Do you know that your brand can persuade your customer in three ways: ethos, pathos and logos. These types of rhetoric have been known for more than 2000 years since they're invented by antiquity.
What do they do? These are persuasive methods of marketing. By using them, we try to convince our customer with different arguments:
1. Ethos is a way of making up your message to your customer based on his values and understanding of what is good and bad
2. Pathos appeals to the emotional part of your customer, trying to impress him or evoke particular emotions
3. Logos is opposed to pathos in a way that it targets reason and rational arguments needed to persuade your customer
Now, let's see how we can practically apply this rhetoric trinity in your brand commercial:
Ethos is a powerful device since it attempts to convince by referring to morality and authority. When your brand talks about its mission and fundamental values you try to persuade a customer that the product you're selling resonates with his ideals of what's good. Another way to use ethos is to engage a person with higher social credibility, for instance, your brand ambassador. For instance, you can hire a celebrity or an influencer who have some authority to prove the worthiness of your product. The alternative way for using ethos is showing a social approval which is called Plain Folks. With Plain Folks technique you argue that common people like your product and this means that your customer can trust too to your brand.
Pathos is used in your commercial as a promise of a happy life. Advertising with pathetic rhetoric directly tries to evoke emotions, and influence your customer's purchasing decision. With pathos, you create an atmosphere of happiness, success, love, joy. Or, you can raise negative emotions to make your customers think about their security and safety, for instance in insurance commercials. Pathos might be also used for erotic images to light up your sexual drive and thus to make the product more desired, for instance in a perfume commercial.
Logos rules over rationality and reason. Logos can be used both as an ol' good wisdom or as statistic data to convince your customer. Logos appeals to logic and well-thought decisions by using arguments to highlight the benefit and usefulness of your project. One of the bright examples is a commercial about a healthy lifestyle, where the organic choice of product is both conscious and reasonable.
All these rhetoric devices can be used separately or in tandem. For instance, you can blend up a reason, authority and emotions and get a powerful cocktail of all three of them. Or, you can try out all three one by one for your commercial idea, to see what results they will yield.
What's the most relevant and efficient rhetoric device for your brand? Can you think about changing your brand's rhetoric to another one? Share your answer in the comments!
Are you in search of inspiring stories? Or, you want to share yours and get heard? Zecamp — the place where creators matter!
