For the sender of television advertising, it is important to utilize content that gives effect, especially to get the receiver’s attention and then maintain it (Hägg, 1998). What is the content of a commercial that creates effect? Previous research focused on the impact that commercials have on the receivers. A discussion of which content that produced effect in commercials does not occur. About animals in commercials, it does not exist much research and a study of an animal welfare organization’s commercial has never been done before. To examine which content that creates effect in a commercial that includes animals and where the sender is an animal welfare organization is thus a research gap that this study aims to fill, using a qualitative text analysis.

A commercial from the non-profit animal welfare organization World Animal Protection has been reviewed, with semiotic and rhetoric analysis. The purpose was to identify which components a commercial contains to generate effect, where the main content in the commercial is animals, but also to find out if there was content that could have created more effect. The result shows that there are several different types of content that generates effect, such as pets, the environment where the animals are displayed and the order of the various scenes. Furthermore, the result shows that there is content that could have created more effect in the commercial. An example of such content is that the narrator in the commercial could have expressed itself more based on "our" and not "your" perspective. The results provide knowledge about what creates effect in the commercial about animals.