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The impact of advertising on consumer buying behaviour
Logos, ethos, and pathos in advertising
Logos, ethos, and pathos in advertising
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Every year, companies spend billions of dollars in advertising in hopes to persuade consumers to buy their product. Companies use Aristotle’s approaches of Rhetoric; which use ethos, logos, and pathos. According to “The Allstate Corporation,” The Allstate Corporation is the second largest property and casualty insurance company, by premiums, in the United States” (The Allstate Corporation). Writer Stuart Elliott, supposed that in the first quarter of last year, Allstate spent $85.9 billion in advertising (Elliott). Elliott also stated that beginning in July 2011, Allstate would retire the face of Dennis Haysbert for Dean Winters in their television advertisements (Elliott). Winters performs as the character of Mayhem, as a toddler, in the "Mayhem Toddler" commercial to persuade buyers to obtain insurance from Allstate. Allstate exercises ethos, logos, and pathos in the “Mayhem Toddler” commercial.
The advertisement opens with Dean Winters in a black business suit with a butterfly band-aid on his upper right cheek, just below his eye. Winters is in the back seat of an SUV. He is holding a purple and yellow sippy cup, which has two handles on either side of it. In his lap is a gallon size bag of Cheerios, which he is consuming with his left hand. On his left is a grey sun blocker; most mothers have to protect their children from the sun while they are in the car. On Winter’s left, a clothes hanger has a pink and green cloth ball tied to a purple string. Winters has crumbs covering not only him but also his car seat. Behind his car seat is a yellow blanket. As soon as the commercial opens, Winters is screaming "Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!" Three seconds into screaming, he looks directly at the viewer with a sly...
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...c of distractions cause accidents. Dean Winters is acting as a toddler causing a distraction, and therefore he can prevent an accident. Finally as the pathos part of appeals, Allstate uses the emotion of humor. All in all Allstate is effective with the advertisement for the use of Aristotle’s approaches of Rhetoric Allstate apply in the commercial.
Works Cited
“The Allstate Corporation.” “International Directory of Company Histories.” 1999. Encyclopedia.com. 13 Dec. 2011.
Allstate Insurance by Allstate. Advertisement. Television.
Edlund, John R. Ethos, Logos, Pathos: Three Ways to Persuade.” Cal Poly Pomona, n.d. Web. 6 Dec 2011.
Elliott, Stuart. “Allstate Adds Villain, With Car Insurance as the Hero.” New York Times. New York Times, 21 June 2010. Web. 6 Dec. 2011.
Olson, Annie. “An Introduction to Rhetoric.” Le Tourneau U, May 2006. Web. 6 Dec. 2011.
Pathos is the author's use of emotions and sympathy to urge the audience to agree with his or her standpoint. And lastly, logos apply sound reasoning (logic) to attract the typical ideas of the audience and to prove the author's point of view. "Lockdown" by Evans D. Hopkins is a fine example of an author using these appeals to persuade his audience. Hopkins uses of the three appeals are easy to locate and relate to throughout the entire passage. He undoubtedly uses rhetoric to try and keep his audiences focused and to persuade them to feel the way he does about the treatment of prisoners.
Allstate Insurance makes itself notable by employing a commercial that divulges a short story of the consequences that a distraught teenage driver can inflict while on the road. Its use of various visual and verbal elements makes the advertisement acutely effective since it seizes the audience’s attention with colorful and amusing displays, while alerting them to the dangers of uninsured vehicles in a memorable way. Moreover, the commercial’s tactful use of several fallacies serves to distract and humor the audience into being swayed by the company’s claims. In short, the advertisement combines all these tools into making an effective, persuasive, and interesting campaign.
Palmer, William. "Rhetorical Analysis." Discovering Arguments: An Introduction to Critical Thinking, Writing, and Style. Boston: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2012. 268-69. Print.
Effectively communicating an idea or opinion requires several language techniques. In his study of rhetoric, Aristotle found that persuasion was established through three fundamental tools. One is logos, which is used to support an argument through hard data and statistics. Another is ethos, which is the credibility of an author or speaker that allows an audience to conclude from background information and language selection a sense of knowledge and expertise of the person presenting the argument. The impact of pathos, however, is the most effective tool in persuasion due to the link between emotions and decisions. Although each of these tools can be effective individually, a combination of rhetorical devices when used appropriately has the ability to sway an audience toward the writer’s point of view.
...ploying strong technical terms and establishing an extrinsic ethos, and exercising sub-arguments that would only benefit numerous groups of people, May strongly achieves his strategy of argument through ethos in terms of rhetorical persuasion.
Ramage, John D., John C. Bean, and June Johnson. Writing Arguments: A Rhetoric with Readings. 9th ed. Boston: Pearson Education, 2012. Print.
Almost every commercial uses Pathos, an appeal to emotions, to convince the viewer that their product is the best choice for them. The use of Pathos enables the persuader to reach out to the audience in a subconscious or even unconscious level. Emotion creates a bond with the viewer and the advertiser. Liberty Mutual commercials convince us that they provide the best coverage and benefits, such as 24 hour road side assistance and easy repair estimates. In particular, their commercials stand out as as one who uses humor and fear, and then provides reassurance to coax us to chose their insurance over others.
McNeil, Hayden. The Anteater's Guide to Writing & Rhetoric. Irvine: Composition Program, Department of English, UC Irvine, 2014. Print.
In an Allstate advertisement promoting “safe driving bonus checks” a man and woman are sitting at a table in a restaurant for lunch. The woman turns to the man asks him whether or not he has said that “men are superior drivers”. When he agrees that he had, she then asks him how it is possible that she receive a safe driving bonus check for her insurance agency, joking that it “must be a misprint”. During their conversation, she also mentions some facts about how clients insured by Allstate go about receiving a bonus check. In an attempt at making an impression, all of the important facts she says are voiced over by Allstate’s spokesman Dennis Haysbert, who is known for his recognized deep voice. This advertisement is attempting to target an
Student's Book of College English: Rhetoric, Reader, Research Guide and Handbook. Boston: Pearson Learning Solutions, 2012. 402-405.
It is clear that he uses pathos as his most potent tool for persuasion. Be it a way to depict gruesome imagery, a way to supplement his call to action, or as an enhancement for both his ethos and logos arguments, his strategic use of pathos is what drove the letter’s meaning to the hearts of
Political activist and contemporary psychologist Dr. Noam Chomsky once said about propaganda and advertising, “Citizens… should undertake a course of intellectual self defense to protect themselves from manipulation and control” (Noam). Advertisers have two main goals when creating their advertisements: attract attention to the product, and generate more sales for their business (Fowles). Truthfulness, although important to the consumer, is not often an advertiser's main concern. When viewing an advertisement, consumers must consider these goals to avoid being duped by the flashiness of the product (Fowles). Magazines such as Cosmopolitan often contain advertisements for a variety of products, such as one selling the latest and
The video describes how our society may not even care about the product being advertised, but we still read the billboard or watch the commercial. Also mentioned was the use of colors in a commercial, the marketing effects in politics, and even market research obtained by studying different cults. Frontline takes an in-depth look at the multibillion-dollar “persuasion industries” of advertising and how this rhetoric affects everyone. So whether this is in the form of a television commercial or a billboard, pathos, logos, and ethos can be found in all advertisements.
Sut Jhally, a professor at the university of Massachusetts of whom won the distinguished teacher award, wrote in his essay “ Advertising at the Edge of the Apocalypse” that : 20th century advertising - the most powerful propaganda in human history - will destroy the world as we know it. The survival of the human race will depend upon our ability to minimize the harmful effects of Advertising. These effects will have lasting impacts on our culture, joy, and future.
Every day we are victims to persuasion whether anyone can notice it or not. Logos, pathos and ethos are the types of persuasion. Logos persuades by reason, pathos by appealing to emotion and ethos by the credibility of the author. The characters in The Iliad employ the use of these techniques to sway another character into doing or feeling something else.