Advertising Speech. Iconic Rhetoric

The crucial concern of advertisers is to make the advertised product (quickly) noticed and (easily) remembered. The use of the image thus becomes the solution, since, as compared to the verbalized expression, our mind can much more easily analyze images, in fractions of a second. It can argue, raise questions and create fictions. Few of the readers of a newspaper or magazine go through the entire text of an advertisement, so that the construction of the advertising text must have special features, preparing for the reader a visual path of reading. This approach implies a visual organization or construction of the statement, which should strengthen the argument. The article reviews the models selected in advertisements (the proper framework, the chromatic code in the advertisement, disposition, graphics, visual metaphors) emphasizing the iconic significations at the first level of image reading, and the connotations at the second level. Finally, some considerations are made regarding the images in perfume ads (which in most cases stress communication via image, rather than the persuasive, linguistic message) and the role of the “letter image” (width, height, type of character).