Going Greek

The Aristotelian appeals to ethos, pathos, and logos can be powerful rhetorical tools in the right hands. Dannon, mostly known as a yogurt company, employs them on their website (http://www.dannon.com/), yielding interesting results.

There is one main appeal to ethos on the webpage: a huge pink bar for breast cancer awareness. “SEE HOW DANNON IS HELPING FIGHT BREAST CANCER” it proclaims. This serves not only as a ploy to draw in the potential customer but also as a gesture of good will. The company wants to appear morally just and likeable. They also intend the audience to take them seriously in their ethics and their product. If they fight breast cancer, they must be good and honest about their product, right?

Similarly, there is one main appeal pathos on the website: appealing pictures of the product. It appears next to fresh strawberries. This serves two purposes. First, it gets the audience’s mouth watering, ready to eat their fill of strawberries in the product. This brings me to the second purpose. This implies they put actual, real strawberries in their product. They never state this on the site, but the audience may assume it because of  the delicious looking picture.

Finally, the site rounds everything out with their appeals to logos. They claim “All natural ingredients with Vitamin D, non GMO ingredients*, made with whole milk.” This is intended to provoke some rational thought in the audience. The company lists off phrases that sound smart and healthy, but offer no real promises. The effect of this is varied, especially when the audiences sees that massive asterisk after the non GMO ingredients claim. Even if the asterisk has a good explanation for being there, many potential customers may see it and turn away, just because of its presence.

The website itself is fairly balanced in its use of Aristotelian appeals. If anything is slightly lacking, it is pathos, a surprise to be sure. One may expect many appeals to pathos, as emotions are often stronger motivators that logic. However, the extra appeal to logos balances it out succinctly.

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