Thursday, February 7, 2008

Rhetorical Analysis - Feb. 7

I recently attended one of those "get a free vacation if you listen to our pitch" things at a timeshare company. The pitch was simple, easy to understand, and fairly unremarkable.
Audience: Obviously, it was people with some money to spend who like to travel
Ethos: Credibility was established through pictures of resorts, customer reviews, and the presence of other customers in the store.
Logos: The salesman tried to appeal to logic by crunching numbers, comparing how much a hotel room costs to the average cost per stay at a timeshare location.
Pathos: The only emotion played on was the desire to travel, trying to convince the customer that traveling will improve the quality of life.

Sufficient: The sales pitch was long enough to get the information across, but short enough to not be boring. Also, the argument was presented in a way that enough information was left out to make the customer want to hear more.
Typical: Having never attended one of these sales pitches, I can't say if it's typical of the industry, but it was pretty much what anyone would expect for a sales pitch. Nothing to catch the consumer off-guard, no unheard-of gimmicks, etc.
Accurate: As far as I could tell, all the information given was accurate, up-to-date, and comprehensible to the average consumer.
Relevant: While the salesperson did spend some time asking us personal questions, all the answers we gave were later incorporated into the pitch. There were few, if any, tangents, and almost all of the presentation was to the point.

1 comment:

sethj said...

Good analysis.

So did you get a free vacation?