Appealing to your Audience

1. Appealing to your Audience In a Documentary

2. Logical vs. Emotional • Although most of us like to believe that we are governed entirely by LOGICAL reasons, much of our behavior is EMOTIONAL. • We are greatly influenced by our motives, desires, needs, wants, or drives. • How you act depend on which motives are the strongest.

3. Logical vs. Emotional • While emotions don’t govern us completely, we are happiest and perform the best when we have an impelling urge to do what our minds tell us we SHOULD do. • When logic and emotions work together, we work at peak efficiency. • Our mind provides the direction, and our emotion provides the energy.

4. Logical vs. Emotional Example • For examples, if we enjoy swimming and the doctor tells us that we must swim daily in order to lower our body mass index, we’ll have little trouble carrying out the orders because our head and hearts are working together.

5. Speakers use Logical vs. Emotional to persuade • As a documentarian, you can more easily obtain a certain audience response if you relate your ideas to your viewer’s motives. • Director weight their films with verbal support (reasons and evidence) and then show their audience how this information will help them achieve their goals -- or satisfy their wants (emotions).

6. Writing the Motive Appeal • Motive Appeals are meant to be from the audience’s point of view. So when you write your analysis of your ad, you will need to write the motive appeal from the perspectiveof the intended audience. • Poor Example: Love and Affection: Habitat for Humanity gives underprivileged people a home where they can live happy lives with their families. • Good Example: Love and Affection: You must support a tax that will give all income to Habitat for Humanity because imagine how good it will feel to help those who cannot help themselves! You would be demonstrating your empathy for all humanity AND allow families to stay together!

7. Motive Appeal #1Self Preservation • Is the desire to survive. • It is the need for food, clothing, shelter. Oxygen and rest. • This is usually considered the foremost motive until it is satisfied. Then other needs take precedence. • Closely associated with this appeal is the need for security and safety (a life free of worry).

8. Motive Appeal #1Self Preservation • We are responding to the motive appeal of self-preservation when we lock our doors at night, get a vaccination, stop (or never start) smoking, use safety devices, take prescribed medications, or go to the doctor when we are sick. • Examples in a speech: • “Buckle up your seat belt and live.” • “If we don’t stop air pollution, in twenty years man will be asphyxiated.” • “Speed kills.”

9. Motive Appeal #2: Pride • This is self esteem, or a feeling of personal worth and accomplishment. • We don’t like to feel inferior or to be made fun of, so we work hard to build our morale and win the approval of our friends and family. • Examples of pride: We become a varsity player, or the editor of the school paper. We get good grades, win awards, join clubs, wear new clothes, and acquire possessions. • Examples: • “If you make the honor roll, you are to be congratulated.” • “Buy this new new CD player, and you’ll have the best one in town!”

10. Motive Appeal #3: Personal Enjoyment • This is the desire for beauty, comfort, and recreation. • Appealing to this would be like adorning ourselves with expensive jewelry, decorating our rooms with colorful posters, buying a $500,000 home to keep out the wind and rain. • Examples: • “Order Sullivan’s ice cream for that melt-in-your-mouth smoothness and that rich, creamy goodness.” • “For an evening a exquisite dining, go to Gentro.”

11. Motive Appeal #4:Love or Affection • This is the need to give and receive love, to have friends, to share our lives with others, to promote a common good. • This is the drive that motivates our parents to take out insurance for family security, or to fight a war to protect our loved ones at home. This drives spurs you to donate to charity, makes you interested in dating, and pushes you to make friends. • Examples: • “People who work together build strong and lasting friendships.” • “Send flowers to show you care.” • Take a foster child into your home to enrich both your lives.”

12. Motive Appeal #5:Acquisition & Savings • This is an appeal to the pocketbook. It is the desire for ownership. It is often the desire that makes us work hard to earn money to buy what we want. It is this drive that entices us at the bargaining table. • Examples: • “Buy now and you will save $10.00” • “Train for this job, and you’ll be earning a six figure salary your first year out of college!”

13. Motive Appeal #6: Adventure and Curiosity • This is the need for exploration. We resist a boring life by participating, reading, watching, and daydreaming. This is why we “feed” a “hungry mind” or seek out the answers to “why??” • Examples: • “For excitement join the Explorers in a rubber boat trip down the white water rapids.” • “Want to live a life that is thrilling? Seek out a degree from MIT and test drive Corvettes for a living.”

14. Motive Appeal #7: Loyalty • This is the faithfulness to a nation (patriotism), school (school spirit), city (civic responsibility), and/or friends and family. • While you may frequently fight with a little brother, but family loyalty sends you to his assistance when a bully picks on him. This is flying the flag on the 4th of July, dressing in purple and gold at Johnston sporting events… • Examples: • “Attend this Friday’s game and cheer on the Dragons to another victor!” • The Newmans need our help, they are a Navy family in need.

15. Motive Appeal #8: Imitation • This is the need to conform…to be just like everybody else. This is what prompts people to “go along with the crowd…” To dress like everyone else, to get your hair cut in the latest style, to wear a sweat shirt with a picture of a celebrity on it. • It is buying a perfume or cologne because it is endorsed by a celebrity • Examples: • Sofia Vegara promoting the new Ninja Coffee Maker.

16. Motive Appeal #9: Reverence • This is the desire to “look up to” someone. • This respect is manifested in three forms: • Hero worship: or deep admiration for people such as a star athlete, a national hero, or a person in high office • Tradition: or a respect for observances such as clapping after a performance, standing for the national anthem, or wearing caps and robes for graduation. • Deity: a worship of a supreme being or a universal force. • EXAMPLES: • “Faith in God is our nation’s greatest strength.” • Washington and Jefferson were men of great wisdom who we need our current politicians to emulate!”

17. Motive Appeal #10: Creating • This is the urge to invent. This is the great satisfaction we get from building a computer, making a dress, planting a vegetable garden, painting a picture, or organizing a political campaign. This is the appeal that makes “do-it-yourself” kits SOOOOO popular. • EXAMPLES: • “Make your own Christmas cards.” • Eat from a bowl you’ve actually made at a pottery class! • You can organize your own baby-sitting service!!

18. Using Motive Appeals • In documentaries, writers start with the ideas first, and then relate those ideas to motive appeals. • For your print ad, choose the motive appeal best adapted to your audience based on the topic of the ad. • If necessary, use more than one motive appeal, but be sure they don’t conflict. • For Example: If you use the motive of adventure, don’t mention fear or safety (self-preservation). Fear would defeat the adventure motive.

19. Works Cited • Tanner, Fran. Creative Communication – 5th Edition.Logan,IA: Perfection Learning Corporation, 2003. Print.