Step 2 Persuasive Techniques
The persuasive strategies used by advertisers who want you to buy their product can be divided into three categories: pathos, logos, and ethos.
Pathos: an appeal to emotion.
An advertisement using pathos will attempt to evoke an emotional response in the consumer. Sometimes, it is a positive emotion such as happiness: an image of people enjoying themselves while drinking Pepsi. Other times, advertisers will use negative emotions such as pain: a person having back problems after buying the “wrong” mattress. Pathos can also include emotions such as fear and guilt: images of a starving child persuade you to send money.
Logos: an appeal to logic or reason.
An advertisement using logos will give you the evidence and statistics you need to fully understand what the product does. The logos of an advertisement will be the "straight facts" about the product: One glass of Florida orange juice contains 75% of your daily Vitamin C needs.
Ethos: an appeal to credibility or character.
An advertisement using ethos will try to convince you that the company is more reliable, honest, and credible; therefore, you should buy its product. Ethos often involves statistics from reliable experts, such as nine out of ten dentists agree that Crest is the better than any other brand or Americas dieters choose Lean Cuisine. Often, a celebrity endorses a product to lend it more credibility: Catherine Zeta-Jones makes us want to switch to T-Mobile.
Do this activity to check your understanding.
The following are some more specific strategies that advertisers use. Often, they overlap with the rhetorical strategies above.
Avant Garde: The suggestion that using this product puts the user ahead of the times.
Association: Using images (like a cartoon character or the American flag), in the hope you’ll transfer your good feelings about the image to the product.
Call to action: Telling you what to do— “Buy today!” or “Vote now”—removes all doubt about next steps.
Claim: Informing you about how the product works or helps you.
Games and activities: Putting a commercial into the form of a game can be a fun way for you to get to know more about a product and spend more time with it.
Humour: Using ads that make you laugh can catch your attention and be memorable.
Hype: Using words like amazing and incredible make products seem really exciting.
Must-have: Suggesting that you must have the product to be happy, popular, or satisfied.
Fear: Using a product to solve something you worry about, like bad breath.
Prizes, sweepstakes, and gifts: Using a chance to win a prize to attract attention.
Repetition: Repeating a message or idea so you remember it.
Sales and price: Showing or announcing a discounted price can make a product look better.
Sense appeal: Using images and sounds to appeal to your senses: sight, touch, taste, etc.
Special ingredients: Promoting a special ingredient may make you think the product works better than others.
Endorsements: Featuring someone, like a celebrity, saying how the product worked for them can be convincing
Weasel Words: “Weasel words” are used to suggest a positive meaning without actually really making any guarantee. A scientist says that a diet product might help you to lose weight the way it helped him to lose weight
Magic Ingredients: The suggestion that some almost miraculous discovery makes the product exceptionally effective. A pharmaceutical manufacturer describes a special coating that makes their pain reliever less irritating to the stomach than a competitor’s.
Patriotism: The suggestion that purchasing this product shows your love of your country. A company brags about its product being made in America.
Transfer: Positive words, images, and ideas are used to suggest that the product being sold is also positive. A textile manufacturer wanting people to wear their product to stay cool during the summer shows people wearing fashions made from their cloth at a sunny seaside setting where there is a cool breeze.
Plain Folks: The suggestion that the product is a practical product of good value for ordinary people. A cereal manufacturer shows an ordinary family sitting down to breakfast and enjoying their product.
Snob Appeal: The suggestion that the use of the product makes the customer part of an elite group with a luxurious and glamorous lifestyle. A coffee manufacturer shows people dressed in formal gowns and tuxedos drinking their brand at an art gallery.
Bribery: Bribery offers you something “extra.”
Bandwagon: The suggestion that you should join the crowd or be on the winning side by using a product—you don’t want to be the only person without it!
Do this activity to check your understanding
The Language of Appeal
When it comes to using language, advertisers draw on a number of techniques. For example, they use language to appeal to our desire to obtain a bargain or to present a product as being a breakthrough in technology. Infomercials in particular make heavy use of the language of appeal or emotive language. You are familiar with the the ideas of ‘buy one, get one free’ or ‘order now and you will receive a bonus’. The use of words such as "new", "free", "fast", "introducing", "at last" and "easy" is the language of appeal or emotive language.
In the 48-hour Rapid Detox commercial , the product advertised promises immediate results. Notice that modality is achieved through discriminating choices in modal verbs, adverbs, adjectives and nouns. To show a high degree of certainty about the likelihood of events, verbs of high modality are used. As well as modal verbs, modality can be expressed through choices of nouns, adjectives, and adverbs. If we feel tentative about something, we use low modality. Refer to the following chart (adapted from Derewianka, 2005) when investigating the language of advertising and the modality used.
High modality : must ought to has to definitely certainly always never requirement obligation obligatory required determined
Medium modality: will should can need to I think probably apparently often usually necessity probable necessary
Low modality: may might could would possibly perhaps seems appears maybe sometimes possibility probability possible
A cosmetic ad, for example, is more likely to use language such as, ‘You will notice an immediate change’, rather than, ‘You might notice a change’; or ‘It’s a must have item’, as opposed to, ‘You might want one’.
Think of a product to sell. Your job is to sell it in three different ways, with three different slogans. One slogan needs to communicate a hard sell of your product, another a medium sell and a third a soft sell. For each type of slogan choose words that communicate your attitude and opinions about your product from the corresponding list.
