Back in the days, advertisements are mostly done through poster, billboard, magazine and more. However, most advertisements nowadays are done on mass media due to the increasing social media user. Some examples of the advertisements nowadays are done through radio, television, emails, website and many more.
There are three main persuasive techniques uses to appeal to the audience are pathos, ethos and logos.
Pathos
Pathos appeals to the audience’s emotion and feelings. It can also elicit people’s feelings that already reside in them. (1)
Ethos
“Ethos is when an argument is constructed based on the ethics or credibility of the person making the argument.”(2) For example in the perfume advertisement above, Brad Pitt is in it. Brad Pitt is a multi-million dollar actor who is known by most people; Therefore, naturally when people see him with the Chanel perfume, people will assume he uses it and it must be good.
Logos
“Logos is the means of persuasion by demonstration of logical proof, real or apparent.”(3) The advertisement on the left shows a cigarette as a bar chart. Logically people know that the more a person smoke, the worse that person’s health is going to get. The “cigarette chart” on the left shows the number of years a smoker can live considering the amount of cigarette one’s smoke.
Implicit vs Explicit
There are two types of message that advertisements are trying to send. Some advertisements send an implicit message, some send an explicit message and some send both.
Implicit
“An implicit message is a message that’s either implied or uses visuals rather than literally saying.”(4) The advertisement by Volkswagen above shows us that their car is easy to park by using a porcupine to represents their car, and bags of goldfish as other cars to show that other cars/goldfish will never get bumped by a Volkswagen car due its excellent parking ability. No place in that advertisement says that directly, but we all can understand what they are trying to imply.
Explicit
“An explicit message is clearly expressed or demonstrated leaving nothing merely implied.”(5) The advertisement by Heinz showed above tells people that no one “grows” ketchup like they do. This shows us that their ketchup are naturally grown and not artificial. Their ketchup bottle made to look like its made out of fresh tomato create imagery in people’s head that it’s very natural and healthy.
The advertisement above is a random advertisement that I happen to come across in Vancouver city. The TD bank advertisement above is using Logos technique because it shows people states/percentages and it sends an explicit message. It tells people that only 25% of the people in Vancouver have a clear savings goal which means that most people don’t. Most people are very likely to not have a saving plan hence this advertisement will remind people that and will cause people to consider meeting them to establish a saving plan for themselves.
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Leon's Blog 
Great analysis of advertisements and their methods of persuasion, Leon!
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