Hillary Clinton’s campaign advertisement, “Families Together”, stood out to me because based on the title alone, it seemed like a lighthearted and uplifting commercial that would make an emotional plea to parents in their voting. Along with this, the video showed a clip of one of Donald Trump’s remarks and then displayed Clinton going against his idea, but spun it in the light of appealing to family values which I thought was rather clever.

The ad is a combination of pathos and ethos. In regards to pathos, the ad definitely evokes an emotional response from a family’s perspective–specifically, the voting parents who are the target demographic–by claiming that Clinton aims to fight for immigration reforms that will keep families together instead of tearing them apart. In a similar sense, this “tugging at the heartstrings” can also be seen as ethos because some may see this tearing of families apart as wrong and believe that Clinton will be fighting for what’s right. With that said, I think that this rhetoric worked out as the campaign team intended it to–that is, by using some phrases like “protecting children” and “life’s work” in its rhetorical sense, she’s is persuading the viewers that she has the experience and is fighting for the families, as opposed to Trump’s plan which is to “tear families apart”.

I feel like the video itself was actually more so targeted towards immigrants and their families, but when listening to the language used, it was much more general at the start of her portion by stating her experience working with and for the children, but then makes it clear the purpose of the video towards the end when she mentions the immigration reforms, tying it together with the mini clip of Trump at the beginning. This strategy was actually pretty effective in making the language significant because even though I’m not the immediate focus group, I still find myself sympathizing with the cause.

Overall,  my first impression after watching the ad was that it was pretty clever in its taking of a situation, completely flipping it around, and reaching to another level by making it directly related to a current issue–all the while making Clinton seem like the good guy and Trump the bad guy. Additionally, I found it pretty effective in its use of rhetoric because it was definitely persuasive to the point where, as aforementioned, even though I don’t consider myself the “target group”, I still felt sympathetic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_sbhlZjDcQ