TOW #2 A Closer Look At The Kitchen (AKA A Rhetorical Analysis of CLOROX WIPES)

Oh, advertising. It's a cut-throat business. Everyone is trying to get ahead of everyone else; nowadays, you can find advertising everywhere, even in your own kitchen, where I found these Clorox wipes. The Clorox company has many competitors and it is their responsibility to not only make sure that their product better than everyone else's, but also to make sure that the product looks best as well. Through their clever advertising skills, the Clorox brand presents their wipes in an effective manner that looks professional, but gets their point across. The wipes look like this:

As you can see, the logo for Clorox is right in the center of the bottle. This placement was strategic, as it becomes the most important thing on the bottle and sticks in the mind of the buyers. That way, when they go back to the store to get new wipes, they remember, “CLOROX.” On the back is an explanation of how to properly use the wipes, including precautionary statements etc. This stuff is required on the packaging, and so the print is relatively small. The company does not want buyers to focus on the negative things (what the product can not do, what dangers come with it etc.) and so they put this information in almost unreadable print. Also, the information is on the back of the product, so as to not appear when stocked in stores. Buyers may not even realize it is there until after they have bought the product. The second biggest font on the bottle states the purpose of the wipes, explaining that they are disinfecting, and the third biggest is a key point, perhaps the most important (as you are supposed to think) thing about the wipes. They “Kill Cold and Flu Viruses.” However, if you look closely, you can see that there is an asterisk next to the words. After careful inspection, I have (FINALLY) found the corresponding asterisk, which is in font that I can barely read on an obscure corner of the front under the “Bleach Free” sign. Since the first piece of text does not specify which types of viruses are killed, it is implied that most, if not all are killed by using these wipes. The small print clarifies for everyone, the wipes only kill two viruses. Though this means that Clorox has deceived it’s consumers, isn’t that the core of advertising? Manipulating words to your own advantage? The rhetoric used by this company allows them to effectively achieve the purpose of looking the best, even though it may not be the truth.