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Navigating Rhetorical Velocity to Improve Corporate-to-Consumer Communication

By: Rachel Young

Table of Contents

I           Timeliness in Advertising

II          Integrated Solution

III         Case Study

IV         Velocity in Campaigns

V          Conclusion

VI         Works Cited

Timeliness in Advertising

“Time becomes a position of value that authors use to draw audiences to their own positions.”  (Killingsworth 39)

Figure 1: Wendy's 'Where's the Beef?' 

campaign was successful in the dawn of 

television advertising, but would the

 unchanging logo be enough for the 

consumers of today? 

 www.commonsensewithmoney.com

As a business professional, you may feel pressured to commit to the time-tested marketing technique: create a campaign that is so noticeable and memorable that the consumer, when presented with a choice, will instinctively gravitate towards the familiar. As a result of this technique, branding has become a time-consuming and effortful standard that has often been left to a hired third-party. Strict regulations have been instituted to ensure that the integrity of the company is not compromised, and copyright infringements are considered a crime worth pursuing in court. In these cases, time is seen as an enemy- if the advertisement is not designed to be timeless, its asset to the company diminished. It should not invite change, or involve the audience creatively- this type of marketing simply requires their recognition. Rhetorical velocity achieves similar goals, but through vastly different means. It takes existing corporate entities and invites them to be modified to achieve a different result that reaches different people, every single time.

Figure 2:  (http://hillaryhe.blogspot.com/2012/09/

54321-next-shortened-attention-spans-in.html)

The “one way street” view of advertising outdated. It is time to harness the power of cyclical processes (the ease of which is made possible by the internet) for the benefit of your business. The concept of rhetorical velocity has come as a response to this change. Rhetorical velocity is a cyclical process that relies on a constant exchange of responses from consumer to business, which can drive a continually updating marketing scheme. With the rise of social media, the attention span of potential customers has shifted. Figure 2 shows that any television audience no longer have the ability to hold their attention on a thirty second TV advertisement, electing to view multiple different sources of media in rapid succession. It has since become a challenge for companies to remain relevant, nearly forcing their advertising campaigns to shift focus to the needs of their audience. Killingsworth, a professor at Texas A&M University, studied the use of time in rhetoric. In his text on the subject, he explains how audiences, rather than being moved to action (choosing one item/service over the competition) by unchanging advertisements and logos, are now attracted when an advertisement appeals to their sense of time. Focusing on the immediacy issue (where should I eat? What should I buy? Where should I go?), rather than the timelessness of it, helps coax a potential consumer to choose your company. Remediation, using this innovative concept of time, provides a solution to this common problem faced by businesses across the globe. By making your advertisements immediate and ever-changing, it is possible to stay relevant, 24/7, to an audience that feels actively involved in your product.

Integrated Solution

The consumer is a driving force on how rhetorical velocity can shape a company. Velocity cannot stand alone, and must always be accompanied by remediations. Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin theorize, in their article, the concept of remediation as “the representation of one medium in another medium.” In essence, everything that is in existence is a remediation of something that came before it by involving new media, or ideas. In business, remediation functions very differently than this theoretical concept: a logo (jingle, image or anything that identifies a company) is used in different contexts, and cuts out unnecessary steps in the branding process. A television commercial can be reappropriated into a humorous image, which is circulated on the internet, or a popular image can be juxtaposed to current events. Consumers may even feel compelled to put their own spin on a product. This process of remediating can involved creative individuals involved in the company, or can be left to an audience to complete. Seeing the same concept reimagined in several different contexts does several interesting things to an audience.

These several things are:

1)      The audience has an individualized experience with the company

2)      The audience engages with the advertisement, forfeiting the need to actively gain their attention

3)      The audience creates their own remediations, creating their own niche

4)      The audience helps create a constantly evolving brand, which transforms to fit ever-changing needs

Figure 3: Rhetorical velocity works just 

as well from the top-down (if an 

audience's first experience with the 

company is through a remediated work).

With resources available to them, dedicated and high-opinionated individuals have been known to remediate a company’s material with or without the sanctioned approval of the company at hand.  These limitless possibilities of remediation can be harnessed (and subsequently increased) for a company’s benefit by marketing with an emphasis in rhetorical velocity.

Rhetorical Velocity understands that remediations are inevitable.  In figure 3, we can see that when audiences create their own remediations (the highest point of the triangle), their opinion of the entire product/brand is strengthened (the base of the triangle). Analyzing these reappropriations for contextualizing evidence helps a creator focus on predicting how a certain entity might be reappropriated in the future.  In essence, you are creating fodder for an audience to digest and recreate with their own inspiration, concerns, love and attention. Rhetorical velocity inherently appeals to a shortened attention span because, in effective, the remediations are always being circulated to new audiences. A marketing technique which involved rhetorical velocity would not only invite change, but embraces it.

Case Study

“How I Met Your Mother” is an incredibly successful television series. Currently in its 8^th season, the main stable aspects of the show are the characters and the memorable song that is played during the intro. The creators and marketing directors of How I Met Your Mother have involved their show in social media, namely Facebook and Twitter. They do not merely use these social media tools to simply relay information. Instead, the people behind HIMYM used rhetorical velocity to make sure that their material was understood, not just seen. On Valentine’s Day, they posted humorous Valentine’s day cards featuring the characters for free use on their timeline. They post pictures and invite responses. The HIMYM twitter acknowledges what is trending about the television show and responds, in a timely manner, to what is being said. Television is used online, and the internet is being involved in the television show. Without altering the main product, they present their show in such a manner that the audience cannot help but become involved. The allure of constant change that responds to an environment is why rhetorical velocity is so effective.

Their light-hearted attitude, sense of humor and willingness to let small discrepancies slide give the audience of How I Met Your Mother with much more than just a television show- it gives them something that is worthy of their time and attention.

Velocity in Campaigns

“In other words, we need to stop thinking about copyright law in terms of what isn’t possible, but also in terms of what is possible—that is, how rhetors can strategically compose for the recomposition of their own intellectual property. “ (Ridolfo)

When you are using rhetorical velocity, you are creating something with the means for it to be remediated. Remediations do not necessarily require the use of the internet, but the same cannot be said for rhetorical velocity. Rhetorical velocity involves a subconscious appeal to time, which necessitates the instantaneous qualities of the internet and social media. The immediacy of the experience itself helps the audience to elicit attention.

Works that are created with rhetorical velocity in mind have the ability to transcend time and space- a thousand responses can be generated in a second, while they can be moved to be across the world in half that time. This can be controlled by the audience, but it facilitated/guided by the business itself. In that way, the company had the potential to save time and money- while still forming a brand. However, this brand is what the audience desires, not what is forced upon them.

Rhetorical velocity and remediation provides another benefit for companies that utilize it: instantaneous feedback. Rather than having to wait for reports to be published, marketing professionals are able to see a general consensus of their success through the remediations which are created (or lack thereof). This relies much on gut feeling rather than hard numbers, for the number of remediations are often far less than the actual audience. Figure 4 describes this cycle of responses and how they manifest feedback.  

Figure 5: 1) The materials a company supplies for reappropriation.

 2) The audience alters the material as they please.

 3) The company looks at the responses. 

4) The company responds accordingly, creating new material.

Rhetorical velocity is often questioned for its ethics, for remediations involved a less-rigid idea of what is allowed and what is not. Copyright legality is at the discretion of the original creators/copyright holders. However, if the remediation is not to appropriate money or slander the company, the principles of rhetorical velocity should hold true. A business should also be wary of extreme cases, where the sheer volume of responses exceeding the limitations of the business, as well as when the remediations of the work replace the product/service in the audience’s consumerism.

The use of rhetorical velocity in campaigns cannot be easily defined in words, due to its limitless capabilities. The way rhetorical velocity is utilized will be different to every business, but must start with a simple, interpretable foundation upon which ideas can be built.

Conclusion

Jimmie Killingsworth theorizes how humans are hardwired to believe that the present is better than the past. Companies can harness this innate belief to their advantage by including the audience in the creation of the brand at its present, rather than its past. This is done through remediated works, facilitated by rhetorical velocity. This process creates something that is novel, always innovative, and ever-changing. This results in rapid growth for the company and brand-name, while improving the communication and response time between the company and the consumer.

Works Cited

Bolter, Jay David, and Richard Grusin. "Remediation." Configurations 4.3 (1996): 311-358. 

Killingsworth Jimmie M. “Appeals to Time” In Appeals in Modern Rhetoric:And Ordinary-Language Approach. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois U P, 2005. 38-51.

Ridolfo, Jim, and Martine Courant Rife. “Rhetorical Velocity and Copyright: A Case Study on Strategies of Rhetorical Delivery.” Copy(write): Intellectual Property in the Writing Classroom 

 Ed. Martine Courant Rife, Shaun Slattery, and Dànielle Nicole De Voss. Fort Collins, CO: The WAC Clearinghouse and Parlor Press, 2011