When cows talk: the Happy California Cow campaign as visual apologia.

• Author: Riley, Catherine L.

If success is measured by recognition, then the Happy California Cow campaign ranks alongside Coca Cola's polar bears and Honey Nut Cheerio's Buzz the Bee. Unlike these latter campaigns, however, the California Milk Advisory Board's (CMAB) Happy Cow ads have garnered more than brand recognition; they have received labels ranging from endearing to deceitful. Despite meeting resistance and being sued (unsuccessfully) by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in 2005, the Board has continued to develop Happy California Cow advertisements. The advertisements, originally featuring Holstein cows, Janice and Diane, took both print and commercial form. Print versions circulated among billboards, magazines, and organization-produced propaganda including bumper stickers and stuffed animals. Commercial versions of the ads appeared on major networks in California and currently run nationwide. The blue skies, green grasses, and spotted cows have become household images, yet they have not been universally well received.

In this paper I explore the visual rhetoric of the Happy Cow campaign, which debuted in 2007, as advertising and apologia used to defend the California dairy industry against mounting criticism. I argue that visual apologia, including that of the Happy Cow campaign, is both promising and rhetorically limiting. It is a potentially potent and problematic form of apologia. In particular, while the Happy Cow campaign excels at engaging audiences, it fails as effective apologia because of its inability to direct audience interpretations to the industry's apologetic arguments. As the conclusion indicates, however, several approaches may be taken to downplay the negative implications of visual apologia while harnessing its productive qualities.

This study of visual apologia unites visual and organizational scholarship with more traditional studies of public address. Taking this interdisciplinary approach strengthens the foundation of the paper, pulling elements from multiple perspectives that best suit the case study (Campbell & Burkholder, 1996). This approach additionally allows the present generic analysis to contribute to a number of important conversations. As visual apologia is a growing phenomenon, more rhetorical scholarship is needed to keep up with modern developments and shifting communication strategies. In addition, this study pragmatically serves the corporate world, as organizational apologia is often a high stakes concern. The California dairy industry and the success of the Happy Cow campaign, for example, have a tremendous economic impact on the state and its thousands of dairy farmers. (1) In response to these theoretical and practical exigencies, the present study of visual apologia, examines the argumentative facets of visual discourse to draw conclusions about this category of rhetoric (Blair, 2008; Burgchardt, 2005).

This paper is organized as follows. A review of the rhetorical literature first provides the foundation upon which the analysis is conducted. Subsequently provided is a review of the social and political context that called forth the Happy Cow campaign. The study of the campaign begins with detailed descriptions of two representative Happy Cow commercials, which are then rhetorically analyzed in light of three visual and apologetic qualities. The conclusion of the paper reviews the challenges and advantages of visual apologia and offers suggestions for productive application and future research.

LIGHTS, CAMERA, CONTEXT

The Happy California Cow campaign was born into a dominant visual culture. Arguments, apologia, announcements, and other discourse are increasingly emitted through visual, not just linguistic, discourse. W.J.T. Mitchell (1994; 1995) and Cara Finnegan (2005) remind us that, as vision frames our human experience, visuals as communicative expressions are nearly as ubiquitous as language itself. Once a mode open only to those savvy with a brush or burin, visual rhetoric in infinite forms is now widely accessible to individuals and organizations thanks to the proliferation of technology. Visual messages now meet many needs and, through their use of imagery, engage and endure in the minds of viewers (Hawhee, 2011). Visual discourse accelerates the speed of communication and more easily expands viewers' global consciousness (DeLuca & Peeples, 2002).

Visual rhetoric, in general, is a growing area of scholarship. In recent decades, scholars have explored the types, functions, counterparts, and challenges of visual arguments (Barbatsis 1996; Birdsell & Groarke, 1996; Medhurst & DeSousa, 1981). Anthony Blair (2008) has clarified that, compared to verbal arguments, visual arguments are characterized by evocative power, perceived realism, rhetorical (not dialectic) power, greater force and immediacy, and an inability to enunciate supporting premises. These understandings are built upon the idea that images engage their audience by functioning like enthymemes, or syllogistic structures in which one or more supporting premises are unstated (Aristotle, trans. 2007; Blair, 2008; Jenkins, 2008). Valerie Smith (2007) recently agreed that classic rhetorical concepts, including the enthymeme, help loosely explain the argumentative nature of visuals. Visuals' argumentative potential is important to understand as organizations increasingly attempt to argue through visuals that omit explicit premises or propositions.

The roles of omission and ambiguity in communication have been widely studied. As Lester Olson (1983) explains, productive ambiguity occurs when visual texts omit specific identifications, allowing viewers to insert their own ideas or assume multiple meanings. Olson and others, including Augustine (trans. 2008), Mikhail Bakhtin (1984), and Eric Eisenburg (1984), have demonstrated that ambiguity is a generous gift that allows an image's message and purpose to change with audiences. By providing the supporting premises of a visual argument, viewers become engaged with, and even invested in a particular idea; they gain a sense of agency by interpreting visual enthymemes, which are often bound to everyday contexts and experiences (Finnegan, 2005). Yet this advantage comes at a cost. Anthony Blair posits that when founding premises and conditions are vague or ambiguous, "we cannot tell what we are being asked to concede, and we cannot decide whether to agree or whether the alleged conclusion follows" (2008, p. 46). Thus the pitfall of the enthymeme: more engaging than a syllogism but also more open to debate.

The argumentative potential of visual arguments is additionally complicated by their reliance on projected realism (Blair, 2008). When images project realism and objectivity as part of their argumentation, they can become highly political (Finnegan, 2001), charged with appeals that can possibly move Congress, as DeLuca and Demo (2000) point out, with the establishment of the first national wilderness park. While projected realism offers potency and engagement, it also poses challenges for the rhetorical potential of visual arguments. In his studies of natural landscapes and prenatal and microscopic imagery, for example, Nathan Stormer (2004) questions whether it is ever possible to fully represent reality in an image. Representing the sublime, for instance, entails acknowledging that competing versions of reality are commonplace (Stormer, 2004), which coincides with Blair's (2008) theory that visuals are not dialectical but rhetorical. Visual arguments lend themselves to multifaceted interpretations rather than single reconstructions of their truth value. Their ambiguity can be problematic, as we will see, especially when visual rhetoric is meant to fulfill highly specific functions (e.g., as apologia).

Realism is additionally challenged when a visual's argumentative quality is transparent. As Jenkins (2008) points out, advertisers who communicate through images are tasked with disarming the public's iconophobic impulses. Similarly suspect are performance fragments, which Keith Erickson defines as "political illusions" that manipulate viewers' emotions and notions of reality (2000, p. 141). Images of staged events, like Lyndon B. Johnson's signing of the 1965 Education Bill at his childhood school and Barack Obama's 2014 visit to a drought-stricken California farm, serve rhetorical and political purposes, but at a cost. Apparent manipulation and staging potentially open such performances to the critique of constructing false images. These critiques can carry over to organizations as they frame and defend their images and actions.

The use of apologia by corporations is a well-documented rhetorical strategy. Exigencies of various dimensions regularly demand that corporations act or speak to defend their ethos (Benoit, 1995; Hatch, 2006; Hearit, 1995). Traditionally, researchers have explored seven apologetic approaches including denial, bolstering, minimization, differentiation, transcendence, attack accuser, and comprehension (Abelson, 1959; Benoit, 1995; Ware & Linkugel, 1973). Studies of apologia, however, have been largely text-based, leaving untouched the study of visual apologia. Despite this gap, some research has at least extended apologetic scholarship diachronically (e.g., Janssen, 2012) and topically (e.g., Oles, 2010).

Paving the way for visual apologia research, corporate social responsibility theory (CSR) outlines organizations' rhetorical use of socially laudable deeds (philanthropic work, charitable donations, environmental contributions, etc.) to bolster their public image, as the oil industry has done (Spangler & Pompper, 2011). For example, since their 2010 oil spill, British Petroleum has produced ads showcasing their Gulf Coast restoration and conservation efforts. Such efforts exhibit how organizations argue through shared cultural values, such as social responsibility, to enhance their image, portray organizational values, and...