Essay Example: Logos, Ethos and Pathos in Advertisements

Logos, ethos and pathos are essential elements of persuasion developed by Aristotle to enable a speaker or a writer to convince and emotionally move the audience into a response. An advertisement, as an art, needs not only to pass a message but also influence the audience to try out the product or service of the offer. Commercials have to be creative, informative and persuasive to influence the choices of the audience. In doing so, ads need to adopt logos, ethics and pathos to attain their goals and objectives. In the context of an advertisement, logos refers to the logic and reasons offered in the advertisement aimed at convincing the audience to try out a product or service. The advertisement should flow smoothly by explaining the nature and composition of the product or service and outlining its importance to the audience.

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Ethos refers to the character and ethics of the advertisement. When an advertisement follows the commonly-agreed principles such as honesty, upholding consumers' privacy and adhering to the state and federal advertising laws, it gains credibility hence increasing the chances of being accepted by the audience.

Pathos refers to the emotional content in an advertisement that is responsible for motivating the audience to act. An advertisement needs to move the audience to try out the product or service on offer. It needs to be persuasive enough otherwise, it fails to serve its purpose. Pathos is the essential part of an advertisement as it determines the success or failure of the ad. In commercial advertisements, pathos is keenly executed to win over the audience.

One advertisement that follows ethos, pathos and logos framework is one titled "Teaching Children To Hate Will Never Lead To Peace" produced by StandWithUs organisation campaigning for peace in the Middle East, specifically during the Israeli-Palestine war in 2011 (Palestine Poster Project 1). The advertisement print ad that features a background of children holding AK47 rifles standing on the front row while senior fighters stand behind them. The children seem to be taking instructions from the senior soldiers standing behind them who are citing orders while others sing motivational songs. The children, silent, cold and carefree, hold the rifles pointing upwards and appear to be marching. One of the children has a head-scarf bearing some writings which seem to be in Arabic. Similar head-scarfs are seen with the other pro-Palestinian fighters.

The advertisement has the phrase Teaching Children To Hate Will Never Lead To Peace written in bold white letters on the left side of the print advertisement. The right side of the print ad shows dilapidated buildings, probably those that have seen the better part of the war. The buildings stand as ruins, depicting the severe state of the war-torn country. Below the picture of the children is a phrase, "Israel Seeks A Partner For Peace".

Logos is depicted in this advertisement in the form of the bold writings that state that teaching children to hate will never lead to peace. The logos begins with a general statement about teaching children to hate and go to the fine details that show the anti-Israeli writings on the boy's head-scarf which show the hate message their superiors teach the boys. Further, it shows how hatred has led to the destruction of the country as evidenced by destroyed buildings and other structures in the background. Another way the advertisement displays logos is through calling for partnership in peace. The Middle East region has been a centre of violence for many decades. The Israeli-Hamas-Palestine violence has existed for decades leading to loss of lives and property. The reasons for the airing of this advertisement is to call for peace.

Ethos is displayed in the advertisement. By showing images of ruins in the background, the piece gains credibility among the audience as they understand that war brings destruction. The character of the gentlemen behind the armed boys shows that they are training the young kids to become militants and adopt violence as their way of expression. These prove to the audience that there is a need to bring peace to the region by teaching children to love each other irrespective of their countries of origin.

Lastly, pathos plays the most significant role in this advertisement. The image of the young kids holding AK47 rifles sends chills down the spines of the viewers. Parents get concerned that the boys in the picture are exposed to violence, war and terrorism at a tender age. They are motivated to react and demand that young kids should not be involved in military or militia activities and that they should not be exposed to hatred. This kind of reaction puts pressure on the warring parties to sign peace agreements that bring the war to an end.

Ethos, pathos and logos are vital elements of advertisement as they are for speech. Advertisements are tasked with passing the crucial message to the audience, and should, therefore, attain the goal of influencing the audience's choices. The "Teaching Children To Hate Will Never Lead To Peace" achieved its goals of arousing emotional responses in the United States when they were placed in six BART stations. Commuters and the general public shared their views on the social media demanding that the U.S government does more to prevent the Israeli-Palestinian violence from recruiting young school-age children.

Works Cited

Palestine Poster Project. Teaching Children to Hate Will Never Lead to Peace. 6 January 2011. https://www.palestineposterproject.org/poster/teaching-children-to-hate-will-never-lead-to-peace. 6 November 2018.