Ethos and Pathos Ad

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The picture above is Nike’s ad for P.L.A.Y (Participate in the Lives of America’s Youth), a campaign to help underprivileged children find a place to recreate. The main parts of the ad are the picture of Jackie Joyner-Kersee, and her story. The story of this impoverished young girl is not only inspirational, but appeals to both pathos and ethos. The story does a great job of appealing to pathos by recounting the situation of a poor girl who lived in a neighborhood with nowhere to run; and appeals to ethos by showing you the need, and then giving you a way to fill it. “I always knew I could run fast, but without Mr. Fennoy, I would have never known I could run so far.”

Pathos and Logos Ad

The above ad is from an earthquake preparation campaign by the American Red Cross, in which they handed out empty water bottles with the message, “Try living on this for three days.” Not only is it an effective ad, but it’s also an effective use of pathos and logos. It paints the picture of being trapped under the wreckage of your house after a deadly earthquake with no water. But it’s not just pushing an emotional reaction, it’s also very logically based on the fact that you can only survive about three days without water. I thought this was a very powerful and clever ad and served its purpose well.

President Obama's Speech

I personally stayed away from all of the controversy involved in President Obama’s previous drafts of his speech, and the criticisms of the one he actually gave.

In Obama’s speech, he not only stressed the importance of doing well in school, but its role in our society. He pushed the view that when they fail, they’re not just failing themselves—they’re failing their country. His powerful, yet encouraging speech, in my opinion, did an excellent job at imparting a sense of responsibility into each child’s academic life, and also at highlighting education and its integral role in enabling students. Though I don’t agree with the President’s need for involvement in our school system, I do believe it was a speech that needed to be heard by the children of our generation. The responsibility to be educated, the importance of an education, and an education's role in society—these are all aspects of Obama’s speech which I completely understand and agree with.

As for the rhetorical strategy President Obama used in his speech, I think he did a skillful job of weaving in pathos and logos. His use of pathos was definitely the most powerful part of his speech: growing up in Indonesia, too poor to go to a good school, suffering through additional schooling from his mother at 4:30 in the morning. And all of this just so he could have the same education that the average American kid takes for granted. He was also very logical in his section about the correlation between education and jobs. “You can’t drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You’ve got to work for it and train for it and learn for it.” Overall, I think it was a very inspirational speech, but most importantly, it was a very necessary speech.