The psychology of advertising

Ads have been sold and bought since the mid-1700s when the first ad placements were made to recruit soldiers for armed services. Over the next 200 years, an evolution occurred with products and then brands advertising their products in an evolving set of mediums and with varying strategies.

Fast forward to the present, we see over 5,000 ads per day versus 500 ads per day in the 1970s. For that reason, learning and applying the psychology of advertising—all while keeping in line with your brand voice—is a tricky but necessary strategy.

There are a thousand ways psychology plays into advertising, but today we’ll break down Aristotle’s age-old (and proven!) theory that explains the rhetoric behind persuasion, AKA the ethos, pathos, and logos of advertising.

Ethos is representative of the ethics or values of a person. Like using someone’s good ethos to persuade a consumer to buy a product or service. In advertising, this often translates to influencer or celebrity endorsements. If someone trusts the person in the advertisement, they’ll be more likely to buy.

Pathos appeals to emotions and uses them to persuade. This can include the full range of emotions all the way from happiness and joy to sadness and anger. Hundreds upon thousands of successful advertisements have been built upon emotion–think Apple or Coca-Cola.

Logos means using logic and reasoning to persuade. Including a statistic or fact in advertisements will help a user agree with the ad, and therefore, will help to increase brand trust.

While emotional content tends to perform better than logical content, ideally, an advertiser will use all three parts of the rhetoric when developing the creative, copy, and call to action for a digital ad.