Humor and Persuasion

For my Rhetorical Analysis I choose to use an advertisement that uses Ethos and Pathos to influence the intended audience. Ethos persuades audiences through celebrity endorsement. They find very intriguing celebrities that they think the particular audience would enjoy seeing. Pathos uses emotion to grab the viewers' attention. With this advertisement they use humor. In an advertisement like this, combining a funny sketch and beloved actors I'm sure Snickers received a great outcome.

The use of effective persuasion techniques will not only the marketing and sales personnel to make more sales and meet the targets but also enable them to have an edge over the competitive environment. So of the techniques used in the commercial video from state farm insurance company on one hand show an effective means of communicating to convince the audience while on the other hand, the video is too complex to comprehend for an a normal and uneducated citizen. Here are some of the effective persuasion techniques that have been used in the commercial to reach out and convince their target audience to use and stick to the company’s insurance services. Moreover, these techniques are aimed at making the incumbent customers to become more loyal to State Farm insurance. According to Petty, Richard and Cacioppo (1984), there are two routes effective persuasion no matter the kind of media used to deliver the message to the audience. First, one can persuade effectively by building a central argument(s) in the message. Secondly, the persuader can effectively deliver the message to his or her target audience by trying to appeal to the audience by associating the message with what they can accept favorably. Usually, the favorable peripheral cues in the message lures the

Advertisements are everywhere. From billboards, to magazines, to newspapers, flyers and TV commercials, chances are that you won’t go a day without observing some sort of ad. In most cases, companies use these ads as persuasive tools, deploying rhetorical appeals—logos, pathos, and ethos—to move their audiences to think or act in a certain way. The two magazine ads featured here, both endorsing Pedigree products, serve as excellent examples of how these modes of persuasion are strategically used.

I feel the usage of pathos is the most powerful in persuading others to do something to change their minds. When one decides to change someone’s perspective on a certain topic, they must decide their audience. For example, a pastor wouldn’t want to persuade his followers that their religion is false and inaccurate. The pastor would want to persuade the non-believers that whichever religion they follow isn’t correct, and try to guide them to his/hers faith. Pathos is one of the world’s leading tactics used this day and can be seen in remotely any area. Humane societies use pathos on their heart-jerking commercials. Food banks use pathos on persuading common folk to give a dollar to feed starving children. Even more commonly, parents use pathos

This type of persuasion occurs when someone evaluates the message based on surface-level characteristics. This method is known as the heuristic persuasion and is leveraged by appeals to one’s habit or emotions. For example, if someone is watching an a tv ad for men’s cologne the advertisers are hoping that people would be more convinced by things like physical attractiveness or music played in the background. People tend to take this route when their understanding of the content is low, or they just aren’t interested in the topic. For this reason, this route doesn’t engage systematic thinking of the individual which allows them to make a quick decision based on heuristics or incidental cues. As a result, using pathos along with the peripheral route is a significant maneuver to help to engage one’s emotions more

(TS) The advertisement for Bose Headphones displaying the man and the waterfall uses humor and dramatic irony to make readers remember the ad and the headphones they are selling. (C1) Humor is portrayed in this ad in a number of different ways. (E1) This ad uses humor because the man rowing the boat is about to fall to his death down a waterfall and doesn’t even realize it. The fact that the man is so oblivious and the exaggeration of the power of the headphones is what brings up humor in the ad. (R1) The humor in this unrealistic advertisement quickly draws readers attention to make you remember it. The picture stands out and is different from other ads because of the way it uses humor, so the audience is sure to remember

Dennis, I enjoyed reading your discussion post. I also see pathos in advertisement very frequently; because it's an appeal to emotion. Just like when they work off of our fear; when waiting to sell alarm system by showing a burglar. Or expensive jewelry showing how happy the recipient is after receiving the gift. Just to name a few they are very clever because it causes people to spend more money than they normally would

We live in a society where everyone is trying to live to a certain expectation set by society. At some point of our lives, we have all been peer pressure into doing something or in some cases thinking. If we sit back and take a minute to analyze our surroundings, we may noticed billboards, newspaper, ads, and television commercials. This is what we come to know as “media”. There are so many techniques they try to use to persuade us into buying that “amazing” product or whatever point they are trying to get across. They could use one of three of the rhetorical appeals, logos, ethos, or pathos. They could use a combination of all three. Persuasion doesn’t only occur through written but also through verbal words or even actions.

The first essential of persuasion involves the structure of the argument being posed by one who is trying to provoke others to action. In order to convince someone of a new argument, idea or moral, one must use the proper methods: logos, ethos and pathos. According to Hauser, “The method

Advertisements are a part of our everyday lives and we encounter thousands every day on television, in newspapers, on the radio, on the internet. Advertisements use three basic tricks to persuade the people as listed by Aristotle: Ethos, Pathos, and Logos. Ethos is an appeal to ethics, and it is used to convince the viewer of the credibility. Pathos is an appeal to emotion and is used to convince the viewer by creating an emotional response. Logos is an appeal to logic and is used to persuade the viewer by logic. An advertisement may use one, two or a combination of all three. They have the power to persuade us into buying things that we might or might not want. Not every advertisement aims at materialistic things. Some advertisements want to educate us on a persistent issue, some might want to raise awareness and even aid funding, some try to remind us of important events that might be taking place in our county. The advertising agencies try to be as creative as possible in order to grab utmost attention. But sometimes, in doing so, they end up hurting sentiments of a community of people. I will discuss one such advertisement in my journal below.

Another example of humour as a persuasive technique in ‘Super Size Me’ is the use funny, informative cartoons.

* Dr. Cialdini explained that commitments are more powerful when they are active; public; effortful; and viewed as internally motivated. The statement of the commentator is accurate because the motorcycle owners had made their commitment public by tattooing their commitment on their

        A strong advertisement campaign is dependent on the ability of the advertisement company to successfully attract the target audience. With that in mind, Wendy’s advertisement company for ‘Where’s the Beef?’ clearly targets the 16-40 age demographic of Americans. This is shown through utilization of younger actors that used smartphones, making fun of older people that were handling retro dial phones, and targeting Americans by having the narrator speaking about how Wendy’s beef is made in America. Once the target audience or demographic has been established, then an advertisement company can select the most effective and efficient persuasion methods. The three persuasion methods selected in this paper are being employed to attract the abovementioned demographic.

Not all advertisers do such a great job at taking their point across in an ad. Sometimes there are those ads that you can stare at endlessly, trying to figure out what it is trying to persuade you of buying, but you never understand

Social psychologists have not only studied the effects of persuasion, but also the elements that contribute to attitude change. Carl Hovland (1953) developed the Hovland-Yale model of persuasion, in which he used a research team from Yale University. They found that there are a considerable number of factors that can influence how likely attitude changes are to occur, however they also noticed that some are more important than others [McGuire et al 1996]. One of the key factors they found that determines whether persuasion occurs is the communicator. Social psychologists have found that persuasion can be influenced depending about who is presenting the argument, which can impact on how an audience receives it. The credibility of the communicator plays a large role in influencing persuasion, in which