Taylor Thompson

Natural Radiant Longwear Foundation

Taylor Thompson

Many makeup companies try to really sell their products in high energy commercials that promise you perfect flawless skin. However sometimes lower quality product commercials can be ineffective because of its lack of details and open-ended promises that are never met. Higher end luxury brands, like Nars Cosmetics, do a great job of not only showing you how their products work in calm video advertisements, but they also have a great description on their website page that appeals to the target audience by showing you how their product works in pictures. They describe how their products will come out and give data to support their promises of perfect looking skin. Though Nars Cosmetics can be up in the price range due to the fact it is a luxury brand, the Radiant Longwear Foundation is definitely worth the money and checks off all promises that Nars claims the product will do.

This easily accessible website with a detailed description of the Radiant Longwear Foundation, and all of its other products has a list of benefits and even a description of how to put the product on. Nars Cosmetics persuades the audience that this foundation is full coverage, will match your skin perfectly, and make it look like you are not wearing makeup at all. The Nars Radiant Longwear foundation is targeted towards anyone who likes “a uniquely lightweight foundation that provides 16 hours of fade resistant wear with buildable, medium to full coverage that looks and feels natural” (Nars US, 2022). Many people like to have a more natural look but still have their skin look flawless with no imperfections and this product is targeted towards said people. Nars Cosmetics uses rhetorical devices such as ethos, to help in persuading their customers to buy their longwear foundation. One way they do this is by including a section of the website labeled “What Narsissists Are Saying” (Nars US, 2022). A “Narsissist” is the name they gave to the supporters of Nars Cosmetics. In this section there are pictures you can click on that bring you to the Instagram pages of makeup artists and even celebrities and influencers that are sponsoring Nars. A picture from makeup artist and influencer Hindash is featured in this section. Hindash is an experienced makeup artist with a following of 1.3 million 42

people on Instagram. By featuring credible makeup professionals and influencers people now show the audience that people who are well qualified in the makeup world approve of and love this product. By establishing credibility its audience is more likely to invest in the product.

Nars Cosmetics also uses pathos in the form of emotional appeals to aid in connecting the audience to other people who have also purchased the longwear foundation. One way they do this is by including customer reviews and ratings of the product. On the website you can see what customers wrote about this product and how many stars they awarded it. For example Joanna said, “Best longwear foundation! Looks so natural on my skin and lasts all day,” and awarded it with 5 stars (Nars US ,2022). Another review by Cassie stated, “I have combination skin and was worried this would not help control my oily skin but it works great. I made the switch from Lancome and couldn’t be happier!” and awarded it five stars (Nars US, 2022). If someone who also struggles with oily skin read this and saw how happy this product Cassie was, they would emotionally connect to her and possibly buy the foundation. Adding reviews helps the customer emotionally connect because it allows them to see how the product made other people feel and base their emotions and feelings about the product.

In the overview of the Nars product page, logical appeals in the form of statistics show how women feel about what the product claims to do. The website uses percentages such as, “75% of women agree skin looked radiant all day” to support their claim that the foundation is fade- resistant and looks better with each hour of wear (Nars US, 2022). By using statistics, the audience can visually see that the product’s claims are backed up with logic. It also mentions that these percentages came from a “1 week independent U.S. consumer study of 65 participants” to show where they got their data from (Nars US, 2022).

Through the entirety of the Nars natural and radiant longwear foundation website, rhetorical techniques such as ethos, logos, and pathos were used to persuade the audience to purchase their product. The most effective appeal was pathos. Nars did a great job of connecting to the audience by adding reviews of previous customers. Adding custom-

ers’ emotions and feelings about their personal experiences with the product allowed the audience to connect to these experiences and possibly be the persuading factor to buy the product. The second most effective appeal was logos. Nars provided hard facts in the form of statistics to show the audience that its claims were backed up by data. The most ineffective appeal was ethos. Although credibility was established by influencers and makeup artists, if someone doesn’t know that particular influencer they might not connect as well. All in all this website was persuasive and Nars did an outstanding job of really selling the product to its audience. This easily accessible, hands on, and well-funded website with rhetorical techniques persuaded the audience to buy the natural radiant longwear foundation more than a short commercial would have.

References

Nars US. (2022). Natural Radiant Longwear Foundation:

Nars Cosmetics. https://www.narscosmetics.com/USA/ natural-radiant-longwear-foundation/999NAC0000065. html?gclid=Cj0KCQiAuP-OBhDqARIsAD4XHpc75HTEB5bCt-

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