“Need a moment? Grab a Twix! ” We all know this famous line from every Twix candy bar commercial. The question “Need a moment? ” as a general question can refer to a variety of things, ever realize though, that in every Twix commercial that the ‘needed moment’ is a moment for the men to find a cover story to save their ass? And how after ‘taking a moment’ to eat a Twix they come up with a believable excuse that every woman accepts without question. If you’ve never thought about that before you now are.One question that came to my mind when I found this similarity in commercials, which just might also be going through your minds as well, was why.
Why would a company choose to advertise their product this way? The answer is simple; because it works. The commercials are using simple rhetoric to convince its audience to buy their product. Rhetoric, the art of using speech to persuade, influence, or please, is used in each Twix commercial. The most recent commercial for example has a couple out for coffee, when the guy’s phone rings from the recieval of a text message.The girl picks up the phone and reads the message as the guy arrives back at the table, she then reads the message out loud to the guy, “Terri says she needs you right now?!?! ” That’s when the guys face gets an ‘oh crap’ look on it, which is when you hear the announcer’s voice say “Need a moment? Grab a Twix! ” The scene is then put on hold as the guy takes a bite out to a Twix. While eating the Twix his face turns bright like he now has an idea and the scene continues and the guys says “Terri, my boss, he is so demanding.
The phone rings again and the girl goes “He says don’t forget the whipped cream?? ” The guy responds “for the latte. ” The girl then laughs and is like “oh okay” and accepts what the guy had said. They guy then looks all relieved that she believed him and the commercial ends. Rhetoric is being used by the male in the commercial to convince the woman who he is in a relationship with, that the shady message from an unknown girl is really just his boss and not another woman that he is cheating with like she assumed.
The second form of rhetoric being used is by the company.The company is using the commercial to convince the viewers that if you buy and consume their product you will have the ability to get yourself out of sticky situations, like the man in the commercial was able to do. They convince you with rhetoric by having the woman in the commercial believe everything the man tells her without question. So you can see that the rhetoric is being used throughout the entire commercial. The main rhetoric statement however is the slogan “Need a moment? Grab a Twix! ” The ever famous slogan “Need a moment? Grab a Twix! ” is the biggest rhetoric in the commercial advertisements.
This is because the slogan is not only persuading you to believe that this candy bar can do miraculous things but it also influences you to buy their product. Because when you see the Twix in a store you think of the slogan “Need a moment? ” and you think of the commercials associated with the slogan. One can also assume by the main plot of each commercial that the target audience for these advertisements would be men around the ages of 18-30 years. We can assume this target audience because when you think of how each person would view the plot of the commercials we can assume how both a man and a woman would view the commercials differently.
A man would view the commercials differently than a woman would. Most women when they see the commercials think how much of a pig the men in the commercials are for doing that to the girls and turn up their noses at the commercials thinking that it is wrong for a company to advertise their product in such a sleazy manner. Men, however, may view the commercial as being funny and entertaining, or thinking what a talented man to think of such a great excuse to get himself out of such a horrible situation. As a result of the men viewing the commercials in this way it helps sell the product.
Think of someone standing in line at the grocery store waiting to check out and they see the candy bars to your right, they take a look and see the Twix section and “Need a moment? ” pops in their head then they think of the commercial and if the person in line happened to be someone of the target audience who think the commercial is funny and entertaining there would be a greater chance of them grabbing a Twix bar instead of one of the other candy bars. Along with trying to convince the target audience to but their product the subject or plot of the commercials also tells a lot about the human culture of our time.With the general theme of the commercials being about infidelity and how to not get caught cheating it gives people a reason to believe that the values, beliefs and morals of our culture of our time are highly astray from what they used to be. A society which once held high values such as family, honesty, truth, freedom, and privacy; a society which once held high morals such as respect, politeness, a society that placed high values on the women of their family, and holding oneself with a sense of dignity, a society once against adultery and displays of sexual acts and topics on the television and in advertisement.Now it is a society that values riches, and being the best, a society that now places no value on the women, a society that believes it is okay to treat women like a piece of meat and walk all over them, a society that believes it is okay to be unfaithful and be un-truthful about what they do, a society that believes it is alright to do whatever they please whenever they please with no concern for anyone else and their feeling. A society that no longer has any respect for themselves or other people.
A society where it is okay to scam, lie and twist the truth as long as long as your ass is saved in the end.This is what is associated with the slogan “Need a moment? Grab a Twix! ” based off of the themes of the commercials this slogan is attached to, and in essence this is what is associated with the candy bar as well. What probably first appeared to a company as a catchy slogan with a funny story has led to a negative effect on a society and a salty opinion of the product they were trying to sell. The Twix commercials goals were to find an effective way to catch their target audiences’ eyes in order to be able to sell their product.
They have successfully done this in using rhetoric in their commercials, but by using the method they have used they have also brought a negative view to the product and the company with the subject of their commercials. Which affects sales that they probably could have had, and lost them money they could of made if they looked at their commercials with a more critical and analytical eye, and saw them from a different perspective. However their “Need a moment? Grab a Twix! ” slogan and it’s rhetoric has proven to be successful and is still being used in each Twix ad.
