To Persuade or not to Persuade

There is no doubt that every human would at least attempt to influence or persuade others to their way of thinking, or - vice versa! Humans are always trying to persuade each other regardless of their backgrounds, religion or race. Having high persuasion skills would no doubt draw others like how iron filings are drawn to a powerful magnet or even like how free samples and gifts draw us Malaysians to it!

The power of persuasion is very extraordinary and extremely important in today’s world. It is aslo the most important key tool for those who are in the field of Public Relations. One will acknowledge the importance of persuasion if one is in this constantly evolving field as it plays in almost everything one does. From generating ideas, creating content, to building and maintaining relationships as well as managing reputations - all of these is only possible with the use of persuasion.

As a public relations practitioner, this field will no doubt constantly challenge your creativity and make you think out-of-the-box ideas to persuade your clients as well as most importantly, your targeted audience. Effective strategies and tactics on campaigns are usually revolved around one’s good communication skills and excellent persuasive skills to pull the targeted audience in and to as well, achieve targeted goals.

“The most important persuasion tool you have in your entire arsenal is integrity” - Zig Ziglar

Mastering and fully understanding the art and theory of persuasion will no doubt put you in life’s driver’s seat. Why?

This is because with the art of persuasion, one is able to persuade and influence with complete power. You will no doubt be able to instantly influence and inspire others to take a certain action or matter seriously, while captivating exactly what you want.

But.. What exactly is persuasion and how do you define a persuasion effort to be successful?

Persuasion is defined as an act or process of presenting arguments to move, motivate, or change the audience’s perception of attitude and behavior towards a certain topic. Once the attitude is successfully changed, the behavior of theirs will change along as well. The process of where one’s behavior changes to perceive themselves with the message being exposed is where one is being socially influenced.

As a public relations practitioner, we try to persuade and as well, influence audiences to learn new information as well as to change their emotions and to act in certain ways. This is defined as the theories of persuasion and social influences.

Studies have shown that the more credible or believable the source is, the more persuaded we are to accept the message. A successful and persuasive attempt compromises and generates changes of attitudes in the target. There are three main components of attitude that defines a successful persuasion attempt.

“Persuasion is often more effectual than force.” – Aesop

The theories of persuasion and social influences are able to be defined by a set of theoretical approaches. There are four steps to consider when an information reaches out to its targeted audience.

Awareness

the audience’s acceptance of the information for the first time.

Attitudes

the audience’s tendency to like or dislike the information given.

Beliefs

the audience’s assessments of the information to be true or false.

Behaviour

the observable actions of the audience.

Emotional Appeal in Persuasion

The advertising industry revolves around a communication strategy dedicated to persuade consumers to buy their goods or services indirectly. Persuasive communication is often used in advertising to generate attention as well as encouraging action to be taken after being exposed to it.

Other than providing information directly or indirectly for the customers through advertising, an emotional appeal approach as well is more commonly used to capture the audience’s attention to buy information with their hearts. As emotional appeal relies more on connecting feelings and perceptions towards things, one will get attached to an advertisement if the advert is relatable and able to evoke their emotions, thus making a strong impact for them to these emotion-infused messages.

To further illustrate the theories of Persuasion and Social influence, here’s an example of Thai Life Insurance’s advertisement which utilizes the emotional appeal.

This heartwarming tearjerker video above is titled “Unsung Hero”, one of Thai Life Insurance’s emotional advertisement that was released in 2014. It was directed by “Tor” Sornsrivichai from Ogilvy & Mather Bangkok, who is also known by many as the king of emotional advertising who is also one of the most awarded advertisement director in the world. Thai Life Insurance has a well-known identify to make memorable and emotional commercials relating to real life issues.

The video shows and follows an ordinary young man who does random acts of kindness in his everyday routine out of altruism. It was an emotional journey as the man is not one who is wealthy but the kind acts he did made a huge difference to the ones he has helped. Along the way, throughout the video, there are people shaking their heads in disbelief, portraying that they were unable to understand the rewards this man would get from giving to strangers all the time. Eventually, after a series of payoffs, this extraordinary man saw exactly what a difference his help has made. This video skyrocketed across the Internet with over 34 million YouTube views to this date - that’s a lot of tissues being used after watching this advertisement!

Prior to the theories of persuasion and social influence, the targeted audience for this advertisement, society as a whole, are very naturally exposed to the four steps from the framework if they shed tears while watching this emotional advertisement.

To wrap it up, bracing through the three main components of attitudes as well as conquering the four phases of persuasion is able to help define if a persuasion is successful or not. The ability of being able to persuade will bring you to higher grounds for you to get what you want, so what are you waiting for? Master the art of persuasion now!

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References:

Basu, C. (N.A.) What Are the Tools of Persuasion in Advertising? Small Business.Chron. [online] Available at : https://smallbusiness.chron.com/tools-persuasion-advertising-34381.html [Accessed on 10 October 2018]

Drucker, G. (2013) TGIF: The Key To Good PR is Persuasion. CrenShawComm. [online] Available at : https://crenshawcomm.com/tgif-the-key-to-good-pr-is-persuasion/ [Accessed on 10 October 2018]

Feel More 50 (N.A.) Thai Life Insurance Unsung Hero. [online] Available at : https://www.feelmore50.com/thai-life-insurance-unsung-hero [Accessed on 10 October 2018]

Taube, A. (2014) All Of Thailand Is Compulsively Weeping Over This One Life Insurance Ad. Business Insider. [online] Available at : https://www.businessinsider.com/thai-life-tearjerker-ad-2014-4/?IR=T [Accessed on 10 October 2018]

University of Minnesota (N.A.) What is Persuasion? [online] Available at : https://open.lib.umn.edu/businesscommunication/chapter/14-1-what-is-persuasion/ [Accessed on 10 October 2018]

Westside Toastmasters (N.A.) The Power of Persuasion. [online] Available at : http://westsidetoastmasters.com/resources/laws_persuasion/chap1.html [Accessed on 10 October 2018]