Pathos, Ethos And Logos In The Art Of Persuasion

Over many years the art of persuasion has been mastered and has given individuals the ability to persuade the common man. Around 2,000 years ago a Greek philosopher discovered three key methods to persuading anyone. These three methods are known as pathos, ethos and logos. Ethos refers to the image of the speaker that is trying to persuade the audience. Pathos is relating to the emotion of the audience that is receiving the information from the speaker. Lastly, logos refers to the logical appeal of the audience. This means whether the information such as statistics or claims seems logical in the minds of the audience. The commercials that were chosen to show the methods of persuasion all involve all three of those methods but focus mostly on …show more content…
It starts off with Michael Jordan walking out of a car and into a basketball commercial. He’s specifically talking about his failures in life and says, “ I have missed more than nine thousand shots in my career, I have loss almost three hundred games, twenty six times i have been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed, I have failed over and over in life and that is why I succeed.” This is such a powerful commercial and is quite ironic. Nike’s main target is selling shoes. They target basketball players specifically and it is quite ironic they took a different approach when filming this commercial. Rather than have Michael Jordan talk about some shoes that have helped him won so many games and make so many shots they took a different approach to it. Instead, they focused on the negative aspect of Michael Jordan’s career. Nike decided to try persuading the audience that failure leads to success. “It’s not about how hard you hit it’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward.” Nike was really brilliant with that commercial and has definitely persuaded many people including me. An addition to what they had in that commercial was they included ethos, logos, and pathos. By hiring Michael Jordan they established credibility in that Nike commercial. Michael Jordan is six time NBA champion, 6 times NBA final MvP , 14x NBA All-Star and etc. He is …show more content…
The commercial delivers a powerful message and is really successful at persuading the audience that they should not text and drive at the same time. The video starts off with a white vehicle crashed into a tree. The driver is bleeding from the head and there is blood everywhere including on the steering wheel. She wakes up and realizes her sister and brother are both dead. They are in the back seats with blood covered all over their faces. The driver begins screaming and yelling at her sibling but they don 't respond. She realizes they they dead due to the impact of the car crash. Then, the commercial ends with a message, “Texting and driving increases your risk of crashing by 25 percent.” The commercial as well has depressing music in the background that makes you feel very depressed. It is evident that the director of the video planned every aspect of the video in order to persuade the audience that texting and driving is really dangerous. The mood that the video creates is a very sad and sorrowful. The director does this on purpose to put you in the position of the driver. It makes you never want to ever consider texting and driving because it shows the consequences of that decision. The director as well uses appeal to emotions of fallacy. The way it works is it appeals to your emotions and does not allow you to use logically reasoning when it comes to analyzing a situation. Although, it