One of the important themes in chapter 9 is AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action). When arguing or persuading, these four ideas are essential to making sure we convince our audience (whether that is a person or a group of people, or even a company) of what we are saying. Without a purpose or a goal, our persuasive argument means nothing. But with these goals, there is a line to be drawn. This brings me to the next important point, persuasive communication ethics. The psychological aspect of trying to persuade people or a group is very dangerous because once you understand how to do it properly, it becomes a very heavy tool to wield. Gaslighting is a newer term for unhinged persuasion. Often we must be careful of the language that we use, this is because many people might become brainwashed with certain rhetoric that is often hard to break out of. Another example that they give is being honest and giving credit. We often sometimes get carried away with how we communicate so we sometimes often blame ourselves or others when we lose a persuasive argument. This is a trap. Persuasive letters must remain grounded and have no white lies within the texts.
Chapter 9 on Persuasive Letters encompasses two very concrete and vital discussion points: understanding and applying rhetoric in a persuasive atmosphere and unpacking the AIDA format. The three most known concepts of rhetoric are logos, pathos, and ethos. The text explains that even though we don’t refer to those terms specifically, we use them almost daily when we convince others with reason, emotions, and authority. What I found especially important from this idea is how to transfer these sometimes fanciful-sounding terms into a scenario many people can relate to, like buying a car. I felt this allowed readers to understand the difference between simply arguing for a cause or a specific opinion versus truly persuading someone to act that requires emotion and authority to come into play. You could spend all day discussing how great a particular car is, but that won’t make a customer act. This chapter’s second big concept is the AIDA format of a persuasive letter; it not only allows for a solid structure and foundation of any persuasive writing but also allows writers to hone their skills in getting inside the head of those they want to engage and obtain some form of action from. Whether it be to get a job, a donation, or a speaker for an event, it is essential that these ideas grab the reader’s attention and turn it into interest, then allow for the details and specifics to be read with a genuine desire to act.
When writing a persuasive essay, there is much more to it than simply building an argument. In an argument there are facts and logic. In a persuasive essay, facts will not do all of the work. There are additional steps to persuasion, including the use of rhetorical techniques like logos, pathos, and ethos. All of these help you convince someone that your idea is “better” than the other. The elements of persuasion as described in the chapter are attention, interest, desire, and action. In the first step, you must get the target audience engaged with the topic. If there’s no interest, and nothing to lure them in, then forget about it. This applies to all types of writing and presentations, in fact it is key to good writing. After this it becomes a little trickier. To be good at persuasion, you have to step into the shoes of your audience. I think it’s important to ask yourself questions like what is important to my audience? What do they value? From here, stressing the benefits (practical, emotional, etc.), is one way to change the perspective of the audience. Another way is by introducing a counterclaim, where you can answer any possible objections that might be preventing someone from believing in your argument. I think the counterclaim is one of the most important parts, because it shows you are well-rounded in the argument and aren’t only considering one side. The call to action is the finishing part of the persuasion, in which you want your audience to be somehow changed, or at least inspired to change. In this part, you want to be specific with your wants so the audience knows what is expected of them. Without this, the persuasion really served no purpose.
This chapter opens up with the idea of persuasive writing, and how to make ones writing more persuasive to their readers. Overall persuasive writing differs greatly from any sort of academic writing. In academic writing, you are presenting someone with facts to make an argument or explain something. What is different in persuasive writing is that you are trying to change the actions, thoughts, or feelings of the reader. This can be similar to argumentative but it extends beyond just having someone believe what you are saying. There are two methods that the chapter mentions in creating persuasive writing: using ethos (emotions), pathos (authority), and logos (use of facts) or using the AIDA (attention, interest, desire, and action) model. Both of these methods calls on the readers emotions, catches their attention, and ultimately causes them to buy into your writings purpose. These methods can also be referred to as the use of rhetoric. What I found interesting was how the chapter stated that we use rhetoric all the time in our language and actions. One of the examples being convincing and persuading a friend to go to the movies. This is something that I likely have done in my life but never considered how it can connect back to my writing ability. It makes the idea of professional persuasive writing easier than I first imagined.
The other part of this chapter I found most important was how to use these persuasive methods while also being ethical. The principles of ethics one must remember in professional persuasive writing is to be honest, to stay within the law, to give credit where it is due, to be fair, to show respect, and be responsible. In being honest one needs to make sure to include all necessary information in statements despite facts that may not be persuasive or appealing (such as negative side effects). Honesty goes alongside staying within the limitations of the law. Including things such as negative side effects is necessary because it would be illegal to not do so. You cannot promote or allow illegal activities such as exclusion of negative side effects or harmful ingredients. Giving credit can be simply understood as acknowledging someone for their ideas or a company for their contribution. It can be understood as similar to academic honesty and avoiding plagiarism. To be fair, a communicator needs to consider all sides of an argument or perspectives in order to be ethical. Respect is simple in that a writer needs to be respectful of those they are writing for and writing about. Responsibility is one of the most important parts of ethical behavior because it effects how a company is viewed. One must own up to mistakes despite it harming their image or company because it is for the greater good of effective communication.
The first main point that stood out in Chapter 9 regarding persuasion was that in order to persuade someone, you must appeal to and change their emotions as well as their mind. Changing their emotions means persuading using pathos and ethos, not just logos. You can use facts and logic to win an argument or to prove a point, but if you wish to change someone’s mind about something, often an opinion they may have that is different from yours. Most of the time you must also appeal to their emotions and feelings. People are emotionally attached to a lot of the opinions they have, using basic facts and information will not be strong enough to convince them to switch their entire outlook on something. If they are to change beliefs, you must convince them emotionally using pathos and with any authority you may have using ethos.
Another main point of this chapter was the AIDA process for writing a persuasive letter. AIDA stands for attention, interest, desire, and action. Meaning, you must first gain attention, then create interest, followed by stimulating desire, and finally causing action. This process is simple yet effective for successfully persuading someone. In writing, this can be used as an outline or sketch tool to help draft and create a persuasive piece. Knowing you need to hit these four areas of persuasion will make the writing process go over smoothly and without many issues.
This chapter went in depth on how to correctly and effectively write a persuasive letter. The most important aspect of this chapter was the AIDA model. This is an acronym that stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, Action. In order to effectively write a persuasive letter, one must first catch the reader’s attention, this is done with a statement that will shock them and catch them off guard to keep them reading further. That is then to be followed by facts and information about why the reader should be interested in the topic at hand. The next section of the letter should make the reader feel a desire to do something about the situation at hand, by appealing to their emotion. Lastly is the call action that will propel the reader into actively doing what they are being persuaded to do. I believe that this format is easy to understand and is actually very informative. Persuasive writing has always been one of the styles of writing that I feel I have been particularly good at, but this model actually helps me visualize what I could do better and how to write more effectively. Appealing to not only to logos and ethos, but also bringing in pathos, is something that I believe will bring my writing to a new level.
Overall something in this chapter that seemed to be brought up on repeat was the idea of ethos, logos and pathos. It talked about the different ways to use each and every little section of the chapter connected back to them. Logos are used to appeal to reason, pathos appeals to emotion and ethos appeals to authority. I feel like I haven’t really talked about ethos logos pathos since high school so it was interesting to read about them and how to use them again. It is also interesting to see them in more of a business standpoint, this connects to another thing that seemed relevant in this chapter which was the acronym AIDA. AIDA stands for attention, interest, desire and action. In the example of being a car salesman this is how you would do it; get the attention of the person you want to sell to, keep and develop their interest, then really hype up the thing your selling to stimulate desire and then lastly get the person your selling to to take action and buy the product. This is a method of speaking and advertising that could be very beneficial in a business setting so it seemed important.
Rhetorical techniques are essential when persuading someone. There are three rhetorical techniques: logos, pathos, and ethos. Logos focuses on appealing to one’s logic. Pathos focuses on appealing to one’s emotions. Ethos uses authority to persuade. These techniques can be used interchangeably and together to strengthen an argument further. We are faced with these techniques every day, even without knowing it. This is the goal of a rhetorical technique: to go under the radar and persuade you. While initial persuasions can be obvious, such as in advertisements, they can show subtler forms the further you engage with them. This can also make it easy for logical fallacies to pass one by if one doesn’t notice them. One way that can be used is in the AIDA persuasive letter. This stood for attention, interest, desire, and action. Starting with attention in the letter can make it so that the reader continues on. This can be achieved in many ways, such as by presenting the problem. Interest goes further in explaining the attention grabber. If a problem has been established, then the context and details of the problem must be examined next. Then desire convinces someone to focus their time, money, and resources on the problem over many other uses. This is where pathos is usually used to appeal to one’s emotions and feelings connected to desire. Finally, an action is given. It must be straightforward to ensure the exact action steps will be taken. This form of the letter can be helpful in any career or profession. It can also be used in any hobbies or other activities one does in their free time, such as for local organizations or committees.
Chapter 9 is all about Persuasive Letters. The chapter mainly focuses on two approaches given to help feed into the persuasive appeal 1.)Three rhetorical techniques of logos, pathos, and ethos. 2.) a persuasive Format called AIDA (attention, interest, desire and action) In the three rhetorical techniques section it gives us the definitions for logos, pathos, ethos it also points out the differences in an argument and persuasion saying that persuasion is based mainly on ethos and pathos and an argument is primarily based on logos. The next section that I want to focus on is the AIDA section. This section goes into great detail about the steps of AIDA. For the first step, the book suggests if you want to get attention with your writing, aim for a “yikes” or “wow” if you can. I thought that was an interesting tip. For interest the book says “you create interest with concrete and specific details, with facts and figures. For desire the book said that it was created in two basic ways: 1.) by stressing the benefits, practical and perhaps emotional of what you propose and 2.) by answering the recipients possible objections. The last step is to get your recipient to fulfill that desire by taking action. To get someone to take action you need to “give concrete evidence and specific details on what that person needs to do next, how he/she needs to do it, and when he/she needs to take action. I think the most important thing to take away from this section was that you need to create a sense of urgency by planting in the recipient’s mind and setting an actual date by which action must be taken and also you want to make the action as easy and simple as possible. Overall I think the most important ideas to take away from this chapter about writing persuasive letters are the techniques they showed us AIDA & the three rhetorical techniques and all the bullet points on page 188 I think are the main takeaways of the chapter. You must be honest, you must stay within the law, you must give credit, you must be fair, you must show respect, and you must be responsible.
The central theme of this section was writing to persuade. Persuasive writing is challenging because you ask the recipient of the letter, email, etc., to do something that will benefit you and hopefully benefit them in the future. One main point was nailing down the three rhetorical techniques. These three techniques appeal to reason while using facts, appealing to emotion and appealing to authority. While these concepts of greek origin are essential to understand how to use them, there is a difference between arguments and persuasion. When writing to persuade rather than argue, it is crucial to ensure you are still comfortable submitting this work. The text suggests that you should be okay with family and friends being on the receiving end of a letter/email/ etc.; this comes from the ethical standards of persuasive writing. This chapter’s second most important point is understanding and writing with AIDA. AIDA stands for attention, interest, desire, and action. When writing to persuade, you want to get the reader’s attention immediately, then continue to hold that attention by making them interested in what you have to say. Because interest cannot seal the deal alone, making the reader desire more from you will hopefully cause them to take action, whether that be they buy your product, call you in for an interview or donate to your charity, you want to keep them engaged until the very end.
The overarching main idea from Chapter 9 was persuasion and how to properly persuade an audience. Out of this, came two big points. The first were the three persuasive appeals identified by the Greeks. These were as follows, “logos, the appeal to reason, including the use of facts; pathos, the appeal to emotion; and ethos, the appeal to authority.” Looking at these three techniques was very interesting, but hearing the history behind them, and how they were used in assembles in Ancient Greece. The book also mentioned that Greek citizens were, “measured by his ability to persuade fellow citizens on a course of action.” The second big defining point of this chapter, incorporates the Greek’s three persuasive appeals with some similarities of the car salesman’s persuasive rules to create the AIDA, a step-by-step guide to creating a persuade letter. These steps, in order are first attention, interest, desire, and then action. Each of these pieces of the AIDA guideline were created to engage and interest the audience. Using the techniques in this chapter, a person has the opportunity to correctly make an offer and persuade. Whether it is selling a car, or pitching a product on Shark Tank, following these guides can help create a great persuasive argument.
One thing I took away from this chapter is what AIDA is and how it’s actually used. It stands for attention, interest, desire, action. First off with attention, you want to catch the reader’s eye with a hook or something that will bring them in. After you get their attention, you get them to find interest in what they are reading. Take a car dealership for example, you give them an idea of what they want in the future so they buy that car. After interest, comes desire, and this is making the customer or reader really want something. You make them want the thing that you are trying to sell. And lastly, it is action. Action is the final part of the process. This only works if the attention and desire are there and working, if not then action will not happen. But if they are there, then you get the customer to buy what you are selling. Through this whole process, good quality customer service will be your best shot at getting to the final step of taking action.
Chapter nine reintroduces the idea of ethos, pathos and logos. Ethos is the method of persuasion focused around expert opinion, logos is persuasion based around logic and facts, and pathos is persuasion based around emotional appeal. This chapter also introduces AIDA (Attention, interest, desire, and action). This method works by first grabbing the audience’s attention, usually with a startling fact or statistic that grabs their attention. Next is to develop interest: usually, this section makes use of ethos, logos, or a combination of both to build the customers interest. However, facts are usually not enough to build a strong enough foundation for action, as someone could be interested in a product but not have the time or money to casually invest. This is when one builds desire by appealing to pathos, or one’s emotions. Many times, companies will appeal to one’s morality or desire for status. In the final step, action, an important tactic is to build a sense of urgency by assigning a date to the deal.
13 thoughts on “JOURNAL # 4”
One of the important themes in chapter 9 is AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action). When arguing or persuading, these four ideas are essential to making sure we convince our audience (whether that is a person or a group of people, or even a company) of what we are saying. Without a purpose or a goal, our persuasive argument means nothing. But with these goals, there is a line to be drawn. This brings me to the next important point, persuasive communication ethics. The psychological aspect of trying to persuade people or a group is very dangerous because once you understand how to do it properly, it becomes a very heavy tool to wield. Gaslighting is a newer term for unhinged persuasion. Often we must be careful of the language that we use, this is because many people might become brainwashed with certain rhetoric that is often hard to break out of. Another example that they give is being honest and giving credit. We often sometimes get carried away with how we communicate so we sometimes often blame ourselves or others when we lose a persuasive argument. This is a trap. Persuasive letters must remain grounded and have no white lies within the texts.
Chapter 9 on Persuasive Letters encompasses two very concrete and vital discussion points: understanding and applying rhetoric in a persuasive atmosphere and unpacking the AIDA format. The three most known concepts of rhetoric are logos, pathos, and ethos. The text explains that even though we don’t refer to those terms specifically, we use them almost daily when we convince others with reason, emotions, and authority. What I found especially important from this idea is how to transfer these sometimes fanciful-sounding terms into a scenario many people can relate to, like buying a car. I felt this allowed readers to understand the difference between simply arguing for a cause or a specific opinion versus truly persuading someone to act that requires emotion and authority to come into play. You could spend all day discussing how great a particular car is, but that won’t make a customer act. This chapter’s second big concept is the AIDA format of a persuasive letter; it not only allows for a solid structure and foundation of any persuasive writing but also allows writers to hone their skills in getting inside the head of those they want to engage and obtain some form of action from. Whether it be to get a job, a donation, or a speaker for an event, it is essential that these ideas grab the reader’s attention and turn it into interest, then allow for the details and specifics to be read with a genuine desire to act.
When writing a persuasive essay, there is much more to it than simply building an argument. In an argument there are facts and logic. In a persuasive essay, facts will not do all of the work. There are additional steps to persuasion, including the use of rhetorical techniques like logos, pathos, and ethos. All of these help you convince someone that your idea is “better” than the other. The elements of persuasion as described in the chapter are attention, interest, desire, and action. In the first step, you must get the target audience engaged with the topic. If there’s no interest, and nothing to lure them in, then forget about it. This applies to all types of writing and presentations, in fact it is key to good writing. After this it becomes a little trickier. To be good at persuasion, you have to step into the shoes of your audience. I think it’s important to ask yourself questions like what is important to my audience? What do they value? From here, stressing the benefits (practical, emotional, etc.), is one way to change the perspective of the audience. Another way is by introducing a counterclaim, where you can answer any possible objections that might be preventing someone from believing in your argument. I think the counterclaim is one of the most important parts, because it shows you are well-rounded in the argument and aren’t only considering one side. The call to action is the finishing part of the persuasion, in which you want your audience to be somehow changed, or at least inspired to change. In this part, you want to be specific with your wants so the audience knows what is expected of them. Without this, the persuasion really served no purpose.
This chapter opens up with the idea of persuasive writing, and how to make ones writing more persuasive to their readers. Overall persuasive writing differs greatly from any sort of academic writing. In academic writing, you are presenting someone with facts to make an argument or explain something. What is different in persuasive writing is that you are trying to change the actions, thoughts, or feelings of the reader. This can be similar to argumentative but it extends beyond just having someone believe what you are saying. There are two methods that the chapter mentions in creating persuasive writing: using ethos (emotions), pathos (authority), and logos (use of facts) or using the AIDA (attention, interest, desire, and action) model. Both of these methods calls on the readers emotions, catches their attention, and ultimately causes them to buy into your writings purpose. These methods can also be referred to as the use of rhetoric. What I found interesting was how the chapter stated that we use rhetoric all the time in our language and actions. One of the examples being convincing and persuading a friend to go to the movies. This is something that I likely have done in my life but never considered how it can connect back to my writing ability. It makes the idea of professional persuasive writing easier than I first imagined.
The other part of this chapter I found most important was how to use these persuasive methods while also being ethical. The principles of ethics one must remember in professional persuasive writing is to be honest, to stay within the law, to give credit where it is due, to be fair, to show respect, and be responsible. In being honest one needs to make sure to include all necessary information in statements despite facts that may not be persuasive or appealing (such as negative side effects). Honesty goes alongside staying within the limitations of the law. Including things such as negative side effects is necessary because it would be illegal to not do so. You cannot promote or allow illegal activities such as exclusion of negative side effects or harmful ingredients. Giving credit can be simply understood as acknowledging someone for their ideas or a company for their contribution. It can be understood as similar to academic honesty and avoiding plagiarism. To be fair, a communicator needs to consider all sides of an argument or perspectives in order to be ethical. Respect is simple in that a writer needs to be respectful of those they are writing for and writing about. Responsibility is one of the most important parts of ethical behavior because it effects how a company is viewed. One must own up to mistakes despite it harming their image or company because it is for the greater good of effective communication.
The first main point that stood out in Chapter 9 regarding persuasion was that in order to persuade someone, you must appeal to and change their emotions as well as their mind. Changing their emotions means persuading using pathos and ethos, not just logos. You can use facts and logic to win an argument or to prove a point, but if you wish to change someone’s mind about something, often an opinion they may have that is different from yours. Most of the time you must also appeal to their emotions and feelings. People are emotionally attached to a lot of the opinions they have, using basic facts and information will not be strong enough to convince them to switch their entire outlook on something. If they are to change beliefs, you must convince them emotionally using pathos and with any authority you may have using ethos.
Another main point of this chapter was the AIDA process for writing a persuasive letter. AIDA stands for attention, interest, desire, and action. Meaning, you must first gain attention, then create interest, followed by stimulating desire, and finally causing action. This process is simple yet effective for successfully persuading someone. In writing, this can be used as an outline or sketch tool to help draft and create a persuasive piece. Knowing you need to hit these four areas of persuasion will make the writing process go over smoothly and without many issues.
This chapter went in depth on how to correctly and effectively write a persuasive letter. The most important aspect of this chapter was the AIDA model. This is an acronym that stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, Action. In order to effectively write a persuasive letter, one must first catch the reader’s attention, this is done with a statement that will shock them and catch them off guard to keep them reading further. That is then to be followed by facts and information about why the reader should be interested in the topic at hand. The next section of the letter should make the reader feel a desire to do something about the situation at hand, by appealing to their emotion. Lastly is the call action that will propel the reader into actively doing what they are being persuaded to do. I believe that this format is easy to understand and is actually very informative. Persuasive writing has always been one of the styles of writing that I feel I have been particularly good at, but this model actually helps me visualize what I could do better and how to write more effectively. Appealing to not only to logos and ethos, but also bringing in pathos, is something that I believe will bring my writing to a new level.
Overall something in this chapter that seemed to be brought up on repeat was the idea of ethos, logos and pathos. It talked about the different ways to use each and every little section of the chapter connected back to them. Logos are used to appeal to reason, pathos appeals to emotion and ethos appeals to authority. I feel like I haven’t really talked about ethos logos pathos since high school so it was interesting to read about them and how to use them again. It is also interesting to see them in more of a business standpoint, this connects to another thing that seemed relevant in this chapter which was the acronym AIDA. AIDA stands for attention, interest, desire and action. In the example of being a car salesman this is how you would do it; get the attention of the person you want to sell to, keep and develop their interest, then really hype up the thing your selling to stimulate desire and then lastly get the person your selling to to take action and buy the product. This is a method of speaking and advertising that could be very beneficial in a business setting so it seemed important.
Rhetorical techniques are essential when persuading someone. There are three rhetorical techniques: logos, pathos, and ethos. Logos focuses on appealing to one’s logic. Pathos focuses on appealing to one’s emotions. Ethos uses authority to persuade. These techniques can be used interchangeably and together to strengthen an argument further. We are faced with these techniques every day, even without knowing it. This is the goal of a rhetorical technique: to go under the radar and persuade you. While initial persuasions can be obvious, such as in advertisements, they can show subtler forms the further you engage with them. This can also make it easy for logical fallacies to pass one by if one doesn’t notice them. One way that can be used is in the AIDA persuasive letter. This stood for attention, interest, desire, and action. Starting with attention in the letter can make it so that the reader continues on. This can be achieved in many ways, such as by presenting the problem. Interest goes further in explaining the attention grabber. If a problem has been established, then the context and details of the problem must be examined next. Then desire convinces someone to focus their time, money, and resources on the problem over many other uses. This is where pathos is usually used to appeal to one’s emotions and feelings connected to desire. Finally, an action is given. It must be straightforward to ensure the exact action steps will be taken. This form of the letter can be helpful in any career or profession. It can also be used in any hobbies or other activities one does in their free time, such as for local organizations or committees.
Journal #4:
Chapter 9 is all about Persuasive Letters. The chapter mainly focuses on two approaches given to help feed into the persuasive appeal 1.)Three rhetorical techniques of logos, pathos, and ethos. 2.) a persuasive Format called AIDA (attention, interest, desire and action) In the three rhetorical techniques section it gives us the definitions for logos, pathos, ethos it also points out the differences in an argument and persuasion saying that persuasion is based mainly on ethos and pathos and an argument is primarily based on logos. The next section that I want to focus on is the AIDA section. This section goes into great detail about the steps of AIDA. For the first step, the book suggests if you want to get attention with your writing, aim for a “yikes” or “wow” if you can. I thought that was an interesting tip. For interest the book says “you create interest with concrete and specific details, with facts and figures. For desire the book said that it was created in two basic ways: 1.) by stressing the benefits, practical and perhaps emotional of what you propose and 2.) by answering the recipients possible objections. The last step is to get your recipient to fulfill that desire by taking action. To get someone to take action you need to “give concrete evidence and specific details on what that person needs to do next, how he/she needs to do it, and when he/she needs to take action. I think the most important thing to take away from this section was that you need to create a sense of urgency by planting in the recipient’s mind and setting an actual date by which action must be taken and also you want to make the action as easy and simple as possible. Overall I think the most important ideas to take away from this chapter about writing persuasive letters are the techniques they showed us AIDA & the three rhetorical techniques and all the bullet points on page 188 I think are the main takeaways of the chapter. You must be honest, you must stay within the law, you must give credit, you must be fair, you must show respect, and you must be responsible.
The central theme of this section was writing to persuade. Persuasive writing is challenging because you ask the recipient of the letter, email, etc., to do something that will benefit you and hopefully benefit them in the future. One main point was nailing down the three rhetorical techniques. These three techniques appeal to reason while using facts, appealing to emotion and appealing to authority. While these concepts of greek origin are essential to understand how to use them, there is a difference between arguments and persuasion. When writing to persuade rather than argue, it is crucial to ensure you are still comfortable submitting this work. The text suggests that you should be okay with family and friends being on the receiving end of a letter/email/ etc.; this comes from the ethical standards of persuasive writing. This chapter’s second most important point is understanding and writing with AIDA. AIDA stands for attention, interest, desire, and action. When writing to persuade, you want to get the reader’s attention immediately, then continue to hold that attention by making them interested in what you have to say. Because interest cannot seal the deal alone, making the reader desire more from you will hopefully cause them to take action, whether that be they buy your product, call you in for an interview or donate to your charity, you want to keep them engaged until the very end.
The overarching main idea from Chapter 9 was persuasion and how to properly persuade an audience. Out of this, came two big points. The first were the three persuasive appeals identified by the Greeks. These were as follows, “logos, the appeal to reason, including the use of facts; pathos, the appeal to emotion; and ethos, the appeal to authority.” Looking at these three techniques was very interesting, but hearing the history behind them, and how they were used in assembles in Ancient Greece. The book also mentioned that Greek citizens were, “measured by his ability to persuade fellow citizens on a course of action.” The second big defining point of this chapter, incorporates the Greek’s three persuasive appeals with some similarities of the car salesman’s persuasive rules to create the AIDA, a step-by-step guide to creating a persuade letter. These steps, in order are first attention, interest, desire, and then action. Each of these pieces of the AIDA guideline were created to engage and interest the audience. Using the techniques in this chapter, a person has the opportunity to correctly make an offer and persuade. Whether it is selling a car, or pitching a product on Shark Tank, following these guides can help create a great persuasive argument.
One thing I took away from this chapter is what AIDA is and how it’s actually used. It stands for attention, interest, desire, action. First off with attention, you want to catch the reader’s eye with a hook or something that will bring them in. After you get their attention, you get them to find interest in what they are reading. Take a car dealership for example, you give them an idea of what they want in the future so they buy that car. After interest, comes desire, and this is making the customer or reader really want something. You make them want the thing that you are trying to sell. And lastly, it is action. Action is the final part of the process. This only works if the attention and desire are there and working, if not then action will not happen. But if they are there, then you get the customer to buy what you are selling. Through this whole process, good quality customer service will be your best shot at getting to the final step of taking action.
Chapter nine reintroduces the idea of ethos, pathos and logos. Ethos is the method of persuasion focused around expert opinion, logos is persuasion based around logic and facts, and pathos is persuasion based around emotional appeal. This chapter also introduces AIDA (Attention, interest, desire, and action). This method works by first grabbing the audience’s attention, usually with a startling fact or statistic that grabs their attention. Next is to develop interest: usually, this section makes use of ethos, logos, or a combination of both to build the customers interest. However, facts are usually not enough to build a strong enough foundation for action, as someone could be interested in a product but not have the time or money to casually invest. This is when one builds desire by appealing to pathos, or one’s emotions. Many times, companies will appeal to one’s morality or desire for status. In the final step, action, an important tactic is to build a sense of urgency by assigning a date to the deal.