Significant throughout time, announcements have long served as a method of persuasion, an integral part of human society, inherently present in our minds from the moment we began putting together coherent thoughts and desires.
Today’s social media landscape is populated by a plethora of services that compete for the attention of over five billion mobile-device users across the globe. At first, social media existed to aid users to digitally connect with friends, family, colleagues and like-minded individuals who may never have had the opportunity to meet face-to-face.
But, as social media companies grew their user bases into hundreds of thousands, millions or billions, a critical mass was formed, where consequently, social media companies have achieved access to some of the richest user data ever produced. With marketers no longer limited to traditional forms of media such as radio, television, mail, billboards, magazines, posters, etc., the social media marketing industry was begotten.
Taking a step back 3,000 years, Athens was a city where Greek citizens would address significant issues of the day in the local agora. Known to all as a public forum, here decisions were made, policies founded and justice administered.
In simple terms, if you wanted the local administrative institutions to address a problem, you went to the agora and presented your case via a persuasive speech.
Nonetheless, as one might imagine, not everyone was good at speaking, thus, a new field of employment emerged; sophistry. Individuals practicing sophistry were gifted at speaking in public spaces and charged others to speak on their behalf. Nevertheless, just because they spoke well, they did not necessarily speak truthfully or in clear terms, which is why our understanding of sophistry in today’s day and age is often looked down upon, having come to mean a “subtly deceptive reasoning or argumentation”.
Even then, there were those who criticised the profession. Most famously, Plato and Aristotle who viewed sophists as immoral due to their subterfuge behaviour, as people who did not care whether or not what they were saying was the “truth”, but rather how they were saying it. Moreover, Aristotle did more than just criticise sophistry; he wrote a book about public speaking, named, “Rhetoric”, nowadays known as the study of persuasive speech.
Therein are the three modes of persuasion:
Ethos | A persuasive appeal based on the ethical character of the person making the argument, as in, “Trust me, I know what I’m talking about”.
Pathos| The emotives of empathy or sympathy, as in stirring the emotions of an audience and thus engaging them in your argument by arousing sentiment.
Logos | In order to persuade someone to do or buy something, it obviously helps if it makes sense for me to do so. Part of me will still be resistant to your efforts to persuade me if I fail to grasp the logic of your message.
These three concepts have had a profound and lasting impression on our comprehension of the processes involved in communication. They have shaped the practice of speech, thus, by extension, they have also made significant contributions to the many practices related to announcements that are still consistently used to this day.
Whether it is persuading parents to allow you to go out with your friends or businesses trying to convince you of the value of their products, persuasion continues to be a essential aspect of human interaction. The persuasive power of announcements shall therefore likely forever influence our actions, perceptions and choices on a daily basis.
