Advertising and Aristotle 

These days, a lot of my waking hours are consumed thinking, discussing, analyzing and applying the AIDA model, Hierarchy-of-Effects model, Innovation-Adoption model, Elaboration Likelihood Model, etc while teaching IMC (Integrated Marketing Communications) to semester 3.

 It makes me wonder who is the ‘father’ of all these clever-sounding models to understand the consumer?

 My curiosity took me back 2300 years.

Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), the Greek philosopher, wrote a book called Rhētorikḗ (translation: On Rhetoric) which deals with the ‘persuasion triad’. This is something you and I (in our daily lives), marketers, advertisers, media, entertainers, politicians, and policymakers have been using consciously or unconsciously since time immemorial. 

So, what is persuasion, aka rhetoric? 

To understand, answer this question first. What is common among school debates, print ads, TV outputs (commercials, daily soaps, reality shows), movies, browsing the internet, YouTube influencers or a politician’s passionate election rally speech? 

The answer is, all of them want their audience to think, feel and act in a specific way - their way - that’s the crux of persuasion. Next question: How to persuade others? 

Let’s welcome Aristotle with his omnipresent three pillars of rhetorics.

Ethos refers to the persuader’s (speaker/writer) character/credibility in the eyes of the audience. Why should I trust you? You can build credibility by citing professional sources, using content-specific language (jargons), and by showing evidence of your ethical, knowledgeable background. If you ever wondered why you should trust Sachin Tendulkar to influence your automobile engine oil choice or why toothpaste ads feature a white-coat wearing friendly doctor Aristotle knew the still prevalent human psychology hundreds of years back.

Pathos is the ‘emotional hook’ in the persuader’s argument to start and strengthen the universal emotions (fear, anger, joy, sadness, disgust, and surprise) in the audiences’ mind and nudging them to ‘act’. Tickling emotion is typically done by story-telling, using vivid imagery, and using an impassioned modulated voice. Ad world if choc-a-block with examples: Coke=happy, McDonald’s=family, smartphone=smart. You get it, right? A word of caution: don’t overdo emotion. It’s a thin line between emotion and irritation. 

Finally, persuasion through Logos. It is the appeal to logic and reason based on data, facts, statistics, quotations. Think of all the number-crunching news anchors and primetime TV debate panel experts who try to influence and persuade using this tactic.

Aristotle's ‘EPL’ has been in the public domain for hundreds of years. Then, why are so many of us prone to being ‘influenced ’by others rather than ‘influencing’ others? 

Well, perhaps it’s because ‘knowing’ something  and ‘doing’ something  are different games.

Image courtesy: https://pxhere.com/en/photo/1012935