Insights for Nonprofit Marketing and Branding Part 2: Pathos
By: David Truong
This is part 2 of a 3-part series on how nonprofits can use rhetorical appeals for marketing and branding.
Businesses hire consultants for advice on tough decisions. Yet, no matter how many methodically thought-out PowerPoints a consultant can make, people will listen to their gut time and time again. Unconscious, emotional thoughts are always at work in the dark recesses of our mind, and every day marketers are manipulating these emotions to sell their latest products and services. The practice of appealing to one’s emotions dates as far back as 400 B.C. in what Greek philosopher, Aristotle coined as pathos. Emotions are the same now as they were then, and so pathos continues to exist. By definition, this rhetorical device aims to use emotion to persuade people toward decisions that align with a predetermined goal.
Modern Plays on Emotions
To contextualize the ancient persuasive practice in our modern day, we can look to the young child, Tommy and Joe Greene on Coke’s “Hey, Kid Catch” or the dystopian female heroine in Apple’s “1984.”
When little Tommy brings happiness to a fatigued Joe Greene in the form of a bottle of CocaCola, a consumer associates the product with similar feelings of joy. In Apple’s vision of a George Orwell-themed dystopia, the Macintosh computer becomes a symbol of control to preventing a dark future. While these ads didn’t necessarily increase sales, their effective use of pathos in conjunction with ethos and logos paved the path for years of publicity for each respective brand, CocaCola landing a branding partnership with the Steelers and Apple revolutionizing the Super Bowl ad.
A Nonprofit Approach: Trite and True
However, whereas corporations can find success in gaining publicity off their ads alone, nonprofits must receive donations — every dollar spent counts. With no product or service, nonprofits must solely rely on the altruism of donors to donate on behalf of the nonprofit mission. The cause is what creates value that people can donate money in exchange for. Having donations predicated on this notion, nonprofits have become infamous users of pathos in advertising their causes.
Take for example, the classic b-roll of precious homeless animals underscored by Sarah McLachlan’s “Angel” in British Columbia Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals’ End Animal Cruelty campaign. The commercial put the at-need members of their cause at the forefront with a clear call to action, and what followed was a major success in garnering donations for the nonprofit in just one year alone, receiving acclaim as “The Ad” in the nonprofit world.
However, success in this ad campaign can easily be misattributed to its dramatizing tactics alone. In fact, the tear jerking feelings evoked in the BC SPCA commercial have even gone so far as have earned the ad a place in meme culture.
Countless nonprofit ads fall into the trap of relying on blanket emotions alone. In War Child’s Batman Ad, we see in the midst of a war-ridden landscape Batman befriending a young child. The ad ultimately reveals that Batman had simply been the child’s father, illustrating how some children need fantasy to escape reality. While the ad creates a compelling a story for children affected by war, it abstracts any call to action: How is a donation helping? What is my money doing?
Nonprofits must move past abstract and be specific with their use of pathos.
Self-Accountability Emotions & The Beneficiary
At the core of these campaigns that effectively use pathos are a focus on self-accountability emotions: feelings that not just induce intention to act, but go so far as to actually take action. We see self-accountability emotions primarily in guilt. The feeling of guilt manifests when one has deviated from his moral standards, and the feelings lingers, holding one accountable until he makes an action that will dispel the feeling.
However, guilt will only reach so many audiences. In these campaigns we are limited by the lived-experience of the audience to empathize and evoke emotions that truly understand the full gravity of a social issue that a non-profit battles.
Nonprofits can bridge this gap of misunderstanding by displaying the beneficiary from the donation. Ads that attempt to display the benefit that a donor will receive are typically less effective because the ad frames the donors’ donation as a selfish motive.
Case Studies
In The Berkeley Group’s experience with nonprofit consulting, this level of specificity in pathos has been key to providing meaningful recommendations. In Spring 2016, TBG consulted for #ICANHELP, a nonprofit dedicated to training students how to navigate cyber bullying, in identifying growth opportunities for their curriculum. A key finding made from an interview with their partner ConnectSafely was that people were attracted to a mission that “incorporates students as active participants.” This finding drove the recommendation to acquire students volunteers who would employ aggressive marketing methods. The beneficiary, in this case being the students marketing #ICANHELP themselves, would most effectively reach the hearts of donors.
We can see also see pathos in full effect in Hats Off for Cancer’s quantitative study of pathos, ethos, and logos. The non-profit created three types of advertisement, one for each mode of persuasion. The three ads and an accompanying survey were then sent to a sample population of previous Hats Off for Cancer donors and potential donors. In the advertisement, Hats Off for Cancer shares the story of Johnathon Cahill, a child stage 4 cancer patient. The ad draws from his sister’s testimony describing Johnathon’s positivity in the face of adversity. The success of the ad can be attributed using Johnathon as the face of the advertisement. Respondents reported feedback such as “it’s about the children that are receiving these gifts and the encouragement we’re providing,” “I like knowing what NPOs do for the people.”79% of respondents felt that the ad using pathos was the most effective. By having the beneficiary marketed to donors, the audience feels more compelled to donate knowing what their money is exactly used for, creating the emotional bridge typically missing from most pathos campaigns.
However, nonprofit marketing campaigns should not be limited to one mode of persuasion. The most effective advertisements seamlessly integrate each rhetorical device when most effective. Anecdotes work best when messages are positively framed because they show the positive outcomes of a donation, whereas negative framing is best done through statistics. Even BC SPCA used ethos in hiring Sarah McLachlan. Through the partnership of emotions, logic, and credibility, nonprofits can reach new donors and relieve the nonprofit of its sob story meme reputation.
Find out how to employ logos in NPO marketing and branding here!
