.   Both of these colors have symbolic meanings in the real world.  The first is black can mean a lot of different but in this case it is referring to a dark and evil sense of the black like Halloween.  It showing us that Rubio can be evil and dark by taking all this money from the government people.  The red, is symbolic of Rubio not being qualified for this position and the text for why he is not qualified comes up in red like a stop sign.  To tell you “stop” do not vote for him, he has done all these bad things while he was a senator.   The ad also shows us different images of Marco Rubio and all of the images that we see of him are images of him in despair and not happy about what is going on.  Each different image of him is showing an image where he looks like he knows he is doing wrong and that it is now catching up to him because the public if finding out.

In the advertisement the authors use of Logos is huge to help to allow the producer to put the piece together.  The first instance is when he talks about the money that Marco has wasted on ideas or bills he has passed or for the amount of money that he took from private firms to stop the bills from passing and for allowing himself to vote against the bills.  Other examples of logos are that of the telling us that Rubio has the worst voting record in the senate and that if he cannot show up for the Senate then what makes you think that he will show up to be the President of the United States.  The final piece of logos is the end when he it goes form telling the people to not vote for Marco Rubio, but that the next best option is voting for Donald Trump and that is who they need to vote for to “Make America Great Again”

The advertisement can produce some sort of guilt for the voters who vote Rubio, because you continue to think all the facts the video shows about him and how they downgrade him as a politician.  It can also make you feel like that if you vote for Trump you can feel like you did the right thing because you did not vote for the guy who has a “bad” record as a politician like Rubio has.  It can make you feel accomplished by voting for Trump because it can allow you to feel like you just learned so much from the ad which taught you that Trump is easily the best candidate for president and he can ultimately help make American what it should be made out to be in his eyes.      

The producer does a good job a making everything Marco Rubio does seem like he is a criminal. But this does skew some of the facts that we see throughout the idea which makes the advertisement lose some credibility.  The first instance of this is when he points to Rubio having the worst senate voting record in the Senate.  This is skewed because when you start a political campaign to run for the presidency you really cannot go to the Senate anymore which causes Rubio to have a poor record because he cannot show up because he is running a campaign.  But because he is running a campaign he cannot be there to vote or debate any bills so he is just counted as absent.  This is the exact same thing that people said about Barack Obama in 2008, but it was because he was also running a political campaign and trying to win an election. 

In conclusion, we see the use of many different strategies to show the voter what to think in the election.  The producer tries to change your perception of Senator Rubio.  He uses the techniques of audience perception, colors in the advertisement, logos, and bad feeling to force you to want to vote for Trump.  The advertisement loses credibility though by skewing information about some points of the argument which was false in a sense.  Overall the essay can sway an opinion very easily based on people’s little knowledge of U.S. politics which allows for the commercial to be very successful and makes you not want to vote for Marco Rubio.  


  