The Art of Acquiring Customers
On Aristotle and Rhetoric
I’ve spent most of my career trying to design great products. Over time I’ve come to realize that a good concept and product is only half the battle. In a world of information overload, things need to be seen, and that task is becoming more and more difficult every day. Not only does the product or service need to be seen, but it also needs to be understood and remembered because humans mentally purchase things prior to the actual functional use of them. They have to imagine the value before using it.
This article is about the art of acquiring customers — more specifically it outlines the three ‘pillars’ of rhetoric as outlined by Aristotle; ethos, pathos, and logos. I will also propose a new critical method of ‘persuasion’ that is necessary for sales in the twenty-first century. This fourth pillar is experiential, meaning people actually need to get it, prior to a fully committed transaction. I’ll argue that free trials and the digital economy make it very difficult to just persuade someone to buy something. Pure extrinsic marketing doesn’t fly anymore—great products and services do. In this article, you will learn what these pillars are and how you can harness them to create more effective advertising and marketing strategies.
What is Advertising?
The word ‘advertise’ in Latin translates to, ‘turn the mind toward’. In a basic sense, an advertisement should ‘stick out’ and direct. It needs to point someone somewhere they can either buy or learn more about a product/service/event. An advertisement informs and piques interest. Good advertising also excites the imagination, because your audience must imagine value prior to buying. Think about it. Before any transaction, the user must have already bought the product in their mind. They do the mental bargaining need to make that decision of handing over money. Good advertising is also functional, meaning the images, symbols, and words must be readable. The message needs to be clear.
The more sophisticated a product is, the harder it is to sell, and thus the more rhetorical loading it requires. For example, if you’re hungry, and I offer you some food, you can immediately understand the value of that offering. It is an urgent biological need that you can sense. Now, on the other hand, the value of some accounting software isn’t as cut-and-dried. How much time is this software going to save me? How does that time translate to money? How long will it take to learn? These are the questions your user is going to need answers to, so it’s imperative you make this information very explicit and appealing.
This article is largely about Aristotle’s concepts written in Rhetoric, a 4th century BC treatise on the art of persuasion. Rhetoric is regarded by many rhetoricians as ‘the most important single work on persuasion ever written’. Alan Gross and Arthur Walzer (two notable historical scholars) indicate that ‘just as Alfred North Whitehead considered all Western philosophy a footnote to Plato, all subsequent rhetorical theory is but a series of responses to issues raised’ by Aristotle’s Rhetoric. It is for this praise of Rhetoric, alongside the rate and frequency to which we see these methods used today, which makes these theories just as important now as they were 2,500 years ago when they were first articulated.
Method 1 · Logos
Logos (not the pluralized word for a company’s icon) is a term to describe an appeal based on logic. Every time you see an advertisement emphasizing its feature set, performance metrics, price, or efficiency — it all appeals to our rational self. Logos refers to the utility of a product — it gives people a reason to purchase something, even if it isn’t the core underlying reason why we buy. Moreover, logos allows a person to justify their emotional purchasing decisions. More on this later.
Statistics, data, lists, and generally more factual information are components of logos. When practising this pillar of rhetoric, often times more is more. This is because humans are much more likely to choose an outcome when the variables are known. Psychologists know this is as the ambiguity effect, and it’s why sound information design is so important. The user must be aware, very immediately and easily — all the factors involved in a purchase. This can include having a very clear return policy, fixed-rate shipping, and product warranties.
Social proof is also a form of logos. We rationalize our decisions based on the fact that others have purchased it. Have you ever noticed how every design and marketing agency is award-winning? The truth of the matter is the average user and even potential client will rarely do fact checking, so often these awards are either lies or from non-credible institutions. Notice in the above advertisement that they list multiple awards this vodka has received. Does anyone look deeper to see if the awards are actually credible? Chances are the average individual won’t research it. We blindly assume that if it won some award, it must be good. This is an important takeaway when questioning and resisting marketing.
Keep in mind that although logos is a very effective form of rhetoric, it is generally used to supplement some burning emotional value-promise that marketers try to touch. What logos more importantly does though, is it gives one a way to consciously justify their purchases. For example, studies show that roughly 95% of our purchasing decision takes place subconsciously — however, when confronted about our spending, we justify it with the obvious logical facts. ‘I bought it because it was on sale, more effective, or faster than the alternative’.
Method 2 · Ethos
Ethos is an appeal based on the credibility of the speaker, author, or character associated with a company or brand. Do you remember when Apple came out with the think different ads of the 1980s? It pictured notable figures like John Lennon, Pablo Picasso, and Muhammad Ali, alongside the Apple logo and the tagline, think different. The obvious irony here is that none of these influential figures were relevant at the time of the campaign. In fact, Apple didn’t even exist in the 1960s and 70s when a lot of these figures rose to fame. Regardless, we (the audience) unconsciously associate the two— their values and conduct. Thus, in a way, Apple syphons value (alongside many companies) from this art and injects it into its own brand. Very effective. Ethical? Maybe not.
History has shown us that a prominent human figure can be the strongest rhetorical tool there is. People are obsessed with people. We constantly stereotype—imagining scenarios with individuals we hear about in the media and we continue to daydream about these people beyond out cursory perception of them. Michael Jordan, Albert Einstein, Elon Musk. These are all people with a tremendous amount of influence, largely in part because they accomplished great things, and the audience knows that. It’s only natural to want to imitate and learn from the best. Even Steve Jobs became an icon, even though he was a rather introverted, shy person.
Moreover, people want to know who is behind the reigns of these creations — we want to give products and services real faces. Companies can harness ethos by giving their business a transparent leader, creating real or non-real characters and stories around their products, putting testimonials on their sites, and much more. If you can associate someone who is likeable, trustworthy, and well-known to use your product, you are set. Also, consider the risk behind this tactic. Remember Jared from Subway and how that panned out?
Authority is an important component of ethos. Notice in the cigarette advertisement above, it featured the physician, who is a culturally knowledgeable, notable figure who is delivering the message. The audience then intuits that if this expert is recommending it, it must be good. The Milgram experiments of the 1960’s support this effect authority has on, or the perception of, persuasion. In these experiments, Milgram proved that people would unquestionably follow the orders of a malicious, sadistic experimenter by inducing painful shocks to a participant who got test answers wrong. It is experiments like these, coupled with the conformity bias we see every day — that proves ethos is an incredibly effective rhetorical tool.
Businesses can harness ethos in a multitude of ways. Find a credible figure in your market to endorse your product or service. Build a fictional character, give them credibility, and use them in your advertising and marketing material. Use ratings and testimonials to support your product or service. Use images of influential figures in your content that relate to your industry. Have your CEO publicly volunteer or contribute to charity (goodwill). Some of that will rub off.
Method 3 · Pathos
Pathos is an appeal to emotion, and emotions are evoked through biological mechanisms caused by external stimuli. Scantily clad models, humour, and storytelling are all components of pathos.
Emotions are subconscious, biological ‘affects’ that can be evoked quite easily. When companies pair ideal states, mates, or statuses with their items, we start to make a deep physiological association with that product or company. This is essentially the process of branding. Fashion models are the epitome of pathos. When you look at a physically attractive person, biological signals start firing, and we begin to imagine potential scenarios with this individual.
Humans also love stories. We fill in the blanks to create them, and we embellish them with false information, all the time. We prefer stories with peaks and valleys and a wide range of emotional variance that we hold deep in our minds. We like stories with twists, turns, novelty, and kickers.
Pathos is used extensively to this day, even without the heavy use of attractive models or engaging image-based stories. I always see posts on LinkedIn and Facebook where an individual opens with an attention grabbing line such as ‘two years ago I woke up with (insert rock bottom scenario)’. The prophet then goes on to state how they persevered to get so some glorious point in their career today. They then direct you to a link to their site where you can buy their course. These types of posts are very effective at converting, because they establish rapport, and empathy with the seller. They’re also often ambiguous, which can be a good thing in advertising because humans are always striving to discover causal links.
Method 4 · Experiential
When Aristotle wrote Rhetoric, which much of this article draws from, products, services, and ideologies were much more basic than they are now. When you are trading food for fur, there is very clear and concrete value exchange between parties. Due to the sophisticated nature of our modern economy, the value of something becomes more difficult to communicate. What does this thing actually do and what are the benefits? How much time or money will this save me? Will it give me comfort or security or allow me to express myself more fully? Will I become self-actualized or enlightened because of it?
It is due to the complex nature of digital products combined with the sheer saturation of them on the market, that people must try the product before they fully commit. This makes the 100% money back guarantee, or free trial almost imperative now. It’s just not possible now to sell a bad product and hope to get away with it.
A good product will trump any other marketing efforts because a good product will market itself. Word-of-mouth or referral marketing is the most powerful form of advertising gasoline there is, because personal recommendations clearly have no illicit intentions. When one tells a friend about the cool purchase they made (which they do) they’re not making any money by doing that—they do it for the sake of expression. It is for these reasons that companies who design and engineer the right products very well, will always win over the manipulators. Granted, there will always be industries engulfed in marketing and branding (fashion), but the internet along with social rating services are making it extremely hard for mere frauds to get by in today's world. Just design valuable products and services, and let the users do the selling for you!
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I’m Jeff Davidson
I’m a digital designer who helps companies design and market profitable products and services. Contact jeffdavidsondesign@gmail.com for project inquiries. You can get free design and business lessons on my site.
http://jeffdavidsondesign.com/
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