Basically selecting an advertisement on a 1988 Nike Commercial with 80 yr old Walt Stack running in it, and do a rhetorical analysis of it. Talk about how Nike uses it as a social statement or whatever. Structure the analysis around a central claim, or thesis. I’m doing a Nike television commercial, so I would need to include an interpretive synopsis in the essay. Remember to think, “what is this like?” and “how is it different from those things?” Does your ad tap into any prevailing trends? Does it represent a certain kind of status symbol? Does it use sex to sell the product? Guilt? Fear? Does it “piggyback” on the popularity of anything else–patriotism, a film or television show, some element of popular culture to which the product may only be tangentially related (think about ads for Pepsi or Heineken that feature movie tie-ins, for example)?
