Example Of Ethos Pathos Logos

Advertising is one of the biggest industries in the world today. People and different businesses are trying to sell certain products to others. They spend billions of dollars trying to make an advertisement to influence them to buy what they are trying to sell. Advertisements are everywhere because there is a variety of ways to advertise a product. Whether it is on television, the radio, in a newspaper, or in a magazine, there is no way a person can escape them. Many of these companies use certain techniques to catch a person’s attention. One way experts get consumers’ attention is by dividing their strategies into three categories: pathos, ethos, and logos.
Smoking has been popular for a long time in the United States. It started with tobacco, since it was one of the first crops grown there. It was very prevalent and that started the trend of smoking. Once tobacco became popular, people started rolling them into cigarettes. After that started, more chemicals were added to them and then they became deadly. A lot of teens started smoking because they thought it was cool and they gave into peer pressure; but they were never taught the dangers of smoking. Earlier on, when smoking

was first introduced, people were not aware of how smoking affected the body. Now, there are many ways for people to learn about how dangerous smoking is for them. People can learn how unhealthy smoking is in health class at school, articles online, or in different forms of advertising. Recently, there have been a lot of ads that campaign against smoking. This particular advertisement is not trying to sell anything. It is merely a health campaign, but it could potentially get people that do smoke to buy products that would help a person to stop smoking, like a nicotine patch.

The first strategy is pathos, which is an appeal to emotion. This advertisement was made for people to stop smoking and also to prevent people from smoking. The advertisement uses a lot of pathos because it shows a lady who is sad because she cannot speak to her grandson that is in the picture frame she is holding. The advertisement is clearly trying to make others believe that if one starts smoking, then he or she will not be able to speak to loved ones again. Family is important to people and the pathos strategy that is used in this advertisement touches that sensitive part in a person that will be watching it. The lady also has a neutral expression on her face, which makes the image more personal to the viewer. It allows the person watching it to put themselves into that situation as well. Another way pathos can appeal to someone is the big letters shown in the advertisement and the bold and italicized font. These are the things that catch someone’s attention while watching an advertisement and that is why pathos is important.
The next strategy is ethos, which portrays the credibility of the authors and also their character. This advertisement shows some credibility because of the CDC logo at the bottom. The CDC is the United States Centers for disease and prevention control. That company sounds pretty credible since it is controlled by the government. Anyone who sees this advertisement would probably trust it because of the ethos involved in it. People who create ads paint a certain picture of themselves when they make them. In this case, the creators of this advertisement oppose smoking. Non-smokers, who oppose smoking too will connect most strongly with this image because they and the creators of this ad have similar views about this particular issue. Smokers, however may disagree if nothing bad has happened to them yet. Another piece of ethos that this advertisement has is the hotline number. The creators of the ad are trying to let viewers know that they can get help whenever they need it. They also want to show people that they care about their health. Ethos plays a big role in advertising because it is helpful when people know how credible the creator is. It is also important for them to know how much one cares about the subject matter and how much they care about the consumers.
The last essential part in advertising is logos, which is an appeal to logic or reason. It could lay out facts and statistics in the advertisement. In this instance they talk about how smoking causes immediate damage to the body. The creators of the ad then point to the lady, Terrie, who has lung cancer. By pointing out a person who smoked and faced the consequences of smoking, it shows the viewer that it really does cause damage after all. Another reason the facts help is because they give the consumer assurance that the advertisement is legitimate. It also shows that the people making the advertisement know what they are talking about. That makes their credibility even greater and that ties into the rhetorical strategy ethos. These strategies go hand in hand and they are all critical when making advertisements.
This advertisement is good because the simple message that smoking is bad gets across to the viewer and the creator of the ad uses pathos, ethos, and logos to get that message across.

Smoking is very popular in today’s culture and for someone to campaign against it is very difficult. There are a lot of people that have a problem with advertising but an advertisement like this would change their minds. Through the three rhetorical appeals, pathos, ethos, and logos, the advertisement is able to convey a vivid sense of danger and promote awareness of the harm of smoking. The people who created the advertisement did not exaggerate or put things in the ad that are irrelevant. They got their point across and did just enough to encourage people to stop smoking and also prevent people from

smoking.