Aristotle's Art of Rhetoric

Aristotle's art of Rhetoric is a book dating back to 4 BC, written by Aristotle to describe the ways in which we persuade people into doing or buying things. It describes the three different ways we convince our audience into thinking similarly to us, which he called Pathos, Ethos and Logos. These three advertising theories describe the way we can make an audience feel emotions, like happy or sad, and use these emotions to influence them into making decisions.

Pathos

Pathos is the use of persuasion to evoke an emotion in the audience. It is used to create an emotional response, and use that to their advantage by having people make decisions based on their emotions. For example, one of the most common ways this is done is by delivering bad news to a person. The news then evokes a negative emotion, most likely sadness. By offering the person a solution to the sadness or problem created by the bad news, the person is then influenced into investing in the product or service to make themselves feel better.

These emotional reactions can be created by things like metaphors, emotional scenes, passionate monologues, sad or happy imagery, personal anecdotes and music. The audience is captured by whats known as a hook, which draws them in to what they are viewing and makes them feel the emotions conveyed in it.

One advert which shows the Pathos method is this advert against child abuse and bullying.



The advert evokes emotions in the audience by using art and upsetting imagery. The emotional image of a little boy crying will upset parents and grandparents in particular, as it upsets them to see a child in any kind of pain. The art also has the effect of metaphorically displaying how hurtful word can cause pain to a child, by portraying the words in such a way that they appear to be physically harming the boy.

Logos

Logos is the persuasion technique that uses facts and evidence as a way of proving a brands' credibility to the audience. They use statistics and information to prove their worth, and don't give the audience a chance to question the reliability of the brand, as they have already proven to their audience that they are reliable through the use of things like customer reviews and percentages.

They persuade their audience that their products are the best by using plenty of figures, to make themselves appear more professional than what they really are. They will use statements such as "80% of women agree".

One advert which shows the Logos method is this smoking advert.



This advert persuades people not to buy or smoke cigarettes by including hard hitting facts. The advert states that the average smoker needs five thousand cigarettes a year, which is showing that people are wasting thousands of pounds on cigarettes every year. The image also shows a metaphor representing the effects cigarettes have on a person.

Ethos

Another way in which they prove their credibility to the audience is by using brand association. Audiences will see celebrities they like and trust endorsing the product, and it will convince them into investing in it. For example, Jennifer Anniston does several television advertisements for Aveeno's moisturising products, therefore people who are a fan of her tv shows and movies will see that she trusts this brand and choose this over others.

One advert that links with Ethos is this shampoo advert.

This advert persuades people to buy their products by using the famous icon, Marilyn Munroe. At the time that this product was being advertised, everyone wanted to look just like Marilyn, so therefore they would have bought this product in the hopes that it would give them hair just like hers.