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3 Persuasion and Types of Advertising Appeals

What is Persuasive Advertising?

Persuasive advertising is a form of digital advertising that leverages the interests, desires,
and motivations of your audiences to convince them to make a purchase decision with
your brand.

Rather than focusing on the benefits of the product or service itself, persuasive
advertising tries to invoke an emotional response from audiences using their own
feelings and emotions to build a positive association with products.

By framing the products in a positive light, customers are more compelled to purchase
from your brand.

Persuasive advertising looks at three main categories of emotion (more about them
below):

● Ethos: Ethics, credibility, character

● Logos: Logic and reason
● Pathos: Feelings and emotions

The 3 Main Categories of Persuasive Advertising Techniques

The goal of persuasive advertising is to appeal to your target audience and gain their
trust.

To accomplish this, you’ll need to choose between the three main categories of
advertisements that use persuasive techniques and these are Ethos, Logos, and Pathos.
Here are the differences:

1.Ethos

The Ethos category of persuasive advertising techniques centers on messaging that

establishes credibility and trustworthiness.

You accomplish this by way of a respected expert, celebrity, or well-known brand who
can endorse a product or service.This speaker or brand can convince the audience that
they are ethical, trustworthy, reliable, and of good character and that what they say
can be trusted.

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2.Logos

For a different approach, the Logos persuasive ads category utilizes logic, reason, and
rationality to persuade an audience.These ads that persuade may use data, facts, statistics,
graphs, or tables to appeal to the logical mind of their audience.The goal is not to
appeal to the heart and emotions but to alert the intellect that there is something that
makes your product or service stand out.

3. Pathos

The Pathos persuasive ads category aims to connect with the audience on an emotional
level, appealing to either positive or negative emotions.Ways to convince the audience
include the use of memory, shared experience, nostalgia, or the senses. With these,
audiences will feel an emotion while also understanding what you offer.

It is a compassionate pitch to convince them to take action.

Examples of Pathos ads that persuade include one with a cute puppy, a loving mother and
child, a distraught family, or a painful condition.

6 Persuasive Advertising Techniques

Now that you have a better understanding of what persuasive advertising is, let’s take a
look at some of the different persuasive advertising techniques you can use in your own
brand’s digital advertising strategies. These techniques will help you create compelling
advertising examples that use persuasive thinking.

1. The Carrot and the Stick

The carrot and the stick is one of the most popular persuasive advertising techniques.
Logically, it makes sense that people prefer to have rewards over punishments. In
advertising, a carrot refers to the potential gains that a customer will have from using a
product, and a stick refers to the potential loss a customer will have if they don’t use your
product.

An ad could call out the benefits of using a product, like better skin for a moisturizing
company, or it could point out loss, like the increased chances of a robbery when a
customer doesn’t buy your brand’s home security system.

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These types of persuasive strategies work because they target some of the most hardwired
feelings in our minds.

2. The Scarcity Principle

You, like many others, probably think that it is cool to have collectibles and items that are
scarce in quantity.

It makes the one that you have seem more valuable since it can’t belong to just anyone.
This is the scarcity principle in action, and it’s a powerful tool for persuasive advertising.

When you make it seem as though your product is a limited offer, a one-time-only deal,
or comes from a limited stock, you can persuade your audiences to make a purchase
decision quickly before they lose out on the opportunity.

It taps into emotions of power and self-worth to have products that other people do not
have or didn’t get the chance to purchase on time.

3. Writing in the Second Person

Using second-person language with pronouns like “you” and “yours” is another
important technique to use in persuasive advertising. It helps you connect and engage
with audiences on a more personal level and can be used to grab their attention and
help them visualize your products and services in the present rather than the future.

4. The Call to Value

As marketers, we are all familiar with a call-to-action in marketing collateral. This is the
push you give customers and the action they need to take in order to move to the next
step of the customer journey. In persuasive advertising, it helps to make the CTA a
CTV, or call-to-value. That makes it clear to audiences that by clicking the button or the
ad, they are benefiting their lives.

5. The Bandwagon Appeal-No one wants to feel left out or left behind. Joining the
bandwagon refers to the process of persuading customers that they won’t be popular if
they don’t have a particular product or item. Rather than feeling as though they are
missing out, a customer will instead try and purchase the product to join in on the
appeal and meet their desire to belong.

6. The Celebrity Association

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Another powerful tool for persuasive advertising is to use celebrities and influencers to
make your appeal to customers more enticing. People want to be like the people that
they admire, and when you use a celebrity testimonial or association, it makes your
products appear more desirable and can help your customers decide to make a purchase
rather than wait.

TYPES OF ADVERTISING APPEALS

1. Emotional appeals - Emotional appeals relate to the consumers social or physiological
needs for purchasing a product or a service. Many consumers’ purchase decisions are
emotional and are made on what they feel about a particular brand more than its features.
They are designed to make an audience associate positive feelings with your brand. These
appeals generally focus on trust, joy, love, loyalty and happiness, which you can leverage
through the use of powerful music and imagery. Examples – Jewellery ads, Ariel share
the load ads
2.Humor Appeals - Who doesn’t like something that’s funny? Humor appeals make
consumers laugh and create an emotional link with the product. It is a proven appeal type
for grabbing attention. When consumers find something humorous, it has value because it
causes them to watch, laugh and, most importantly, remember. By capturing the viewer's
attention, humor appeals cut through advertising clutter and allow for enhanced recall and
improved moods of the viewers. The challenge with humor however is to keep the brand
in the humor – so your market associates the humor with your brand. Often it’s the humor
that is remembered more than the product. Examples – Mentos ads, Center shock ads,
Fevicol ads.
3. Musical Appeals - Like humor, music is a great way for brands to get noticed and
make an audience remember their products. In addition, musical appeals can bring up
positive memories whenever someone hears a catchy tune in an ad, which goes a long
way toward making them feel good about the product being presented. The use of
musical appeals allows for a connection between the product or service and a catchy
jingle or piece of music. Examples – Airtel jingle ad, Lifebuoy “Lifebuoy hai janah
tandaroosti hai wahan”, Washing powder Nirma.
4. Rational appeals - Rational appeals use logic, facts, and data to convince consumers
to buy products, and are often found in advertisements for medications, cookware, and
cleaning products. They focus on the consumers practical, functional need and utility for
the product or service. It emphasizes either product features or its functional benefits or
its problem removal or problem avoidance attribute. Examples – mobile phone ads
showing features, detergent ads showing superior stain removal properties.
6. Fear Appeals - Fear appeals focus on the negative outcomes that can happen because
of an action or inaction. Another fear tactic involves isolation. People will purchase a

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product to avoid isolation from others because of bad hygiene for example in the case of
toothpastes and Deodorants. Fear appeals fit particularly well with certain types of goods
and services, particularly those products that can eliminate threats or provide a sense of
personal security. For example, fear is often used in insurance company ads, focusing on
the consequences of an untimely death. Examples – anti tobacco ads, toothpaste ads
focusing on germ fighting property.
7. Scarcity appeals - Scarcity appeals tap into people’s fear of missing out, so they’re a
great way to convince people to take advantage of a sale or a limited edition product.
However, make sure that scarcity actually applies to what you’re selling and sale is
indeed a sale and is not a permanent offer. Examples – Toothbrush Free with Toothpaste
ads, ads giving gifts or lucky coupons.
8. Favorable Price appeals – Favorable price appeals make price as the dominant point
of the message. It can be used to announce a lower price product, low prices every day.
Examples – 5 Rs. Chhota coke, Vodafone’s 10 ka chhota recharge, McDonalds “I’m
Lovin it” ads.

ROLE OF SOURCE IN ADS and CELEBRITIES AS SOURCE IN INDIAN ADS

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EXECUTION STYLE OF PRESENTING ADS
Executional styles include:

1. Lifestyle: One of the most successful, relevant current strategies—Shows “how” the
product or service will “fit” perfectly into the consumer’s lifestyle or raise their
convenience or quality of life. This format can be associated with personal appeal,
causing the consumer to desire the lifestyle they see others in the advertisement
experiencing, because they have the product depicted. If a consumer cannot “see” and
“feel” the benefit of product/service to them, the sale will not happen. Lifestyle “shows”
the consumer “how” and creates an aspiration for the offering. (i.e. A beautiful set of new
lawn furniture being enjoyed by a family).

2. Slice-of-Life: Another successful style, usually associated with social appeal, depicts
people in a normal setting enjoying life because of a certain product or service. This style
is aimed at creating an attachment to an offering through showing how “they” could
enjoy a slice-of-good-life if they were to engage in the offering. (ie. An advertisement
depicting a luxurious cruise.)

3. Spokesman/Testimonial/Endorsement: Having celebrities or experts explain a

product is often a way to have a consumer gain trust in a brand. However, trust has to be
authentically created and not just a paid voice that is not behind the brand. Consumers
today are smarter than ever and loyalty and trust cannot be bought, only earned.

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4. Fantasy: Creating a fantasy around a product and what it can do for a consumer often
aligns well with a social appeal-the need to identify with something bigger than oneself.
(i.e. The status of having a sports car with the fantasy of a beautiful woman being
impressed by it.)

5. Humorous: Aligns directly with the humor appeal to engage a consumer in something
that is funny and memorable. More than 30% of advertisements utilize humor for greater
success.

6. Demonstration -It illustrates the main advantage of the product by showing it in

actual use or in some situation. This style is more effective as a live demonstration can be
seen and it helps to achieve the trust in the mind of consumers.

7. Testimonials- Many advertisers present their marketing communication message in the

form as the testimonial whereby an ex-consumer, person, etc. speak on behalf of the
product based on their experience. To make it more effective a celebrity can also be
involved in it.