Working in PR fields, you may need to know how to persuade your target audiences. Having good persuasion skill will help you in targeting more audiences as well as achieving your goals or objectives.
Theory of Persuasion & Social InfluenceThis theory describes persuasive communication which PR practitioners communicate to persuade the audiences. This theory explains that PR practitioners will try to persuade audiences to learn new information, accept it, change their emotions and act in certain ways.
Persuasion – change of behaviour and attitude.
Successful persuasion attempts to generate some type of cognitive, affective or behavioural modification in their targets.
In Public Relations, PERSUASION is discussed using these terms:
Persuasion Theory uses emotional appeal (in media) to change behaviour.
Advertisement would be one of the best examples for successful persuasive communication as it has the power to make consumers aware of you brand, think about the messages and change their behaviour towards your brand. But… how?
Let’s take a look at this short advertisement!
A man suddenly appears in front of the lady while she’s cleaning. He uses Mr. Clean’s product to clean the dirt on the stove, toilet and mop the floor for her. But, it is actually her fantasy, the one who cleans everything is her husband. This advertisement shows that it is very easy to clean the dirt, even a man can clean it very well by using Mr. Clean’s products.
This advertisement made use of these 3 types of emotional appeals:
1. Humour Appeal
feel a sense of humour when watching the advertisement
2. Romantic Appeal
the actions of the lady and Mr. Clean and quotes like “You gotta love a man who cleans”
3. Sex Appeal
eye contact, body movements and the kiss scene
Audiences may go through these 4 steps after watching the advertisement:
Awareness
Once people watch this advertisement, they are aware of the brand and its products as well as accept the information being delivered regarding the products of Mr. Clean through the advertisement. This advertisement uses the three appeals to grab audiences’ attention.
Attitude
After being aware of the advertisement, people will choose to like or dislike the information or the products that are shown in the video. People will choose whether to agree or not with the message being delivered by Mr. Clean.
Beliefs
When people reach this step, it means that they like and believe that the products or information being shown in the advertisement. Then, they will assess whether the information delivered by Mr. Clean is true or false. For example, people may assess on Mr. Clean’s products through asking the opinions of their relatives or neighbours, or perhaps, they may go and check out the actual products. However, if an individual thinks that the information are false, he/she will not move on to the next step.
Behaviour
This is the final step where people will change their behaviour towards Mr. Clean’s brand, take action to buy its products. On the other hand, it also describes that Mr. Clean has successfully transform or persuade people to change and purchase its products.
Reference
Greiner, P. (2015) Triadic Model: Components of attitudes. Available from: <https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Triadic-Model-Components-of-attitudes_fig1_281194253> [Accessed 7 October 2018].
Middleton, A. (2017) 23 Types of Advertising Appeals Most Commonly Used by Brands. Visme. Available from: <http://blog.visme.co/types-of-advertising-appeals/> [Accessed 7 October 2018].
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