Who sings the song for the ASPCA Christmas commercial?

You’re happily watching TV and then you hear the music. Next comes those sad faces. You run for the remote and change the channel as fast as possible in an effort to minimize the emotional damage. That’s how it goes whenever aSarah McLachlan “Angel” commercial for the ASPCA comes on. But ever wonder how McLachlan herself feels about them?

Apparently, just like you do.

“I can’t watch them!” she recently told the video blog Makers. “It just kills me.”

But clearly, someone’s watching. McLachlan, 47, revealed those ads have raised over $30 million for the ASPCA.

“Obviously the mix of the music and my sad face,” explains the singer of the PSA’s tremendous success. “But it was brutal doing those ads.”

However they also enabled McLachlan to reach a whole new fan base because.

“I got a whole new audience out of it,” she says. “I swear I’d be at Target in Missouri at 10 o’clock at night getting off the tour bus and I’d be going down the aisle and these two little old ladies would be like, ‘Are you that dog lady? I love that song!’ Daily. Daily this would happen.”

Before You Go

2014 Super Bowl Commercials

Imagine yourself thirteen years ago sitting on the couch eating some popcorn watching some quality television then BAM the super sad animal commercial with Sarah McLachlan singing in the background comes on. We all know this commercial with the dogs shaking in the corner of their crates, dogs walking around chained up where you can see their bones, and cats being rescued. This commercial was a game changer for the ASPCA resulting in a lot more support and popularity. This commercial shows the harsh reality of abused and neglected animals urging people to donate to help them. To bring awareness and popularity to the ASPCA through this commercial the ASPCA had to consider the exigence, audience, and constraints to make the commercial effective.

Lloyd F. Blitzer defines the rhetorical situation as, “a natural context of persons, events, objects, relations, and an exigence which strongly invites utterance” (4). What Bitzer is basically saying is that a rhetorical situation enables a response that is caused through different circumstances. The rhetorical situation is composed of three parts: exigence, audience, and constraints. The exigence is the reason the rhetorical text is produced. Bitzer defines exigence as, “an imperfection marked by urgency; it is a defect, an obstacle, something waiting to be done, a thing which is other than what it should be” (6). Bitzer defines the audience for a rhetorical situation as, “only those persons who are capable of being influenced by discourse and being mediators of change” (7). The rhetorical audience are the people who can do what you want them to do and can initiate change. As for constraints Bitzer says these can be “made up of persons, events, objects, and relations which are part of the situation” (8). Constraints are not always negative, and they influence the way the message is conveyed and received. Exigence, audience, and constraints are all things that can be found in the rhetorical situation encompassed in the ASPCA commercial.

We all know or have heard of the ASPCA, and I am sure many have seen at least one commercial by them. The specific commercial I am referring to is the one with Sarah McLachlan. This commercial starts right off with “Angel” playing and a video of a dog shaking in a create. “Angle” is a song by Sarah McLachlan which is a very slow sad song, it is talking about dying and being carried away by angels. The chorus of this song is sung throughout, it starts with “In the arms of the angel, fly away from here, from this dark cold hotel room, and the endlessness that you feel.” Just the song itself makes you want to curl up into a ball and cry, but with the added emotional videos of helpless animals you really get into your feelings. Not only are shown sad pictures there are also heartbreaking statistics throughout the video. While the video does get lighter at the end by giving us hope these animals can be saved, it is still a harsh commercial to watch.

In the ASPCA commercial the exigence is that too many animals are being abused or neglected and help is not coming. Henry Bergh says the mission of the ASPCA is “to provide effective means for the prevention of cruelty to animals throughout the United States.”  This qualifies as a rhetorical exigence because as Bitzer says, it is able to be positively changed by the help of discourse (6). Donations to the ASPCA will help neglected and abused animals become healthy and loved. While we know in the back of our heads there are tons of animals being abused everyday this commercial brings that harsh reality to life. One of the statistics says, “every day in America thousands of animals suffer from cruelty and neglect” (ASPCA commercial 0:07). The commercial goes on to say that while some animals are getting help for many others help came too late. There is a sense of urgency encompassed throughout the video to help these poor animals. The goal of the ASPCA is to stop animal abuse altogether, this seems like a very hard place to reach, but with donations relief can come to the animals who have experienced this. The rising popularity of the ASPCA has caused an increased awareness of animal abuse and neglect which could decrease the number of animals that have to be saved.

The rhetorical audience of the ASPCA commercial does not only include people who have animals but also includes people against animal cruelty willing to give money. A child watching this commercial is not the intended audience but if a child tells their parents about it, then the target audience is reached. By targeting an audience who has a soft spot for animals this commercial kind of has an ability to guilt trip the audience into donating. Before this commercial gained lots of popularity, it primarily ran on Animal Planet and channels that may not be super popular, even if it was not hitting those popular stations yet it was hitting the right audience. Sarah McLachlan urges the audience to be “angles” to these animals just by picking up their phone. Sarah McLachlan says “for just eighteen dollars a month, only sixty cents a day you’ll help rescue animals from their abusers and provide food, shelter, medical care, and love” (1:13). Bitzer describes the rhetorical audience as anybody who is able to initiate change. Sarah McLachlan gives an easy way for anybody to help that only requires them to pick up the phone. Not only are they helping the animals they also get a free gift which includes a picture of an animal in the shelter. While this commercial does show the harsh reality of animal abuse it also shows us the happy outcome which appeals to the audience.

Constraints are not always negative and influence the way the message is conveyed and received.  In the commercial the consists include the medium and type of commercial. The audience is engaged with this commercial because it is multimodal. All five modes are used in this video, these include aural, linguistic, visual, gestural, and spatial. The aural and visual aspects are the main elements of this commercial but the linguistic, gestural, and spatial modes are just as important. By having the number and website listed across the screen it gives more people time to think about donating while the commercial is still playing. Having depressing statistics about animal abuse come on the screen in between the heartbreaking videos is very effective and urges the audience to help. This used to be a very difficult topic to cover in just a commercial length. A New York Times article says, “Sarah made it possible to do in two minutes what took 30 minutes before” (5).

Sarah McLachlan urging people to donate to the ASPCA (ASPCA commercial 0:54)

The medium of what channel the commercial appeared on and what time it appeared was definitely a constraint in the beginning. An article by Stephanie Storm says, “donations from the McLachlan commercial enabled the ASPCA to buy prime-time slots on national networks like CNN, which in turn has generated more income” (11). Since the commercial is now shown at prime time and on big networks the mode is not that big of negative constraint, but now more of a positive constraint. More people will see the commercial and more donations will come as a result. The medium is still a constraint however because people are able to record and fast forward, so if something was being watched back the commercial was probably skipped.

The type of commercial could be a negative constraint or a positive constraint. Many people may not be interested in guilt tripping type adds because of the feeling that you have to give. The ASPCA took a risk using this type of sad heartfelt commercial, but it worked out in a positive way for them. I think the commercial did a very good job at not showing to many people except for McLachlan herself, which really allows the audience to focus on the animals. If the audience believes that animal lives are as valuable as human lives, they will probably watch the commercial all the way through. If the audience does not really care about animals the commercial will get flipped. This commercial also has some pretty heartbreaking photos which may turn the audience away. Research done by Michael Theis found that “participants became suspicious of the advertisers featured in high-guilt ads and questioned whether they were committed to the cause” (3). This commercial has multiple aspects to “guilt trip” people into donating, if the heartbreaking videos were not enough the commercial ends with Sarah McLachlan ends with saying “right now there is an animal that needs you” (1:47). Many people are definitely concerned whether the ASPCA actually uses the money for what they say they are going to. A case study done by Joe Thomas found that, “the ASPCA engaged in a variety of activities aimed at improving the welfare of animals. The organization was involved in a number of legislative activities as well as funding grants to animal related organizations” (5). While this type of approach to this commercial posed as a constraint it turned out to work very effectively.

As a response to these constraints the ASPCA decided to use Sarah McLachlan to promote the ASPCA. Bringing Sarah McLachlan into the commercial caused the increased popularity and the increase in revenue. An article from the New York Times says, “that simple pitch has raised roughly $30 million for the organization since the advertisement started running in early 2007, making it the ASPCA’s most successful fund-raising, where such amounts are virtually unimaginable for a single commercial.” Sarah McLachlan was being coming increasing famous in the years before the commercial. Her Christmas album, Wintersong released in 2006 and was nominated for many awards. The choice of the ASPCA to use her was a risk, but a very effective one. While sure they could have used someone more famous, her song was the most effective one for the add. Not only did the use of her song “Angel” and her support of the ASPCA brought popularity to the organization, but she also had a growing fanbase as a result, her version of Silent Night was used in an ASPCA commercial in 2008. Thinking back to exigence, audience, and constraints of the commercial’s rhetorical situation, a viewer can determine if the rhetoric is effective. The audience is shown sad videos of abused animals, but these sad videos are followed by happy videos where these animals are being loved and cared for.

The ASPCA commercial uses pictures and videos that pull on some heart string throughout the commercial. The ASPCA uses constraints of the medium, audience, and Sarah McLachlan to bring awareness to this tough topic. The sense of urgency presented in this commercial is extremely effective however, it has been discovered in recent years that the ASPCA may not be using all the money for the animals. While this commercial is effective in getting donations, the use of that money may not be used for what people are donating for. This commercial has brought increased popularity to ASPCA and increased awareness of animal abuse and neglect.

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