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.
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.
