Ellen DeGeneres, an award-winning entertainer, exemplifies a popular culture icon who has promoted her persona by utilizing various genres. ED, Ellentube, her novel Seriously…I’m Kidding, and her GLBTQ Leadership Council speech, vary in form, style, and subject matter, yet have the same purpose of marketing her personal brand.

      Ellen DeGeneres’ lifestyle brand, ED, is a collection of thoughtfully designed women’s apparel, accessories, furniture, home decor, and pet items, all of which are inspired by her iconic style, values, and personality. This online store is characterized as having a visual mode as it is essential to visibly display the items available for purchasing. The merchandise has a restrained style that utilizes a simple color theme of mainly red, white, and navy blue. As a way to express her passionate love for animals, Ellen’s collection feature cartoon animals that appear on the background of the website as well as on many of the products. The overall design of the website parallels the collection’s simplicity and color choices. Links to various product categorizes are located along the left side of the webpage, which contains a large, central image to capture the viewer’s interest right away. Each page also contains a humorous quote. For example, the pet items webpage contains the following quote of Ellen: “After I launched my line for humans I realized that I was leaving a whole species out. Dogs deserve nice things too” (Ellen DeGeneres ED Online Store). The bottom of the every page contains links to the social media outlets of Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest accounts dedicated to featuring Ed products, leading to even greater exposure of the collection. There is also a ED mailing list so that viewers can provide their personal email to receive updates, coupons, and promotions. Visualization of the collection creates the rhetorical appeal of pathos. Ellen is persuading individuals to purchase her products by appealing to their desires. A digital medium allows for Ellen to reach out to people in all areas of the world. It also allows the audience to easily share the products they find attractive with their friends and family. The audience would be those who visit the website, specifically females who appreciate and admire Ellen’s sense of style and individual expression.  As a prominent gay role model, Ellen persuades her customers to “embrace and express their own sense of style and individuality through all parts of their life” (Ellen DeGeneres ED Online Store).

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     Ellentube, a website that features humorous and interesting videos, was developed by Ellen in union with Telepictures Productions Inc. and Warner Bros. Entertainment to extend her T.V. franchise to digital, social, and gaming audiences. This website can be characterized as having both a visual and an audio mode. Videos are meant to be seen, heard, and engaged with. It encourages viewers to fall into an addictive cycle of watching video after video. The website’s symbol featuring a rainbow color scheme is very similar to a SMPTE television test pattern, which correlates Ellen’s wide use of the television medium. The home page and subpages contain abundant colorful pictures and fascinating videos to capture the viewer’s interest right away. Ellentube has a very easy-to-navigate design, which is suitable as the website was created to be accessible to people of all ages, from young kids to adults. The overall style creates a humorous and relaxed tone. This tone creates a sense of enjoyment in its viewers, appealing to their emotions, and creating the rhetorical appeal of pathos. Ellentube can be characterized as having a digital medium. This family-friendly site displays both exclusive online clips from The Ellen DeGeneres Show and user-generated content submitted by fans. A digital medium makes it easy for people to share videos and images they find enjoyable with their friends and family. The bottom of the website contains links to the social media outlets of Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, YouTube, Facebook, Vine, Pinterest, and Rich Site Summary (RSS) Feed in order to further this sharing. The main purpose of this website is to not only entertain, but also persuade people to watch her T.V. show. This website demonstrates the humor that Ellen is widely known for, which creates a sense of identity with her viewers. It can be estimated that the more people that like Ellen personally, the more people that will watch her show. Filmed at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, California, The Ellen DeGeneres Show is an hour long, five-days-a-week talk-variety show. This show features a mix of celebrity interviews, music performances, audience involvement games, and segments focused on astonishing stories and talents of real life people (Ellentube). Ellentube is a main method in which Ellen advertises this show. Those who visit the website can purchase tickets to the show, watch old episodes and clips, participate in show-sponsored giveaways, and send Ellen mail.

     Seriously…I’m Kidding is Ellen DeGeneres’ third novel, which was published on October 4th, 2011 (DeGeneres).  It includes tidbits from her personal life, humorous observations on life in general, and a wide variety of other items.  These items include short stories, poems, and a bucket list.  The book is in the form of a text-based and audio mode.  Readers have the option to choose between a hard-copy book and an audiobook.  The audiobook is a voice-over of Ellen herself. The decision to have Ellen’s distinctive voice deliver the text is of importance because Ellen is known for, and capitalizes upon, her comic voice. She is a talk-show host, meaning that her voice is heard by millions of people every week. Ellen’s recognizable voice resonates with her audience from her work with television, radio, and film.

    This artifact differs from the other artifacts presented because it is in the form of both print and digital media. Ellen is gaining greater exposure by appealing to those individuals who prefer a physical delivery of information, rather than digital. For example, although audience preference varies among different individuals, a younger audience might prefer to listen to the audiobook while going about their lives, while an older audience might prefer to engage with the hard-copy book. Ellen is widely known for her work with digital mediums. The creation of a book, on the other hand, leads to a whole different experience for her audience. Television and film present ideas and characters on a basic surface level, negating great detail since the main purpose is to keep viewers engaged and entertained. Television shows are fast-paced in order to keep people from tuning out and switching the channel. In contrast, books lead to a prolonged experience, meaning the reader can bookmark where they left off and continue the experience at a later time. Books are proactive as the reader must focus and analyze the concepts presented.

   The purpose of this book is to persuade readers acquire a certain affinity for Ellen.  Through a loose and whimsical writing style, good-natured banter, and an optimistic tone and outlook on life, Ellen is attempting to make a deep connection with her readers. This book also speaks of the importance Ellen places on individual expression. She urges readers to place personal happiness above the thoughts and trivial opinions of others. She disregards societal demands for women. This is one of the reasons why some people look up to her for inspiration. Another purpose of this book is to tell a story.  She shares her opinions and talks about her own life in the form of a memoir.  The topics include, but are not limited to, working for Cover Girl, her wife, Portia de Rossi, her passionate love for animals, and her journey as a gay woman.  The audience would be those fans who appreciate Ellen, or simply those individuals who are interested in reading a humorous book.  Unlike Ellentube, the audience for this book is directed mainly to adults and teens due to the fact that some of the language would be difficult to process for children of a younger age.

   To get a better understanding of her writing style, the following is a quote from the book, Seriously…I’m Kidding: “My point is, I love gardening as a hobby. Right now in our garden, Portia and I are growing tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, beets, eggplant, basil, and a whole assortment of herbs” (DeGeneres). This quote is an example of Ellen sharing personal parts of her life with her readers. She feels strongly about health and animal rights. As a vegan, she has also launched a website called Going Vegan With Ellen, which includes recipes, resources and tips, and information on celebrities who have decided to make the transformation to become vegan.  Along with her wife, Ellen has also been involved in a partnership with chef, Tal Ronnen, to open a new vegan eatery in California's San Fernando Valley (NY Daily News).  By sharing her passions and values, she is attempting to make readers feel more connected to her.  Her goal is to become relatable and transcend being known as just a talk-show comedian. Ellen is widely known for her great sense of humor. Through this novel, she gives valuable life advice, but at the same time, is never too serious.

     Another artifact of Ellen DeGeneres is a speech given for the GLBTQ Leadership Council (GLC) at the Human Rights Campaign National Dinner on November 7th, 1997 (YouTube). This speech can be characterized as having an audio mode. She uses her voice to discuss gay and lesbian rights and issues. She uses her own personal experiences of coming out as a lesbian woman on national television and how it has affected her life in order to make her main points. She uses the rhetorical appeal of pathos, appealing to the audience’s emotions by using humor and evoking feelings of empathy. She delivers the speech face-to-face in front of an audience composed of adult men and women apart of a leadership council for human rights.

This speech demonstrates how Ellen DeGeneres is often viewed as an icon for civil rights. When she publicly admitted to being gay on the cover of Time Magazine back in 1997, she became a symbol of courage and hope for numerous individuals struggling with their sexual orientation. A couple years later, on February 25th, 2007, she became the first lesbian woman to host the Academy Awards (Childhood, Life Achievements & Timeline). As both a woman and a homosexual, Ellen is a representation two large minority groups. She is a strong advocate for human social equality and her widespread fame aids in projecting her message. Ellen’s coming out about her sexual orientation was a topic of controversy. She ultimately, however, gained large amounts of publicity and can now be recognized as one of America’s most famous gay individuals.

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Ellen DeGeneres, an award-winning entertainer, has been successful in “branding” her image to the public by developing compositions in various genres. She is a popular culture icon in current society, representing an aspect of cultural identity. However, DeGeneres has not always been this iconic and influential. Rather, through compositions, such as ED, Ellentube, her novel Seriously…I’m Kidding, and her GLC speech, she has promoted her persona. By utilizing different methods of promotion, including merchandise, websites, television shows, social media, speeches, and books, her distinguishable voice is heard by a wide audience from young children, teens, to adults. Along the way she has made important decisions concerning what medium, mode, design, and style, would best serve this audience and her purpose. The choices she has made are a representation of who Ellen DeGeneres is as a person. She is an entertainer, who uses her sense of humor to attract people and gain a following. It is due to this humor that viewers can identify with her and, thus, listen to what she has to say no matter the topic. She is also a vocal woman who speaks freely and honestly about subject matters she finds important encompassing the advancement of human and animal rights. Ellen DeGeneres’ ability to capture’s people attention and get them to listen to not only trivial, but also important subject matters is a defining reason why she has made an impact on current society.