Ignorance is dangerous for you.

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i1. Protect yourself with knowledge.
i2. Protect democracy from concentrated power.
i3. Develop your own writing and thinking skills.
i4. Enjoy yourself by knowing the "rules of the game."

Why analyze ads? Who cares? Why spend time thinking about persuasion?

Self-protection is just common sense when you think of the great number of commercial persuaders all trying to get you to buy their product, and political persuaders all trying to get you to buy their policy.

Your time and your money are limited.

In a free society, ideally, you are free to choose any product to buy, and to believe anything you want.

But, genuine free choice is informed choice.

You need to know the common strategy and tactics used by all persuaders.

You need to know the predictable patterns how people intensify the "good."

You need to know the predictable patterns how people downplay the "bad."

You need to develop a "healthy skepticism" -- a moderate position -- avoiding the extremes of being gullible (believing everything) or being cynical (believing nothing).

See also: Why Analyze Ads? and "H" - Harmful Effects

As a democratic society, we need to counter-balance any concentration of power.

The Constitution of the United States of America was the end product of a long debate (seen, for example, in the "Federalist Papers") in which a set of "checks and balances" was created to avoid putting too much power into one part of the system.

Furthermore, the Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution to protect citizens from abuses by their own government. The 1st Amendment, for example, defended a "free press" (often, the critics and watchdogs of an Administration) and to protect the "free speech" of all citizens who might dissent or disagree with an Administration's policy.

Alas, currently, American schools are not doing a good job explaining the importance of the 1st Amendment, free speech, and a free press. In 2005, for example, a major survey of 112,000 students (grades 9-12) reveal "basic misconceptions and a disheartening lack of interest" about our key freedoms: "For instance, 75 percent of students think flag burning is against the law (it's not); and 49 percent say the government can legally restrict indecent material on the Internet (it can't). Add to that the students' surprisingly restrictive view of First Amendment freedoms -- more than one third think the Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees; and only 51 percent think newspapers should be allowed to publish stories without government approval -- and the land of the free starts to sound like another country."

In general, the young receivers of persuasive messages in our society aren't very well prepared.

Furthermore, the senders of persuasive messages are growing in power, because of media concentration in the hands of a few. In the USA, for example, the mass media (TV, radio, newspapers) is concentrated in the hands of a powerful few: five major media corporations (and their "family of companies") which determine what most people get to see, hear, and read; and four huge publishing corporations (McGraw Hill, Reed Elsevier, Vivendi, Pearson) in the educational textbook industry which dominate what students read in their texts. (At what point does "education" become "indoctrination"?) There's a growing imbalance between the few and the many. This trend of media concentration needs to be watched carefully by all citizens.

In Lord Acton's famous warning: "Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely."

See also: Why Analyze Political Rhetoric?

Skills Transfer.

Analysis (the taking-apart process) is the counterpart of composition (the putting-together process).

The more alert you become analyzing how other writers -- such as the skilled persuaders who put together ads -- the more able you can become in your own skills of composition. You'll pay more attention to strategy, structure, audience, and choice of words.

Are ads worth all of this attention? Perhaps not. But, your mind is.

If you can better learn how to analyze things, to recognize patterns, to sort out incoming information, to see the parts, the processes, the structure, the relationships within things so common in our everyday environment, then it's worth your effort.

After all, you'll continue to see thousands of ads in the future. If you can use them to your own advantage, to help you become a better analyst and a better composer, then it's worth your time and attention.

Advanced Students -- See the parallel pages in: A Companion to Composition

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i4. Enjoy yourself by knowing the "rules of the game."

There is a joy in learning new things and a delight of seeing old familiar things in new ways.

The more you know about how anything works, the better able you are to recognize good work and bad.

Sports fans, for example, who know the complexity of a difficult play can really appreciate the flow of a good basketball team, or the grace and elegance of a double play in baseball.

That enjoyment also goes to people who know the predictable patterns and the "rules of the game" -- in composing the structure of a sonnet or of a sermon ... or an ad.