Persuasive Genre

There are many different examples of persuasive pieces that serve to encourage the audience to do something. Some examples are TV commercials, Magazine ads, even college brochures. The piece I chose is a magazine advertisement for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority. The purpose of this persuasive piece is to convince people to visit the DC area and to use public transportation when they do it. The audience of this campaign is tourists who want to see authentic DC, because permanent residents of the area already do or do not use public transportation. This ad uses pathos by relaying the cultures of others in the DC area to the audience and enticing them to want to learn more about these and use the transit system to immerse themselves in the other cultures. This ad uses a visual mode to attract users. With the bright and colorful pictures of the different cultural objects and the simple black and white wording it invites the audience to indulge in the fullness and completeness of the ad. This helps the ad’s purpose by further enticing people to read the ad which will in turn get more people to use public transit. This piece could be converted into a TV commercial by having a train, trolley, etc. pass through all these culturally diverse parts of DC with the tagline of “Travel the World in D.C” at the end of the commercial. There could also be a foreign actor in each part of the city that tells of the many activities that are offered where they live. This change would broaden the ad and make it use visual and audio modes.