How do I capture your attention? This is the focus of the advertisement industry. Commercials are the most successful way to get a mass audience to buy into a company’s product. Commercials use the three modes of persuasion to get potential consumers to become interested. The three modes of persuasion are ethos – ethics of the author, pathos- appeal to emotion and logos - appeal to logic. Break the barrier a 30-second advertisement by St John Ambulance uses logos and pathos to persuade the audience to take their CPR courses.
In the advertisement a young boy swims in a pool while his mother is preparing to take used plates in the house. While the mother is cleaning the camera pans the boy running and sliding into the pool, hitting his head on the way in. When the mother realizes, she jumps into the pool but there’s a barrier stopping her from rescuing her son. The mother then proceeded to beat on the barrier in the pool …show more content…
Pathos is used here to get the audience to feel nostalgic when showing the mother spending time with her son. Seeing and hearing the boy hitting his head on the ledge is also an example of pathos. That moment brings out a shock in the audience, which introduces fear and urgency. Suddenly, the audiences are set into the mother’s headspace. The advertisement uses pathos to make the audience feel as if the boy is each person’s son. In a situation like that you panic, your thoughts are everywhere, you don’t know what to do. But like the mother, people would jump in the pool and try to get the boy out. With the situation so frantic one would just end up pleading for help. Which is what the advertisement wants because most people don’t have the training to save someone in that type of situation. This advertisement uses the emotion of helplessness to convince the audience that taking CPR classes at Saint John will help you save a life of someone you care