Friday, January 27, 2012

Pathos: the building blocks of advertisements.

It seems to me that most advertisements nowadays have their foundations in pathos. It also seems to be pretty lazy advertising when it comes down to it. If you think of nearly any commercial, it's almost always based on an appeal to your emotions. From the Sarah McLachlan commercials, to Axe body spray commercials, advertisers are always pulling on our heartstrings.

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But how much does this type of advertising really work? The Sarah McLachlan commercials rip your heart out and show it to you, but do you really pick up the phone...? And Axe commercials are just ridiculous... So how can this highly emotional appeal really improve sales? Usually, the emotional appeal is mixed with some logical or ethical appeal.

Maybe the Sarah McLachlan commercials, and others of the like succeed in that they do insert some logic and ethic appeal. The common phrase "for only twenty cents a day..." and "to save a dog like Ralphy..." really make a person feel like they could make difference with their twenty cents a day.

Hopefully the Axe commercials aren't fooling anyone. It's interesting to really watch the commercials and see that the guy is kind of average... but just add Axe and he suddenly has five or six super hot chicks all over him. Again, hopefully no one was tricked by that. If you were, it's okay... I guess. But on some level advertisers are hoping people watch these Ads, chuckle a little and give their product a shot.

I'm sure the dynamics of advertising are highly considered and calculated before any Ad is put out, but regardless, it's pretty interesting to examine how much commercials and such go right to the heart before anything else.
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2 comments:

  1. --January 27, 2012 at 12:15 PM

    I agree that most commercials are banking on the audience having some kind of emotional reaction to them rather than purchasing the product because of the facts provided in the advertisement. A perfect example of this is the Old Spice commercials. There were absolutely zero facts in those commercials, but the guy presenting the product talked in a funny voice and walked around doing all kinds of ridiculous things while proclaiming that anyone could smell like him. He didn't explicitly state that Old Spice was the reason he was able to do these amazing things, but it was heavily implied. When they first came out these commercials got all kinds of positive feedback. The main guy in them ended up guest starring in a couple TV shows because of their popularity. Basically, if appealing to people's emotions works for a company, they're not going to change their methodology to be more factual. They will do whatever makes the most money, and that seems to be appealing to the viewers' pathos.

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  2. Mike InterdonatoJanuary 28, 2012 at 5:32 PM

    I find your take on the role of pathos in advertisements very interesting. I definitely agree that most advertisements try to reach out to our emotions in order to convince us to try their product. For some reason, I do not think that commercials have much an effect on me in that I do not find myself going out to buy things based on a commercial that I saw. While the Axe commercials are comical and try to make you believe they have some special power, I do not go out to buy Axe after seeing them. Also, the Old Spice commercials that Caitlin references are hilarious, yet I don't buy that either. However, most companies do seem to focus on pathos in their commercials and advertisements so I guess some people do go out to buy products after being convinced through pathos.

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