The Three Examples Of Persuasion In And Out Of My House And How They Are Impactful

The Three Examples Of Persuasion In And Out Of My House And How They Are Impactful by Kadin McElwain: As a society, we are used to seeing methods of persuasion on a regular basis. Whether it be the standard commercial for KFC’s new Cheetos Chicken Sandwich or your mom trying to convince you to do the dishes tonight after dinner, persuasion is a major part of our culture. This idea makes me reflect on elements of persuasion that I see in and outside of my house when I’m doing my routine for the day. More specifically, I think of three examples that apply to not only me, but society as a whole. These examples are the television set, the billboard, and the radio. These three examples are not necessarily the main persuaders, but they are distributors of persuasion, which makes them complicit in the persuasion cycle. The television, billboard and radio are normally used to advertise a good or service a company is trying to sell you. These tactics could be something as simple as a catchy jingle made for a donut shop or something as complex as a statue of a cow painting a billboard message that urges you to go to the chicken sandwich restaurant to protect them from being turned into burgers. Looking at our textbook, we know that persuasion “should take into account the rich complex of verbal, nonverbal, and contextual cues found in interpersonal encounters” (Gass and Seiter, p. 32). The three items listed take all three of these concepts into account, with the television and radio being the most prominent, as they use audio and visual cues in their commercials to persuade you to buy the product being advertised. One notable example of this in the sense of the radio is a lost 1954 radio advertisement for Southern Maid Donuts featuring Elvis Presley, which featured the jingle “You can get them piping hot after 4PM” (Blazeski, 2017). This company used the radio and one of the biggest stars at the time to convince consumers that their donuts were the best. In the sense of the television set, the persuasion mediums that are used are video and audio, as seen in many commercials. In the sense of the billboard, the persuasion mediums used would be print and the occasional QR code that people can scan to head to the social media page of the company. Finally, in the sense of the radio, the persuasion medium used would be the audio medium. These three items give companies the platform to persuade consumers to buy their products and/or that their product is better than the other brand. Additionally, thanks to the rise of social media, all three of these platforms allow even more companies to persuade consumers to buy their products or services, whether it be through a QR code leading to the social media page, a DM from a company discussing their product, or even getting some influencers to promote their product with just the click of a button. But what kind of tactics are used by both the companies and the distributors of persuasion to make their point? Three of the most notable persuasion tactics that we see used in all three persuasion distributors are pathos, ethos, and logos. Going back to the 1954 Southern Maid Donuts radio advertisement, the element of ethos can be seen, or heard in this case, through the use of a celebrity endorsement, more specifically, Elvis Presley. In the sense of the billboard, a notable example of the pathos element is in Lego’s three-part “Violence, Drugs, Sex” series, which uses the emotional appeal of wanting to protect your child to convince parents not to let their child watch too much television. In the sense of television, the notable example of logos used is the infamous “15 minutes could save you 15 percent or more on car insurance” advertisements from GEICO, which hypes up the savings people can receive on their insurance if they switch over to them. All three persuasion channels allow companies to use pathos, ethos, and logos to persuade consumers to buy their product or service for one reason or another. To conclude, the three items I chose that use persuasion are the television set, the billboard, and the radio. These items aren’t necessarily the persuaders, but they are rather the persuasion distributors for companies looking to sell a new product or service. These companies not only use audio, video, and elements of social media to make their point, but also use logos, ethos, and pathos to persuade the consumers to buy the good or service that they are selling. Our culture is defined by persuasion. But we just need to be aware and pay attention to the types of persuasion.