Fundamentals of Branding by Aristotle
I’ve this habit of re-reading books - classics in fiction/novels, etc; or books on fundamentals when it comes to business/marketing/management. The wonderful thing about re-reading such ‘classics’ are that you will unearth something new or you’ll start looking at the known things in a different perspective, because the context might have changed since the last time you read. One of the recent books I revisited was the JWT Planning Cycle Fundamentals (?) By Stephen King - The 70’s printed bible for all strategists and planners in advertising & communication agencies.
While the Stephen King book would have laid the fundamentals of modern day planning when it comes to branding, I think the seed for this thought was sown around 4th century B.C by the great Greek philosopher, Aristotle. I came to know about the similarities while reading a Harvard Business Review article on Aristotle and the art of persuasion.
In his treatise, Rhetoric, Aristotle, goes on to give an overview and then develops the basics of a system for rhetoric. Maybe the reason for his treatise could be to help people in oration or maybe in development of theatre that the ancient Greeks are famous for. The principles that Aristotle mentioned are still used and considered as touchstone in the art of persuasion.
So, how does the 2000 year old principles on oration/theatre find relevance in the world of branding?
According to Stephen King, brands, and thus branding, need to appeal to :
The physical sense: How the brand looks, smells, tastes, feels, sounds, (the product and the packaging)
The rational: What the brand does, how it performs, what it contains, what is it used for
The emotional: What moods it evokes or satisfies, the psychological rewards for using it, what its associations are.
All these combines together in various ways at various degrees and thus create a brand - a unique blend of appeals. (Extracted from Stephen King’s book). Thus branding is an activity that harnesses these appeals and is put forward to a specific set of audience whom we call as ‘market segment’.
Aristotle in his book focuses on 3 means of persuasion - Ethos, Logos, and Pathos
Ethos speaks about the “Character” of the person. In branding terms we can equate it to the physical attributes of the brand.
Logos is all about “Reason” and making a logical appeal to the audience. This is very similar to the rational appeal the brand needs to address when speaking to their market segment.
Lastly, Aristotle says that without Pathos, absence of “Emotion”, the persuasion cannot be effective. People are moved by what and how they feel. That is why effective public speakers spend a lot of the speaking time on telling ‘stories’. Exactly, what a brand needs to evoke and do.
According to the article, the amount of time public speakers (in TEDx Talks) spend on focussing on Pathos, Logos, and Ethos - 65% of their time went into stories (Pathos), 25% on Logos and 10% on Ethos. It will be a good exercise to conduct on branding activities too, in terms of weightage on the 3 appeals.
On a final note, there are a lot of definitions for branding - activities building perceived image of the product or services, share of mind, sum of conversations that people have about your product/services, etc……But the substratum of any branding is Effective Persuasion
(As an aside, the current book I’m re-reading is, The Elements of Style’ by Strunk and White - Another ‘classic’ from 70’s… May find lots of similarities to another part of Rhetoric by Aristotle that talks about using Metaphors and Brevity :))
While the Stephen King book would have laid the fundamentals of modern day planning when it comes to branding, I think the seed for this thought was sown around 4th century B.C by the great Greek philosopher, Aristotle. I came to know about the similarities while reading a Harvard Business Review article on Aristotle and the art of persuasion.
In his treatise, Rhetoric, Aristotle, goes on to give an overview and then develops the basics of a system for rhetoric. Maybe the reason for his treatise could be to help people in oration or maybe in development of theatre that the ancient Greeks are famous for. The principles that Aristotle mentioned are still used and considered as touchstone in the art of persuasion.
So, how does the 2000 year old principles on oration/theatre find relevance in the world of branding?
According to Stephen King, brands, and thus branding, need to appeal to :
The physical sense: How the brand looks, smells, tastes, feels, sounds, (the product and the packaging)
The rational: What the brand does, how it performs, what it contains, what is it used for
The emotional: What moods it evokes or satisfies, the psychological rewards for using it, what its associations are.
All these combines together in various ways at various degrees and thus create a brand - a unique blend of appeals. (Extracted from Stephen King’s book). Thus branding is an activity that harnesses these appeals and is put forward to a specific set of audience whom we call as ‘market segment’.
Aristotle in his book focuses on 3 means of persuasion - Ethos, Logos, and Pathos
Ethos speaks about the “Character” of the person. In branding terms we can equate it to the physical attributes of the brand.
Logos is all about “Reason” and making a logical appeal to the audience. This is very similar to the rational appeal the brand needs to address when speaking to their market segment.
Lastly, Aristotle says that without Pathos, absence of “Emotion”, the persuasion cannot be effective. People are moved by what and how they feel. That is why effective public speakers spend a lot of the speaking time on telling ‘stories’. Exactly, what a brand needs to evoke and do.
According to the article, the amount of time public speakers (in TEDx Talks) spend on focussing on Pathos, Logos, and Ethos - 65% of their time went into stories (Pathos), 25% on Logos and 10% on Ethos. It will be a good exercise to conduct on branding activities too, in terms of weightage on the 3 appeals.
On a final note, there are a lot of definitions for branding - activities building perceived image of the product or services, share of mind, sum of conversations that people have about your product/services, etc……But the substratum of any branding is Effective Persuasion
(As an aside, the current book I’m re-reading is, The Elements of Style’ by Strunk and White - Another ‘classic’ from 70’s… May find lots of similarities to another part of Rhetoric by Aristotle that talks about using Metaphors and Brevity :))
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