Every day many Americans sit back and watch the world go by, dreaming of getting out and reaching their personal ambitions. Although everyone has goals in mind to achieve, success depends on the drive he or she has inside. Imagine a shoe that can supplement that motivational drive. The recent Nike Air Zoom Spiridon advertisement found in Self magazine this month creates a conceptual situation that a running shoe can take the place of the ever-faithful companion, man's best friend. The caption states this running shoe will be there to give your motivation, "a gentle tug toward the door sitting patiently with that certain look in it's eye that says it's go time, let's lace up, get outdoors and take it up a notch." This Nike ad contains powerful appeals to consumer's desires for individual athletic achievement and makes a very convincing claim using all elements of the rhetorical triangle.
When analyzed, the artistic components which include layout, color use and media show the techniques used by the advertisers. Readers are influenced by the way images are represented and how they are applied to their own lives. This specific Nike ad presents a two-page spread of the distinctly eye-catching Air Zoom Spiridon shoe amongst a bright green lawn. However, the grass and the shoe are not quite what catches the audience's attention, but rather the fact that the shoe is attached to a leash and there is a large caption stretched across the entire add announcing, "This is not a running shoe." This statement causes readers to wonder, if it's not a running shoe then what is it? Now the advertisers have lured the readers into reading the small paragraph of text and exploring the ad further. This is what allows the readers to see this product is an "ever-faithful running companion." The wording is stressed by the use of all capital letters. .
Nike uses other media components such as a well-developed website and a series of commercials to supplement this magazine advertisement.