More and more retired professional football players are coming forward with long term brain injuries that range from shaky hands to severe memory loss. Some have even died, with doctors claiming Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) as the ultimate cause of death. The NFL has aggressively denied allegations that football is directly related to the development of CTE and allegations that NFL neglects to properly protect its players. Many people believe that the problem starts at the peewee level in not just football, but all contact sports, and makes its way up the ladder to the professional levels. To fix the problem, many people want to change how young children learn the sport to make it safer for all parties involved, but until then, the company, Athlete Intelligence, has developed a product to detect hits hard enough to induce concussions and alert the player or coach when the concussed player should withdraw him or herself from play. The advertisement released for this product makes a strong appeal to parents to protect their young children.

The visual advertisement I chose to analyze is for a product that detects concussions in sports and wirelessly transfers data to a smartphone nearby. This product was released a few years ago by the Athlete Intelligence, and is called the Shockbox Helmet Sensor. 

The company released an advertisement depicting a young child in full hockey pads in the foreground. The quote, also in front of the ad, reads “Know when a hit is too hard”. The quote, combined with the picture of the young innocent looking kid targets parents that worry about their children playing violent contact sports. Most parents are very concerned when their kids play sports like football, lacrosse, hockey, etc. This ad appeals to the protective nature of parents and their desire to protect their children as best they can, while still allowing them participate in activities and sports that they want. This is a very effective way to appeal to the target audience. When the target audience, parents of young children, see this ad they almost immediately become protective; even those parents that had not worried about their kids before. The quote was also specifically designed to draw emotion from the target audience, the words “Know”, “Hit”, and “Hard” are in colored red while the other words are white, the three red words are also in a larger font size. This color change and font size change draw the audience’s eyes. “Hit” and “Hard” specifically play on parents fear that their child will get hurt while playing. Another aspect to the advertisement is the background. The outline of two players colliding, in a helmet to helmet collision. This emphasizes what the product is used for, while demonstrating the dangers of the sport to the parents. 

The one weakness of this advertisement is that it does not show how the product is attached to the helmet, and how it transmits to the device to alert of impact great enough to cause a concussion. It is hard to tell if the product is even attached to the helmet of the child in the ad. To strengthen the argument of the ad, the ad could easily display how the Shockbox attaches to the helmet and transmits data wirelessly to the coach on the sideline.

The advertisement displays a young white kid in uniform with all new hockey equipment. This sport is made up of an overwhelming majority of white athletes. Hockey is an expensive sport with all the equipment costs, travel, and rink rentals; mostly middle and upper middle class citizens are able to participate which explains the lack of minority groups in hockey leagues, which explains the lack of minority groups in the advertisement.  

The main goal of the advertisement is to be bought by as many people as possible. The creator of this advertisement does this by selecting a target audience and designing the ad to appeal to them specifically. For this ad, the creator chose to sell to parents of children young enough to be beginners and new to the sport. The ad relies heavily, almost exclusively, on pathos. The creator plays on the audience’s emotion visually and textually. Visually, the first thing the viewer sees is the little boy, which contributes to parent’s desire to protect their own child and provide the best care and equipment for them so they can safely participate in their desired sport. The other thing that immediately catches the viewers eye is the phrase, “Know when a Hit is too Hard”. Concussions can be a difficult thing to diagnose right after they happen, so this device will provide peace of mind to parents that they will be able to know for sure when to pull their child from play and rest easy. The creator uses dark colors associated with violence to build anxiety in the viewer which, when paired with the natural parental instinct to protect their child, creates a sense of fear in the viewer that can be overcome only if the product, the Shockwave Helmet Sensor, is purchased and used by the audience’s child. This could cut down on the number of concussions, or the number of long term affects that stem from receiving another head injury while concussed. 

With the growing number of concussions athletes receive is a concern to everyone in the sports world. Nobody wants to see someone sidelined because of an injury, especially one with such frightening long term effects. The repetition of concussions, and receiving a second concussion while still feeling the symptoms from the first is particularly dangerous. The recovery time is different for every concussion, and returning to action prematurely can cause permanent damage, which is a major fear for most parents with kids playing contact sports, especially football, hockey, and lacrosse. The advertisement does a particularly good job in realizing the uncertainty of concussions and, using rhetorical strategies like pathos, plays on the audience’s fear for their child’s safety. 

 