Dear OPPP! reader, welcome back! We hope you had a good time during the summer break. Perhaps some of you even had the (mis)fortune of visiting a car rental office and coming across the above ad from the fast-growing Sixt company, known for its high-end and luxury vehicle rentals.
The ad’s main text says: “Don’t rent a car. Rent the car”, followed by “The Adventurous BMW X1”, in a decidedly smaller font.
This text exploits the mechanism of presupposition by definite description. When speakers use a definite description (like demonstratives, possessives or a noun preceded by the definite article the in this case), they are taking for granted the existence and identifiability of the object under discussion. In other words, the use of a definite description signifies that (the speaker thinks that) there is only one such object in the conversation context. For this reason, it is perfectly acceptable to say “the sun is shining bright today!” or “my mumwon’t like this a bit”, since the speaker assumes that there is only one sun and only one speaker’s mum. At the same time, it is not appropriate to say “please, pass me the pen” if there is more than one pen in the situation. Conversely, using an indefinite description signifies that the speaker is talking of one non-specifically identified (i.e., in a way, non-special) exemplar within a multitude; which in turn is why it is not felicitous to say: “a sun is shining bright today!”.
The above ad leverages precisely this mechanism. It implicitly counterposes the non-special multitude of cars (“don’t rent a car”), with a special exemplar: “rent the car”. By doing so, it is presupposing that the advertised car, the Adventurous BMW X1, is significantly different and way better than all the rest, and thus conveys the idea that driving that car will give the customer a unique experience that they won’t find anywhere else. If stated explicitly, the same idea would result more evidently exaggerate, and even false.
However, we suggest that there may be another subtle level of implicit manipulation. We pointed out that there is a notable font size difference between the giant main text and the company name SIXT on the one hand, and the smaller BMW model name on the other hand. This choice may be meant to convey another persuasive implicit content. Clearly, Sixt was interested in promoting the Adventurous BMW X1, yet overall the company is also always (more) interested in promoting itself. The oversized font of part of the ad captures significantly more readers’ attention on the fact that with Sixt you are not just going to rent any car, but a very special and unique one, that will give you an extraordinary experience behind the wheel.