Cymbalta can help? I think not...

Can Cymbalta help? Ummm... I think not. With all the elements of ad techniques and appeals the ad this company is clearly using, it's hard to pick a few to talk about so the ones i'm gonna point out are the need for affiliation, the "Weasel Words" technique, and the Bribery technique. There were also a couple interesting details to point out in the commercial. One thing that I noticed in this commercial was that the problems discussed by the supposed patients with depression in the beginning, compared to the images of the same people shown later in the commercial are irrelevent to eachother. The later images are supposed to be showing the patients after they take cymbalta, when they are in a much more cheerful mood with their problems solved but they show different problems being solved. 

When it comes to techniques such as the need for affiliation, the women that is being reunited with her son as a resulted from taking Cymbalta definitely shows this. Before, the women is shown in the beginning distant from her son, but after taking Cymbalta she is later shown engaging and having a good time with him. So there's a definite sense of relationship being rebuilt when using this product, and also a relationship being lost if you don't. 

With the Weasel words technique, it's much more obvious. After the first 20 seconds of the people's different depression, the only information the viewer gets from cymbalta is that "Cymbalta -CAN- help." This is obviously weasal words because there's no guarantee of help. 

The other technique I had observed in the commercial was the Bribery technique, which was shown is the very last seconds of the commercial when the "free trial," is mentioned. Pretty much any free offer or deal in a commercial is regarded as this technique. 

The last, and possibly most prominent detail of the commercial was the immensely long list of side effects. In fact, only the first 20 seconds of the commercial wasn't about the side effects, and the other 45 were. Not only that, but the side effects were quite serious, such as "possible suicidal thoughts...OR ACTIONS." If it were me, i'd much rather be sad than dead.