Its surprising how many times a day I'm bombarded with mini persuasive speeches. When I sit down and analyze how many advertisements I come across daily, I feel a little blindsided. The majority of my everyday encounters try to appeal to my emotions, needs or logic. Unfortunately, the ones that really stand out to me are ones that appeal to my emotions.
During political elections especially presidential elections, scare tactics are most popular in the advertisements. Most often the opposing political party would feature ads that predict horrific outcomes should their opponent become president. An example of this was during the 2008 Presidential Election, Senator McCain sponsored advertisements that talked about President Obama’s inability to defend the nation from foreign threats. If Obama won, our country would be in great danger. I must admit, those ads were particularly memorable to me because it made me speculate and hypothesize about negative outcomes that could result. That scare tactic didn’t necessarily scare me, but it made me think twice about which candidate to vote for.
Other great examples of persuasion are the “target market” advertisements that talk about the negative consequences of smoking. These advertisements are particularly memorable because their scare tactics are so extreme and in-your-face. I remember a particular one where they drove a bunch of dolls to the corporate headquarters of a major tobacco company. The dolls represented however many people died in a year from tobacco-related deaths. In a way they were mocking the company and educating them about the effects of their product at the same time. As an audience member, who doesn’t smoke but is an observer of the message, I feel the advertisers are educating and mocking me too. I know the consequences of smoking, but to see a physical representation of the statistics appealed to my emotions greatly. It made me feel as if I should do something to help end tobacco use and that perhaps I may be partly responsible for these deaths too. It was an odd experience.
Can you recall memorable advertisements where the persuasion technique involved the advertiser attempting to appeal to your emotions instead of logic? Was it effective and do you think that is most effective method to get the public to change?
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I like that you used advertisements as the persuasive factor. I do remember seeing an ad once that totally appealed to my emotions before anyting else. It was a commercial about adopting an animal from a shelter. It was soooo sad. Right away this really sad music came on and all the visuals were sad, abused animals. It was very effective because I just wanted to go out and adopt all of the animals and hug them. I'm not sure if using emotion is the best way to reach out to the entire public but it sure worked on me.
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