How They Convinced Us to Buy These Mints: Visual Rhetorical Analysis

After being bought by the Hershey’s Company, the advertisements for Ice Breakers mints evolved to adopt a unicorn with the ability to burst through ice, walls, and any and every environment, as its mascot.

The unicorn is galloping wildly and breaking through bright and multicolored ice to convey the wild chilling sensation that comes with an Icebreaker mint. The new strawberry mints are specifically featured on the box, despite containing both the strawberry and original flavor. Every successful company geared toward a crowd entertained by exhilaration needs to constantly produce something “new and improved,” so that audience — who likely has already seen and bought the old icebreakers now — has several options of different, but equally thrilling, flavors of sweet fruit.

Advertisements like these are extremely effective, because they deliberately use the inclination for associative learning to make you, the potential consumer, not only think of that fresh and intense cooling sensation, but also to a greater extent than their competitors' products by comparison. A few examples include large snowy mountains, strong winds, icicles, and polar bears.

The quirky gimmick that’s produced by taking a fictional animal and putting it in a seemingly disconnected and extreme environment, an ice cave. There are plenty of minty products that use some aspect of ice and snow in their advertisements — Mentos, Icee Squeeze, York Peppermint Pattie —but how many have unicorns rampaging through an ice cave turning fruit into candy?

While this product likely tastes like every other menthol product, it’s advertised with a wild and make-believe character in a unique environment, generating a novel and exciting atmosphere for the consumer.

Furthermore, the unicorn is presented as emanating a bright aura, emphasizing its magnificence. All of the detail dedicated to making the unicorn as remarkable and wonderful as possible is strategic as its coat is designed to resemble the mints— white and with bits of mint speckles all over it, communicating to the buyer that the thrilling adventure continues with the purchase of every package of Icebreakers.

The new brand of Icebreakers gives the consumer more than one choice: the original or the fruit flavor, and the choice is distinguished by the two vivid and opposing colors. The “two in one” approach excites us with a bold new flavor while simultaneously relieving us of the inconvenience of having to by another separately.

Regardless of the particular target audience, the brand’s unicorn can burst into any place and even does so into “boring” office cubicles, bringing the liberator of a monotonous life: Icebreakers mints. The name itself entails this breakthrough.

In this particular case, they appeal to any audience using a person’s predictable inclination to positively associate ice, wind, glaciers, and other frozen features with a crisp, fresh, and cool taste and subsequent feeling of their minty products. Accompanied by this tactic is the “remarkable factor” that draws in their younger audience: the unicorn and its untamed yet majestic energy that turns fruit into the electrifying mints you know and love.