The Ancient Sales Manual: What Aristotle Can Teach Modern Marketers
More than 2000 years ago, Aristotle figured it out. He systematized persuasion into a textbook format that reads like the original sales manual. And here’s the lasting relevance – everything you learned in that expensive sales training course? It’s all there in the rhetoric.
Politicians love to dismiss their opponents by saying “that’s just rhetoric.” But here’s what they don’t want you to know: rhetoric isn’t fluff. It’s the science of persuasion.
Guest: Sue Grabowski
Marketing Expert
CEO, Desidara
What exactly is rhetoric anyway?
Aristotle called it “the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion.”
Translation: It’s your ability to figure out how to convince someone in any situation.
When you’re pitching to small businesses versus enterprise clients, you change your approach. Different examples. Different terminology. Same goal, different path. That’s rhetoric in action.
When you call in sick to work versus telling your spouse you’ll be late, you use different approaches. You’re adapting your message to your audience. We all do it.
How is rhetoric different from pandering?
Pandering crosses the line. It’s when you try to be someone you’re not to win over an audience.
Think politician suddenly developing a Southern accent when speaking in Alabama. Or pretending to understand struggles you’ve never experienced.
Rhetoric adapts the message. Pandering fakes the messenger.
What are Aristotle’s three pillars of persuasion?
Every persuasive argument needs three elements:
Logic – Your rational framework. The facts, studies, and reasoning behind your position.
Emotion – The feeling that drives action. Because even in B2B, people buy with emotion and justify with logic.
Credibility – Why should anyone believe you? Your track record, expertise, and trustworthiness.
The magic happens when you balance all three for your specific audience.
Why do most marketing messages fail?
Most companies default to pure logic. Charts, graphs, studies, test results.
But here’s what we learned working with a client in the medical field: They were drowning prospects in 99% logic. When we checked the analytics, nobody was reading the studies. They were reading stories.
People don’t just want data points. They want to know how this affects them. What’s the emotional benefit? Why should they trust you?
What words should marketers avoid?
Stop using these empty words:
– Quality
– Innovation
– Service
– Solutions
These are what Aristotle would call false arguments. They’re nebulous terms that apply to every industry. “We have better quality” means nothing until you define what quality means to your customer.
Does quality mean durability? Speed? Friendliness? Same-day shipping?
Make it concrete. Give people something measurable they can hold onto.
How do advertisers use ancient persuasion techniques?
Every commercial follows Aristotle’s syllogism formula:
– Mothers love flowers
– Flowers make good gifts
– Therefore, mom would love flowers (you connect the dots)
Beer commercials master this:
– Good times happen with friends and attractive people
– Our beer is present during good times
– Drink our beer = good times with friends and attractive people
The advertiser gives you two premises. Your brain automatically creates the conclusion. That’s why it sticks.
What are the most common persuasion traps?
The Straw Man – Mischaracterizing your opponent’s argument to make it easier to attack. “There are those who say we shouldn’t invest in renewable energy” (but who actually said that?).
Red Herring – Changing the subject. “Why didn’t you do the dishes?” “Well, you never vacuum.” Now you’re arguing about vacuuming instead of dishes.
False Dilemma – Presenting only two options when more exist. “You’re either with us or against us.” Really? No middle ground?
Ad Hominem – Attacking the person instead of their argument. This happens constantly in office politics.
These techniques work because they bypass logic and hit emotion directly. But they’re ultimately hollow.
Why does emotion-heavy marketing backfire?
Aristotle warned about relying too heavily on emotion. Use it too much and you wear people out. They become immune.
Think about those Sarah McLaughlin animal rescue commercials. Pure emotional manipulation. After a while, people just change the channel because they can’t handle the guilt trip.
Emotion grabs attention. Logic provides the framework people need to hold onto. Credibility makes them trust you enough to act.
How do you know which persuasive approach to use?
Know your audience. Really know them.
Some audiences need heavy logic (engineers, CFOs making big purchases). Others respond to emotion (parents buying safety products). Still others need credibility first (investors evaluating new companies).
The key is recognizing that the same message delivered to different audiences requires different emphasis. Not different values or fake personas. Different balance of the three elements.
What’s the biggest mistake in modern persuasion?
We’ve lost the art of thoughtful discourse. Everything is soundbites, headlines, and quick judgments based on incomplete information.
People skim instead of reading. They make decisions based on emotion alone, without the logical framework to support those decisions long-term.
As marketers and communicators, we have less time to make our case. But that doesn’t mean we should abandon the principles. It means we need to be more skillful at integrating logic, emotion, and credibility into tighter packages.
Why ancient wisdom beats modern marketing gimmicks
Aristotle wrote the first sales manual. Every principle in modern sales training traces back to his rhetoric.
The three elements – logic, emotion, credibility – haven’t changed in over 2000 years because human nature hasn’t changed.
Stop dismissing something as “just rhetoric.” Start recognizing it as the systematic approach to persuasion it actually is. Then use it better than your competition.
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Transcript for ECC-009 Just Rhetoric
Sue Grabowski: [00:00:00] See what you’re saying is you really have to know your audience so that you can delicately balance these three elements mm-hmm. Of emotion and logic and credibility. Mm-hmm. In the proper percentages and doses.
Matt Bailey: Yeah.
Sue Grabowski: To exact a response. And yeah. If we, if you don’t analyze the audience. You may not persuade them effectively because with some, they need more logic and with others they’re gonna need more credibility.
Absolutely, yes. And, um, the proper measurements of those three and integration of those three is what makes the best arguments.
Matt Bailey: Mm-hmm. And I think that, I mean, Aristotle even goes into chapters of understanding the audience.
Introduction: Welcome to Endless Coffee Cup, a regular discussion of marketing, news, culture, and media for our complex digital lifestyle. [00:01:00] Join Matt Bailey as he engages in conversation to find insights beyond the latest headlines and deeper understanding. For those involved in marketing, grab a cup of coffee, have a seat, and thanks for joining.
Matt Bailey: Welcome to Endless Coffee Cup, and this is your host, Matt Bailey. And we’ve got Sue Grabowski back in the studio.
Sue Grabowski: Hi Matt.
Matt Bailey: Hey Sue. Glad to have you back.
Sue Grabowski: Thank you.
Matt Bailey: And this is because we, uh, we’re also following up on a previous episode when I think we both said we need to do a show on rhetoric. And all of a sudden now you’re looking at me with those, oh, that’s today, eyes.
Um,
Sue Grabowski: yes, that’s what we agreed to do. Matt, discuss rhetoric. And that’s what we’re gonna do.
Matt Bailey: Okay. Repeating the point. That was a good way to start. That’s
Sue Grabowski: what we’re gonna do.
Matt Bailey: So, well, let me start by this, uh, what do you remember about [00:02:00] rhetorical theory as you remember? Dear listener, Sue and I went to college together, had many of the same class together.
And the two, I mean, my favorite was rhetorical Theory and Persuasion. Persuasion, and I think it was the same for you.
Sue Grabowski: Those were my two favorites. What I recall about rhetorical theory, I took rhetorical theory between my freshman and sophomore year as a summer class.
Matt Bailey: And well, we, we were in the same class.
In the same class. The summer session. There was only
Sue Grabowski: four or five people in the class.
Matt Bailey: We were in the same class.
Sue Grabowski: There weren’t that many people.
Matt Bailey: Yeah.
Sue Grabowski: And where it was, so it was intensified because it was, you know, five weeks, but it was a few hours every day or whatever. But. What I remember, I don’t remember all of while you sit here with the actual book that we used in rhetorical theory.
Um, what I remember was the kind of the aha moments of everything that we say or that is put before us, falls into these buckets [00:03:00] to get us to, you know, these different categories of, of, uh, of rhetoric or argument. And we all are inducing us to make a decision or to act. And for me it was a kind of a wake up of like, wait a minute, I’ve, I’ve been duped.
These people have a strategy to get to me. Yes, yes. And then I went, wait a minute, I can employ these strategies Exactly. For my own devices, far purposes. That’s right. Yes. So that was, that’s really what I mean, and that was early in my college career. Mm-hmm. Um, but I loved, um, I, I like studying thought.
Matt Bailey: Mm-hmm.
Sue Grabowski: I like studying, uh, reactions to things. And so, um, reading Aristotle was fascinating anyway, uh, but to find that those theories from those ancient days remain applicable, and this was in the eighties and now applicable it two [00:04:00] in 2016. Right. Is fascinating to me and remains fascinating.
Matt Bailey: That’s what blew my mind is more than 2000 years ago, persuasion was systematized how to persuade, how to speak in certain situations, and also methods of persuasion.
How you can organize your thought as a speaker in order to persuade an audience to take an action that more than 2000 years ago. Aristotle systematized this Yeah. Into a very, and I’ll say into a very accessible text. Yes. I mean, reading this is not like reading the Odyssey.
Sue Grabowski: No.
Matt Bailey: It, it’s a textbook. It’s broken apart.
Sue Grabowski: It is, it’s, it’s in these circumstances do these things.
Matt Bailey: Right.
Sue Grabowski: So it’s, it’s very logical.
Matt Bailey: Mm-hmm.
Sue Grabowski: Uh, and you’re right, they, they addressed certain arguments, certain ways. Mm-hmm. And there’s a properness to it all. Yeah. And it was, it really was a step-by-step kind of guide to draw people to your side. [00:05:00]
Matt Bailey: Well, and, and what was most amazing to me is I took sales training.
So it was like a six week intense sales training class. And everything that I was learning in sales training, I’m, I’m connecting. I’m like, wait a minute. That’s in the rhetoric. That’s right. That’s in the, and it was just one principle after another. That’s in the rhetoric. And so, you know, I took like a refresher sales course later and it was just amazing how every principal they were teaching in sales principle or in sales training went back to Aristotle and the rhetoric and how to apply these things in certain situations.
Which do you have the, the definition on hand of, of rhetoric?
Sue Grabowski: I have the definition of rhetoric because people toss that word around. I have no clue. And frankly, and that I had, I had to refamiliarize myself. Before you do that,
Matt Bailey: let’s, let’s set up the show is, yeah. Well, when I called Sue, I said, Sue, we need to do this show on rhetoric.
The main reason was, is because I think I was watching the [00:06:00] news and, you know, politics is the big thing right now and I’m amazed at how many politicians will say, that’s just rhetoric. Yes. And then move on and say something. Well. What’s just rhetoric? I’m, you know, I think that’s one of those words that people hear a lot of, it’s used a lot, especially in politics, and it’s never really explained.
So let’s first start as he’s explaining it, as Aristotle would tell us to do, to define the, the issue to define what we’re going to talk about.
Sue Grabowski: Aristotle considers it a counterpart of both logic and politics and calls it, quote the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion.
So it’s actually the ability to observe how someone is persuading someone.
Matt Bailey: Mm-hmm.
Sue Grabowski: We use it commonly, I believe in the, in the [00:07:00] example that you gave, we use it commonly to express fluff or words without substance. Mm-hmm. I believe,
Matt Bailey: yeah. That’s
Sue Grabowski: how we use it. But that’s incorrect use of the term.
Matt Bailey: Yeah. Well, it, it’s, and I like what it is, is observing in any situation the available means of persuasion.
So also from an advertising standpoint or from a marketing standpoint, that I have a narrative of my company, but I’m not going to say it the same way to two different audiences. It’s not going to be an identical presentation. So if I have an audience of great example, I was dealing with this today that if I have an audience of small to medium sized businesses, I’m gonna use different examples.
I’m gonna use different terminology, and I’m going to speak to people who either wear many hats or they do it all themselves. Mm-hmm. And maybe one employee [00:08:00] does it, if I go speak to an enterprise. Business group. Now I’m speaking to people that manage teams, probably siloed, and so I have a whole different set of circumstances.
I’m gonna change my presentation drastically, even though I’m trying to get them to do the same thing.
Sue Grabowski: Right. It’s it’s audience. That’s rhetoric. It’s audience plus message plus means. Yes.
Matt Bailey: So when a politician says, that’s just rhetoric, that’s rhetoric. Of course. That’s right. Someone is using rhetoric. We all do.
Exactly. We all do it. It’s, it’s a difference between if you call off sick from work, the reasons that you give your boss will be different from if you call home and you’re gonna be late. That’s right. You’re going to take a different approach. Your voice is gonna be different. It’s the, I’m gonna be late or not show up.
And you’re gonna sell to your [00:09:00] boss or your spouse, one of the two. Right. And you’re gonna take a different means of persuasion with both. That’s rhetoric. Yes. It’s simply adapting the message to the audience.
Sue Grabowski: Correct.
Matt Bailey: But not pandering.
Sue Grabowski: No,
Matt Bailey: I think we can kind of draw the line there. Pandering goes over the top where you’re that.
Sue Grabowski: I’m gonna quickly pull that definition up too, because people, again, pandering
Matt Bailey: has come up many times in this, in this election.
Sue Grabowski: Uh, to pander is to gratify or indulge. An immoral or distasteful desire, need or habit, or a person with such a desire, et cetera. Mm-hmm.
Matt Bailey: So
Sue Grabowski: news, the, the example they give her is newspapers are pandering to people’s baser instincts.
So that’d be like
Matt Bailey: the Enquirer. It’s, I assume the art of expressing
Sue Grabowski: one’s views in accordance with the likes of a group to which one is attempting to appeal.
Matt Bailey: Wow. See, now that just flattens it out there. That
Sue Grabowski: was Wikipedia. But let me give you Miriam Webster.
Matt Bailey: Oh, well, [00:10:00] okay. Yes. Let’s do this. Let’s
Sue Grabowski: do it that way.
To provide, to do or provide what someone wants or demands, even though it’s not proper good or reasonable.
Matt Bailey: Okay. That,
Sue Grabowski: that’s a better definition.
Matt Bailey: Yeah.
Sue Grabowski: This is why you don’t use Wikipedia, folks, and that’s why I, it bugs me. There you go. When it comes up first, and I read it before I read Merriam Webster dictionary,
Matt Bailey: well, there’s a clear delineation there,
Sue Grabowski: right?
Matt Bailey: Because the, the Wikipedia definition of pandering is rhetoric. I’m gonna change my message based on who I’m talking to. That’s common sense. But when it comes to the point where, uh, it’s not who I am, and I have, I don’t know, it’s, you could get into when it becomes almost demeaning,
Sue Grabowski: right? Wait, it’s lack of a better, it’s sucking up.
It’s, yeah. There you go.
Matt Bailey: Yeah.
Sue Grabowski: It, that would be common terminology. Mm-hmm. It’s, it’s me. Um. Glad handing a group of people to get [00:11:00] them to, to like me. And it’s, it’s, it’s not, uh, it, it says it’s not proper good or reasonable. It’s not. It’s improper.
Matt Bailey: Yeah. Yeah. So
Sue Grabowski: it’s not me. It’s so hard to do.
Matt Bailey: It’s like taste.
I, I guess it’s hard to define until you see something you know, is in really bad taste. It’s, it’s, it’s like when
Sue Grabowski: you’ve been, you’ve been before speakers or where you do you feel sucked up to, um, it’s an over, it’s over exaggeration, uh, to appeal to a group of people, or they’re using examples that are, are kind of maybe over the top.
Matt Bailey: Mm-hmm.
Sue Grabowski: Just to let you know that they’re connected with the group, but it’s, there’s no substance or it’s, it’s fake. It’s, yeah.
Matt Bailey: I don’t even know if that, I don’t know if that’s the right, it’s pandering. Yeah, that’s just bad speaking.
Sue Grabowski: We’ve all seen that too. Um, to provide gratification for others’. Desires to provide gratification for others’ [00:12:00] desires.
Eek.
Matt Bailey: Yeah, that’s a very, uh, fine line. Someone who caters to or exploits the weaknesses of others. I think that would be, well, I think it would be to come into a situation and say, look, I’m just like you, and act like you are just like them, even when you’re not. Right. And that’s the thing. If someone, if you’re caught on video with one audience and you are acting differently than you normally do, then I would say that’s pandering Rhetoric is I’m simply saying things in a way that’s more.
Uh, suitable to that audience. Right. I’m not changing my, my, your values or your my val I’m not, well, I’m not changing who I am. I’m not changing my, my voice. Right. You know, I think that one of the big things, you know, politically is, is when politicians are in the southeast, a southern [00:13:00] accent. You know? Or do people
Sue Grabowski: do that?
Matt Bailey: Oh, I’ve heard of it. Yeah. It’s so, it’s, or nobody can see my
Sue Grabowski: face to know that I actually know that people do that.
Matt Bailey: Yeah, absolutely. It’s when I’m with an older audience, you know, I’m gonna look older. Well, I mean, that’s, I, I kind of do that too. You kind of dress for the audience. You’re gonna be, but I think that’s more maybe with the dialect that you change your dialect around a certain audience.
And so it, there’s a, a, a dissonance there.
Sue Grabowski: Where’s the line when you’re pandering versus presenting a persuasive. Discourse. I think a persuasive discourse is considering the, the audience and the message. Mm-hmm. And the desired response and tailoring it based to who we know we’re speaking to. Mm-hmm. To generate, to illicit, to illicit response that we, it’s appropriate.
Yeah. Pandering is, is is appealing to a base, a base [00:14:00] level. I mean, we did see that consistently through the definition. It’s where we,
Matt Bailey: I think it’s where you try to act like your audience.
Hmm.
You try to be like them in speaking to them. Right. Right. Exactly. Okay. You’re not relying so much on the words, you’re relying on these, um, these affectations that I’m like, I’m just like you.
Right. I understand your struggle. I am, I’m with you. And when you know, it’s, obviously you’re not right, but you’re pretending to be. In order to get your message across, that I think is the line between pandering is when you are trying to be someone you are not, or trying to identify with either this community or this group of people based on behavior and affectation rather than the substance.
Because rhetoric is about the substance you’re using.
Sue Grabowski: Right. [00:15:00] So we probably should talk about what Aristotle had to say about it.
Matt Bailey: Abs Well, yeah, like his, his, yeah. Let’s get there. Okay. So his three, yes. The available means of, uh, rhetoric,
Sue Grabowski: persuasion.
Matt Bailey: Yes. At any, or persuasion at any given point. So, um, let me, let me get into my handy dandy rhetoric and poetics.
So there are three kinds of rhetoric. And, and I love these because this has been, this has stuck with me since day, the day we learn this, it has just stuck in my mind. Okay. So the logic, emotion, and credibility.
Mm-hmm.
Those are the three areas of, uh, the three divisions of rhetoric. So number one, you’ve got to provide a compelling, logical argument for your position.
Number [00:16:00] two, to be effective, it has to tap into someone’s emotions, because ultimately we are emotional creatures. Mm-hmm. And so we need that emotion that it can be completely logical. I think we’ve talked about this before, that even when with business, I can lay out a completely logical, uh, a proposal, a means of action.
But if there’s no emotional benefit to it, it kind of falls flat.
Sue Grabowski: It, it’s, I believe that everybody buys, I don’t care if they’re buying widgets.
Matt Bailey: Mm-hmm.
Sue Grabowski: Uh, services. There has to be an emotional dis there’s an emotional decision woven in there. Now, some people may weigh the data or the logical side of it mm-hmm.
More heavily than the emotional attribute. But that’s why, I mean, why do you think companies sell, spend so much time talking about trusting Yeah. Our company or, you know, core values or putting things [00:17:00] out there that say we are trustworthy, we are honest. We are. It’s because those things are the emotional barometer.
Mm-hmm. That tied with the logic may lead to a decision.
Matt Bailey: Right. Right. So you’ve got the logic, the, the logic of your, the framework of your argument, the emotion. Which is kind of what close it, which provides the advantage of it. Mm-hmm. That here’s your, uh, like he said, really the, the ultimate, uh, goal. I, I love this.
I’m gonna read this now, and urging his heroes to take or to avoid a course of action, the political orator must show that he has an eye to their happiness. That would be the emotion part of it. Yeah. That, and, and really, I, you could put the political, when Aristotle talks about political, that’s advertising,
Sue Grabowski: right?
It’s any, at that time, the discourse was political.
Matt Bailey: Right, right.
Sue Grabowski: But it [00:18:00] was to convince you to, yeah.
Matt Bailey: So if I, the emotion is the happiness of it. Underlying everything is the credibility, the credibility of the speaker. So those are the three areas of rhetoric. And so using your available means of persuasion means that in some areas.
I’m gonna need more logic now. There is, I’m gonna need more emotion. And it, it was funny because, and the credibility side, I was just talking to someone this the other day, that when you’re the consultant that’s brought in from the outside Yeah, you have, and, and we were joking about this, you have unknown credibility.
You only credibility is you’re from out there and you, you’ve done some stuff and now you’re gonna come in here. If someone is appointed in-house to do something, you need to have known credibility.
Sue Grabowski: Yes.
Matt Bailey: And so there’s two, you know, what type of credibility is it that you’re bringing to it? So the [00:19:00] credibility of the speaker, what they’ve done, what they’ve performed, what their background is, says that will affect people’s judgment of their overall argument, their trust of what they’re going to say.
And so you’ve gotta figure out what’s needed at in a certain time. Um, you know, I think we can point to numerous client examples where just the, when you look at the writing of how they present themselves mm-hmm. I can think of one who, it was 99% logic.
Mm-hmm.
It was studies, it was medical tests, it was, uh, laboratory tests and charts and graphs.
And it’s not what people wanted. When we figured out who their audience was, they wanted a motion.
Mm-hmm.
That’s what it was. So we, we had to go in and like, not completely dump it, but just get rid of that. Go to the motion.
Sue Grabowski: Yeah. Balance
Matt Bailey: it more. Yeah. Well, honestly, or did you just ditch the whole, when we look at [00:20:00] the analytics, no one’s looking at the studies.
They’re looking, you know what they were reading stories. Stories. Well, you know, and that’s credibility.
Sue Grabowski: Yeah.
Matt Bailey: And emotion
Sue Grabowski: stories. I think I’ve said this before and, and one of our things, um. I once heard this data is remembered one way. Mm-hmm. Intellectually, stories are retained three ways intellectually, emotionally, and physically.
Hmm. Your body reacts to stories once you go to the movies. Mm-hmm. That’s why you, you’re sitting at Starbucks, you’re sitting at the bar, you’re not sharing data points, you’re sharing, you’re sharing stories and you, and you remember it and you know, when you, when you speak, uh, I bet afterward it’s cocktail hour or whatever, and someone’s coming up to you, they’re gonna talk to you about an example mm-hmm.
That you gave not a data point Right. That you made. Right. The data point supports the stories. I think a story, I think a story well done and True really hits all three of those things. Oh, [00:21:00] absolutely. Logic, credibility, and emotion.
Matt Bailey: Mm-hmm.
Sue Grabowski: Um. But we have a lot of clients too that because they have a proven study or they have something that differentiates their product from their competitor, from a testing standpoint, that they think that that’s the strongest argument.
It only is the strongest argument if you can tie to why the client benefits from that added feature or whatever makes, makes it excel. Mm-hmm. And, uh, it’s sometimes tough to get the client to understand, um, their available means of persuasion.
Matt Bailey: Right. Yeah. Include things
Sue Grabowski: other than just data points.
Matt Bailey: Yes.
Yeah. Well, and that’s, you know, what this client had to do is really go back to people that they got quotes from. And let’s explore the quote more. Can you explain what was the problem? How did this become the solution? Why did you decide to do, you know, go with us and what you know? And, [00:22:00] and ultimately what they were trying to do is because not only was an emotion problem, this was the highest priced product in their category.
So they had to justify the price and in order to justify the price, it was the performance. And it was showing that, you know what, these people aren’t afraid to pay for what works. Mm-hmm. I mean, that became kind of, the message is you want quality, you gotta pay for it.
Sue Grabowski: You know, I hate that word.
Matt Bailey: Quality. I
Sue Grabowski: hate that word really.
Quality service. Innovation. Oh yeah.
Matt Bailey: Okay.
Sue Grabowski: Solutions. Yeah. Talk. Let’s talk about rhetoric.
Matt Bailey: Alright, let’s go.
Sue Grabowski: That’s fluff it. There’s no substance to it. Mm-hmm. That’s what people would call rhetoric. That’s what I, I would call it. Um, they’re nebulous, undefined terms that apply to every industry.
Matt Bailey: Yes.
Sue Grabowski: And so when we toss about those words, they, it actually takes on the form of one of Aristotle’s, uh, anti arguments.
What did he call those? I mean the, the false [00:23:00] arguments.
Matt Bailey: Okay. Yeah. ’cause they’re,
Sue Grabowski: they’re, they are nebulous, they are to assert that I have more quality than your, than you have quality with no definition attached to it. Yeah. It’s, uh, it’s empty.
Matt Bailey: Mm-hmm.
Sue Grabowski: And meaningless. And I don’t, I see that. Yeah. Unless I get overridden, I don’t allow my clients to use those words.
Matt Bailey: Well, and it, it makes a lot of sense because, I mean, countless times seeing companies that the way they position themselves, you know, is enterprise solutions and you know, it just, what do you
Sue Grabowski: do? We have outstanding service. Um, gosh, I hope so. Yeah. And
Matt Bailey: we have a quality product. Well, you have a quality product, you know,
Sue Grabowski: but there’s, there’s quality, you know, there’s quality white bread.
Matt Bailey: Yeah.
Sue Grabowski: And there’s quality wrenches. So, you know, does that mean it’s fresher? Does that mean it’s, there’s stronger, yeah. I think there’s so many words that you can use that will make it concrete [00:24:00] and solidify it, but we just default to these words. Yes. Because we don’t, we don’t know. And it’s, it’s a problem because I have, I have clients clamoring to get their things out there, and when I push them for, they go, well, we’ve got better quality.
Well, what does that mean?
Matt Bailey: Yeah.
Sue Grabowski: And what we do is we go and ask the customers what that means, and we ask their employees what that means. Yeah, absolutely. And we often come back with two different definitions of what that means. Yeah. The customer says that’s more durability. Mm-hmm. And the employees may say.
Um, it’s, uh, it’s, it’s, uh, cheaper. I don’t know. Mm-hmm. Um, but you’ve got to, you’ve gotta be clearer. If you wanna have a strong argument, if you wanna be persuasive, use concrete language.
Matt Bailey: I like how you put that concrete that we can’t rely on. We have better quality. What
Sue Grabowski: I just, I just think
Matt Bailey: what is [00:25:00] better quality or, you know, service.
Yeah. What
Sue Grabowski: does that mean? You pick up the phone, you, you are friendlier.
Matt Bailey: Mm-hmm.
Sue Grabowski: Uh, you are faster. You are what, you know, you ship the same day. I don’t know. Yeah. But it seems to me that it just becomes the default when we don’t know what to say. That is true. That is true. Um, so there’s, yeah, there’s several words.
So quality, innovation, service, because when you solutions, when it
Matt Bailey: becomes concrete, then it becomes something I measurable,
Sue Grabowski: right. Yeah.
Matt Bailey: And that becomes a sales point. That becomes something that has to be delivered.
Sue Grabowski: I think sometimes our clients are afraid to actually make it concrete, because then they actually would have to go up against Yeah.
Scrutiny. And, and so if you’re gonna make a claim
Matt Bailey: Yes. It’s a safe way to make a claim.
Sue Grabowski: Right. So I, you know, I don’t know where this falls in the, in the, in the rhetoric discussion. I [00:26:00] just think, um, it’s funny in the, in the political scope of things. Oh yeah. People throw out words that are nebulous.
Matt Bailey: Mm-hmm.
Sue Grabowski: And that’s on purpose. It’s designed to get you to draw your own conclusions rather than providing ones that you can stand on. And I’m in the business of trying to help my clients have something they actually can, can stand on and can, and can and can be persuasive with. Yeah. And, uh, so that, those words are annoying to me, but.
Matt Bailey: I, I think it was, I, I have a book by George Orwell on why I write, and on the front of the book, I’m trying to remember the quote exactly, but it says, political speech is such that it gives concrete to the, to the wind and makes murder sound, uh, it makes murder sound [00:27:00] like beneficial and, and just, I mean, he rips apart, uh, what politicians, how they speak and the whole discourse.
Did you find it there?
Sue Grabowski: I was looking for it. Um, I’ll look for it here.
Matt Bailey: But basically that political speech gives weight to the wind and makes murder. Good. Uh, or, or sound good. That like it was a noble, I think it was, it makes murder Noble, uh, that how by nature political speech is meant to be completely evasive of any substance.
Yeah. Like you said, it’s, it’s all buzzwords.
Sue Grabowski: Can’t find it.
Matt Bailey: Ugh. I’ll have to go grab it.
Sue Grabowski: Not fast, but maybe during
Matt Bailey: a break. We’ll, I’ll go grab that and find it, but it was a wonderful, it’s a wonderful quote because it forces you then to evaluate what am I [00:28:00] hearing? What am I being told where, what are the concrete things that I’m being told?
What, you know, I think there’s a reason why we don’t trust politicians over deliver and under promise. Yeah. I mean, that is the, I. We do that in business, but we don’t do it in politics. It’s over promise and under deliver.
Sue Grabowski: I just pulled up, um, George Orwell quotes from why I write, so I’m trying to find the one that maybe you could, that you were referencing.
Oh, um, this isn’t it. I don’t think so. This the more one, the more one is conscious of one’s political bias. The more chance one has of acting politically without sacrificing one’s aesthetic and intellectual integrity,
Matt Bailey: it means the more, okay. Yeah. ’cause that was outta the book. It means the more you identify with a certain political party, the more you act according to your own integrity because you are so [00:29:00] sure of what you believe and what you believe is right.
That the more you talk about it, do about it, it just reinforces what you already believe.
Sue Grabowski: This might No book is generally free from political bias. The opinion that arch should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude. So same thing, the, if you say you’re throwing out rhetoric, you just threw rhetoric.
Exactly.
Matt Bailey: Yeah. Yeah. You just undermine their credibility.
Sue Grabowski: Yeah.
Matt Bailey: Uh, by saying they’re just doing this. And then what do you do? You launch into a means of persuasion. That’s right. With your own view of looking at things. So it’s just funny to hear people say that’s just rhetoric, because that’s rhetoric.
Sue Grabowski: That’s right.
Matt Bailey: And they are engaging in rhetoric. At the same time they are judging. Rhetoric. That’s correct. What a beautiful, beautiful thing. That’s so cool. That’s so cool. So logic, emotion, and credibility. And I think that that really, I know when I had the [00:30:00] agency that became really the measurement of we wanna evaluate content, what’s needed for the situation.
And I think most people will default to logic because they believe that they need to make a logical argument for yes, their company, their, their product, agreed why they’re better. And very few I think, will go to emotion and the, but I think a greater percentage will go on credibility. How long we’ve been around.
Ugh. Our mission statement, I, I was, I was with a company and they were having a day long workshop on what are we gonna do with the website? And someone put up their hand and said, where do we put the mission statement? I, it is like all the oxygen got sucked out of the room.
Sue Grabowski: The, the, uh, a lot of my clients, the credibility part about how long they’ve been in business, [00:31:00] uh, that’s a quick default mm-hmm.
Matt Bailey: For a
Sue Grabowski: lot of my longer term clients. However, uh, we had a discussion once about this, um, client wanted to not lose the fact that they were century old business.
Matt Bailey: Mm-hmm.
Sue Grabowski: And yet they were a global company. And one of my employees spent a fair amount of time in China and he said, um, excuse me, in China, they don’t talk in terms of centuries.
They talk in terms of dynasties. So your a hundred year, your a hundred year reference means jack
Matt Bailey: Yeah.
Sue Grabowski: In, in Asia. And he’s right about that. But that’s, it’s, it’s supposed to land credibility. And I don’t think that today’s younger audience cares how long you’ve been in business.
Matt Bailey: No, and that’s, yeah. That used to be
Sue Grabowski: a big deal.
If you survive, you think about surviving the depression.
Matt Bailey: Mm-hmm. Or
Sue Grabowski: surviving a time when there was huge economic [00:32:00] downturn. It was impressive to say you survived through that. Today, 2000 buyers, 2009,
Matt Bailey: those of us that survived the, that’s right. The great modern,
Sue Grabowski: the great modern downturn and that those were some bad years.
Um, but I think that credibility is, is important, but I don’t think that a lot of companies really focus enough on it. Mm-hmm. Um, credibility from the standpoint of who are the people creating their products or services. Yeah. Uh, credibility from, you know, uh, from a knowledge base, from, from an experience, not, not years, but types of work that the people that have created this product or service I’ve done or whatever, that’s something that I think, uh, could be really cultivated
Matt Bailey: mm-hmm.
Sue Grabowski: For organizations. Um, and it’s really important. You want to, you want to buy from someone who knows. Right. Right. What, what they’re doing or knows something.
Matt Bailey: Mm-hmm.
Sue Grabowski: And we do a really [00:33:00] bad job, I think of, of accurately of, uh, adequately giving credibility to organizations. Our default is how long they’ve been open.
Matt Bailey: Mm-hmm.
Sue Grabowski: And that really, I know companies have been around a long time that I wonder how you’ve done that. And then, um, we, we have, I have a good example, a good example of that. I have, uh, a Morgan Engineering that’s a, it’s a client that makes overhead cranes.
Matt Bailey: Mm-hmm.
Sue Grabowski: The company itself has been around 140 some years.
Yeah. Oh yeah.
Matt Bailey: But
Sue Grabowski: it’s transitioned over time from family ownership to ultimately a holding company. And about five to six years ago, it was purchased back to private ownership by a third generation employee Oh, wow. At the company that his father worked as grandfather there. But they have. Taken the age old crane technology and applied it to modern day applications.
For [00:34:00] example, the retractable roof at the Arthur Ssh stadium, at the US Tennis Association, which just launched a couple weeks ago.
Matt Bailey: Mm-hmm.
Sue Grabowski: That’s a place where, that’s a perfect example where as the president of the company is discussing retractable roof stadiums with the mechanical engineering firms and the firms that, you know, the construction firms that are building stadiums around the world saying that Morgan’s been around 150 years.
Okay. It’s something
Matt Bailey: for a manufacturer. It, it, it, it’s
Sue Grabowski: impressive.
Matt Bailey: Impressive.
Sue Grabowski: But what’s more impressive is how they’ve adapted this technology to work for today.
Matt Bailey: Yeah.
Sue Grabowski: And. The credibility he’s getting now is about modern adaptation.
Matt Bailey: Mm-hmm.
Sue Grabowski: Of time tested, you know,
Matt Bailey: wonderful engineering. Oh, that’s
Sue Grabowski: so
Matt Bailey: cool.
Sue Grabowski: Right.
Matt Bailey: Yeah.
Sue Grabowski: Um, but that 150 year thing, 140 year thing, it’s in passing now. Mm-hmm. It’s no longer taking the center stage. Right. When that [00:35:00] used to be their claim to fame. Well, we’ve been around a long time.
Matt Bailey: One of my clients was a window company. They made replacement windows and they were talking about their 20 year guarantee or warranty, and they said, you know what, it’s great here in America, but as soon as we go over to Europe and we offer a 20 year warranty, like this house is 500 years old, what are you telling me?
These windows are gonna last 20. You, you know, they’re, they’re thinking in terms of this house has gotta go another a hundred years is so we forget.
Sue Grabowski: We’re, and we’re a young, we’re a young country. Oh my
Matt Bailey: goodness. Yes.
Sue Grabowski: And we, we, we think something’s been around a hundred years. Yeah. 20 years. That’s a, that is a lifetime.
Yeah.
Matt Bailey: But, um, great example too is, uh, James May from, used to be used to be on top gear.
Okay.
And so he, he’s a car writer. He, he started out just as a columnist on cars, and he, he said something, it was just phenomenal that I don’t wanna talk to the PR guy. [00:36:00] The PR guy didn’t design the brakes. That’s
Sue Grabowski: right.
Matt Bailey: I want to talk to, let’s talk to
Sue Grabowski: the,
Matt Bailey: the bloke who, who designed the brakes and why he did it that way. What was his thinking? And, and so from a writer’s perspective, don’t put me in front of the, the PR department who doesn’t know a thing other than new, improved quality. You, you know, they’re, they’re putting out those words.
It’s innovative. Yeah. I wanna speak to the guy behind the desk that no one else wants to talk to. But from the writer’s perspective, I wanna tell a story about what’s different about this car. Let me talk to the guy who. And, and thought had that thought process. And, and that’s the thing. No one wants to put the engineers in front of the media, but here’s a writer who’s willing to say, no, let me talk to him.
I’ll mm-hmm. Make it sound, I’ll put it into the right words because he understands both worlds and he wanted to be able to get that direct access to that. [00:37:00]
Sue Grabowski: See what you’re saying is we, you really have to know your audience Yeah. So that you can delicately balance these three elements mm-hmm. Of emotion and logic and credibility mm-hmm.
In the proper percentages and doses.
Matt Bailey: Yeah.
Sue Grabowski: To exact a response. And yeah. If we, if you don’t analyze the audience, you may not persuade them effectively
Matt Bailey: because
Sue Grabowski: with some, they need more logic and with others they’re gonna need more credibility and Absolutely. Yes. Um, the proper measurements of those three and integration of those three.
Is what makes the best arguments.
Matt Bailey: Mm-hmm. And I think that, I mean, Aristotle even goes into chapters of understanding the audience of who are you talking to? Know that this group is concerned about these things. Mm-hmm. And it’s funny to hear Aristotle talk about old men and young men and you know, the difference of them.
And it, it, it, you know, you’ve got the, it’s an ancient Greek text, [00:38:00] so you know, you’ve got the, the plebes and this is what they’re concerned. And the aristocracy and the, you know, chapter 13, the character of elderly men. You know, this is, I love these, uh, the character of men in their prime. Um, yeah, here you go, Sue.
Chapter 14, the character of men in their prime. The body is in its prime from 30 to five and 30. The mind about 49.
I’m almost there. I’m almost there. Uh, and then the gifts of fortune by which human character is affected good birth, wealth, power, uh, it just, even though it’s dated and some of it may sound just stilted and awkward nowadays, there’s still good stuff because some of this, you’ll read through this and be like, yeah, I, I get that.
I love how, you know, the prime ends at 53, but that’s, it means I got like five good years [00:39:00] left.
Sue Grabowski: I’m gonna remember that.
Matt Bailey: So yeah, that’s knowing your audience, I think it’s just such that, that that’s what makes this work.
Sue Grabowski: Yeah.
Matt Bailey: How else do you know the available means of persuasion? So let’s jump into some fun things here.
Sue Grabowski: Okay.
Matt Bailey: So one of the main things that, this hasn’t been
Sue Grabowski: fun.
Matt Bailey: Oh, this is fun. Don’t get me wrong.
This is more fun.
Sue Grabowski: Okay,
Matt Bailey: so Aristotle spends, and I think we spent hours on this in class. The syllogism, the enemy. The
Sue Grabowski: the syllogism and the anthem. Yes.
Matt Bailey: So the syllogism is if A equals B and A equals C, then B must equal C. Now let’s put that into, let’s [00:40:00] put that a proper English.
Sue Grabowski: Yes.
Matt Bailey: Uh, a good example of that would be mothers love flowers.
Flowers are a good gift.
Flowers are a good gift for your mother or your mom. Would love flowers would be the. The, the, the syllogism, the conclusion that would be drawn from that. So in modern advertising and, and also Aristotle is very clear on this, that you want your audience to make the connection,
Sue Grabowski: right.
Matt Bailey: So you, you don’t wanna have to be deliberate about it.
Yes. If you are deliberate and you go through all three stages, they won’t remember it. If you give the two propositions, mother, you know, mothers love flowers. Flowers make a good gift. You as the listener are putting it together that mom would love flowers. So that would be a [00:41:00] syllogism that, it’s such a weird word, it’s just great
Sue Grabowski: syllogism.
Matt Bailey: Um, but that’s what modern advertising is built on.
Sue Grabowski: Right?
Matt Bailey: That was my assignment to when I had a, a group of kids, was to go home, watch commercials, and write down the propositions that they are making. What is the proposition that is being told to you and what are they demanding of you to put together as the conclusion?
You wanna know, you wanna understand what advertising does to you and what it’s doing to you, and that’s how you’ve gotta watch it. What are they saying and what am I supposed to be putting together as a result of that? It will open your eyes.
Sue Grabowski: Um, every beer commercial
is syllogism.
Matt Bailey: Absolutely. Absolutely. Good times.
Sue Grabowski: Good times. [00:42:00] Hot women plus beer.
Matt Bailey: Yeah. Equals yeah. And friend. I mean, it’s
Sue Grabowski: drink beer.
Matt Bailey: Drink beer.
Sue Grabowski: You gain those things.
Matt Bailey: Friends, hot girls. Yeah. Every beer, commercial friends and hot girls. That’s, I, I completely agree with that. Um, they don’t come on. You know, I, my classic is x.
That that takes it to the next level.
Sue Grabowski: Yeah.
Matt Bailey: That ax attracts, and that’s even just ax attracts women. Um, and they can’t help themselves around ax body spray. And so what you, what are you supposed to draw from that? That if I wear ax, women are gonna come running? I mean, that, that’s what they are showing.
Sue Grabowski: Not to mention the fact like if we go further with that, that they actually are injecting some seriously crazy pheromones into that stuff that is not cool from a chemical standpoint. Is, is that what makes it
Matt Bailey: stink so
Sue Grabowski: much? It it’s just bad news? Yeah. It’s generally bad news. Mm-hmm. But yes. Mean that is it, [00:43:00] it is having you draw conclusions quite quickly and, and you have, I mean, if you don’t, if you can’t draw the conclusion quickly, it doesn’t work.
Right. So it’s all about speed of going. Mm-hmm. I get this with this.
Matt Bailey: Mm-hmm. I make my family happy if I use the right fabric softener.
Sue Grabowski: Yes.
Matt Bailey: That’s the conclusion. Uh, so that’s what I mean. It, it’s really as soon as you, as soon as you think through it and get to that conclusion that if I use this fabric softener, my family will be happy.
Therefore, this fabric softener will make a happy
Sue Grabowski: Why? There’s lots of happy family conclusions.
Matt Bailey: Oh my goodness, yes. Everything from
Sue Grabowski: frozen meals
Matt Bailey: Yes.
Sue Grabowski: To, you know, I, I’m going to have an experience if I get this lasagna.
Matt Bailey: Mm-hmm. Yeah. So
Sue Grabowski: buy the lasagna and have the experience.
Matt Bailey: Anything around the home, anything that has kids in it and, and the family’s happy as a, it’s like a [00:44:00] story where the happy ending is I bought the right product.
Mm-hmm. And that resulted in a happy family. And I hope we don’t believe everything that’s, that’s being shown. Vacation advertising.
Sue Grabowski: Oh yeah.
Matt Bailey: It’s all about rewarding yourself. Yeah. And so how do you wanna reward yourself? I think sometimes when it comes to vacation advertising, the question is, where do you wanna stop?
Because it’s not how much you wanna pay. It’s right. How much more can I reward myself? It’s, you know, I can go VIP, I can get massage on the beach. I can, you know, woo, keep adding all these things ’cause I’m worth it. You know? And those types of attitudes come into the, just the advertising. It’s, you’re getting away.
It’s worth everything you can pay to make it worth it. Mm-hmm. Make it memorable. Um, we, I, I like, uh, I like seeing where vacations are advertised. Not as a vacation, but it [00:45:00] is. Oops. Vacations are, that’s the tell bar on here. My fancy new bar set here. Uh, vacations are positioned as a way to reconnect with your family.
Sue Grabowski: Unless it’s the Vegas commercials,
Matt Bailey: those are, uh, onto themselves. Those are unique. I
Sue Grabowski: sort of love them. Yeah. But yes, you’re right. It is. Um,
Matt Bailey: but is that telling us that the only way you can reconnect with your family is on a vacation?
Sue Grabowski: I mean, there’s conclusions to be drawn.
Matt Bailey: So that’s,
Sue Grabowski: and then Enha is just a kind, it’s a condensing of it.
Yes. Correct. It’s just, it’s skipping kind of the, the A plus B and jumping from A to C
Matt Bailey: that like the X Body spray.
Sue Grabowski: Yeah.
Matt Bailey: Yeah. I’m showing you a guy putting this on and women chasing after him. What do you think? Yeah, that, so, yeah, it’s, it’s, you’re skipping the second step. You’re just putting it out there, showing it [00:46:00] visually, and this is what happens when you passively take in advertising.
When you passively watch television or look at these ads, you are taking in that kind of message without the filter.
Sue Grabowski: Right.
Matt Bailey: Of what are they really trying to say at this point? So that is the, the Enha and the syllogism. A couple other things that come up in persuasion. And, and these are, this is the fun part here.
Okay? The, the false, false arguments. And my favorite is the straw man argument. The straw man. The straw man.
Sue Grabowski: Again, people toss that out. They don’t even know what it is, but
Matt Bailey: yes, yes. Um,
Sue Grabowski: do you want a definition of a straw man? Well,
Matt Bailey: the straw man is a way I’ll, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll stab at it here. A straw man is a way to [00:47:00] characterize your opponent’s argument.
Well, I’ll just say it’s a way to mischaracterize your opponent’s argument, and I’ll just stop there.
Sue Grabowski: Mis. Yes. Um, it says, I have a good description here. This is from logically fallacious, um, because it’s about fallacies, but substituting a person’s actual position or argument with a distorted Yes.
Exaggerated or misrepresented version of the position. Of the argument.
Matt Bailey: Yep. This is used every day in politics, every
Sue Grabowski: Oh yeah.
Matt Bailey: I would say Barack Obama is the master of the strong man argument because when he gets up there and, and he will say things like, there are those who say we shouldn’t invest in solar power, and, and we Who’s saying that?
Who is saying we should not? Invest or we should not explore. [00:48:00] And, and that’s what, that’s what makes it so effective is that you’re taking, you’re saying my opponent or there are those, he, he’s effective because he doesn’t name anyone. Mm-hmm. He just says there are those who say, and, and logically, if you think about what those people are saying, I don’t know anyone who’s saying that, but it sounds, it sounds very powerful.
It sounds powerful because he’s mischaracterized what his opponent is actually saying. Right. By taking a more extreme view, which it sounds legit,
Sue Grabowski: both sides of the upcoming
Matt Bailey: Oh,
Sue Grabowski: uh, scenario are just masters of the steel. It’s so hard
Matt Bailey: to do a show like this without being political.
Sue Grabowski: Well,
Matt Bailey: I mean, because it’s, it straw man is.
A cornerstone. Yeah, it’s a cornerstone [00:49:00] of, of political, but
it,
I would say to a lesser degree in more everyday
Sue Grabowski: speech. Yeah. It’s definitely more in political circles. Yeah. It’s, it’s designed to incite. When you talk about persuasion, you, in Aristotle’s view, at least that’s, this is my recollection, it’s to persuade someone to make a decision.
Yes. Or to, um, align with a certain perspective.
Matt Bailey: Mm-hmm.
Sue Grabowski: In this case, straw mans are used to incite a reaction like a, uh. I think a more extreme mm-hmm. Reaction.
Matt Bailey: Hmm.
Sue Grabowski: Uh, it, it creates the gasps, creon and the, the gasps and the, um, yes.
Matt Bailey: The creon, how could they not want to do that? Yes. Yeah.
Sue Grabowski: The, um, I accused one of my opponents once of having strongman.
I mentioned that to you in a strong man argument. And it’s because, um, the, the [00:50:00] argument was so generically applied to something that I had said. Yeah. It moved what I said to an extreme
Matt Bailey: Right.
Sue Grabowski: Which I never said that.
Matt Bailey: Mm-hmm.
Sue Grabowski: Um, but the way it was phrased, it got, it would get a, it would get a bigger, um, ride out of the crowd.
Matt Bailey: Mm-hmm.
Sue Grabowski: And so that’s what it’s designed to do.
Matt Bailey: Right.
Sue Grabowski: Um Right. Very generic and designed to make you go What?
Matt Bailey: And that’s in a debate.
Sue Grabowski: Yes. It
Matt Bailey: is highly effective.
Sue Grabowski: Yeah.
Matt Bailey: It’s gonna be interesting to watch. I, you know, now I, I’m wondering like, how can we bring this into marketing because that’s, it’s a really effective false argument.
Yeah. And, and because it, it’s one of those, it doesn’t hit you between the eyes. It, it more sort of meanders around, like you said. It gets that emotion riled up and your logic kind of goes to the back. Your
Sue Grabowski: logic is out the window. You aren’t analyzing what the claim was.
Matt Bailey: Right, right. Unless you are really [00:51:00] paying attention and, and say, what?
Wait, what? That’s not the argument. That’s something else. Which related is the red herring? The red herring. The red herring, yes. I was looking today at the history of why it’s called the red herring. Oh,
Sue Grabowski: okay. Tell me why. I don’t know that.
Matt Bailey: I can’t tell you why I didn’t. Oh, it was, it was really. Uh, it, a lot of people guessing, I didn’t really see anything that stood out as to being, uh, you know, they got into discussions of fish and kippers and smelly things, but
Sue Grabowski: it says, um, attempting to redirect the argument to another issue that, that to which the person doing the redirecting better respond.
Matt Bailey: Mm-hmm.
Sue Grabowski: While it is similar to the avoiding the issue fallacy, a red herring is a deliberate diversion of attention. Yes. With the intention of trying to abandon the original argument. So, you know, argument A is presented by person one. Mm-hmm. Argument, the person two introduces [00:52:00] argument B. So argument A is abandoned,
Matt Bailey: you know, I think does this really well?
Married people, oh yes.
Sue Grabowski: I,
Matt Bailey: how
Sue Grabowski: could I always know that you always do this? You always do this. Or, or you’ll have an argument about, that’s a perfect example. Um. W why didn’t you do the dishes? Well, you never vacuum.
Matt Bailey: Yeah, there you go. Yeah. Perfect. That has
Sue Grabowski: nothing to do. All of a sudden
Matt Bailey: you’ve moved the argument away.
You’ve
Sue Grabowski: moved the argument to the other person. Yes. And off of the, the moment at hand.
Matt Bailey: Mm-hmm. That is perfect. That that’s,
Sue Grabowski: yes. We’re very, very good at that. It may not
Matt Bailey: be that obvious, but especially my daughter right now is a master of Red Hairing. Oh my goodness. It’s, I, when I tell her, you know, empty the dishwasher, okay, I’ll do that right after I do my homework and, and now as a parent I’m like, oh, wait [00:53:00] a minute.
I just asked her to do that. She has inserted her homework now in between, because she knows that that’s more important to me. Right. But now she has just commanded the power. Yeah. By inserting this and, and I, I, I don’t know if she learned this, I don’t know how she knows to do this, because now we are very aware when she does that because she will, okay, I’ll do that after I go to the bathroom, and then she goes to the bathroom and she hides there for about 10 minutes and then drifts back out to her room.
You know? So it’s, this girl is the master of the red herring. She will, you know, don’t look at what’s behind the curtain. Don’t look at what’s behind the curtain. Well, it’s the shiny ball. It’s the shiny
Sue Grabowski: ball syndrome. You, you take somebody away from that point and you never go back to that point.
Matt Bailey: Yes. So, um, it’s a misdirection.
Yeah. It gets
Sue Grabowski: [00:54:00] used and that gets used in politics. I mean, you can watch it if they’ve got an agenda, which they all do.
Matt Bailey: Mm-hmm.
Sue Grabowski: Um, it doesn’t matter what topic is being introduced by, say the moderator. Mm-hmm. Somehow you end up on a different topic than what the moderate is because you inject that. ’cause you don’t wanna discuss it.
It’s easier to argue. Yes. The other point. So
Matt Bailey: that’s great. The false dilemma. The false dilemma is, and this is actually a very, I’ve seen this done very well in advertising. It’s where you present two dilemmas and now you need to choose.
Mm-hmm. See,
I’m trying to stay away from politics, but this politics too, you, you have two choices.
Either, you know, either and, and I guess the false dilemma is [00:55:00] either you are a gun loving, nature, hating, uh, you know, conservative or you’re a mother earth loving. You know, liberal, all inclusive. And not that there’s anything wrong with that, you know, but, but then saying to people, now you have to choose one of ’em.
You know, which one are you gonna choose? Uh, you know, it’s either this way or that way. And when you state that there are only two things, that’s a false dilemma. Because there’s always, there’s always other options. Other options,
yes.
But when the speaker presents, it’s either this or that. The audience immediately, like we said, the emotion takes over, logic goes to the back, and the audience is saying, oh, what, what would I choose?
What would happen? And so that is the false dilemma. Yes. It’s, it does really well in advertising. [00:56:00]
Sue Grabowski: It makes you, the example that I have pulled up is, um, uh. Uh, Obi one Kenobi puts it in Star Wars in episode three, only a sit deals in absolutes. So there are those who, you know, it’s, it’s, you’re either with, you know, against for or against.
Mm-hmm. Like you were saying there, but it was just, uh, that’s
Matt Bailey: funny ’cause that statement is an absolute statement.
Sue Grabowski: Yeah.
Matt Bailey: Only, only, and that’s what I love about, that I love about, I love about universal statements and absolutes, is you,
Sue Grabowski: there’s so few.
Matt Bailey: You can’t, I can’t even
Sue Grabowski: think of that many conditions.
Where there, there is that there are absolutes.
Matt Bailey: Yeah.
Sue Grabowski: Death and death and taxes. That’s, yeah.
Matt Bailey: So yeah, that’s the false dilemma. And then Sue, I think your favorite,
Sue Grabowski: my favorite. [00:57:00] A hominin.
Matt Bailey: A hominin. I think
Sue Grabowski: I just like to say it.
Matt Bailey: That is a funny word to say. Just like syllogism or enha.
Sue Grabowski: And that’s just, um, argument that’s directed at a person rather than against a position
Matt Bailey: Yes.
That they’re taking, which I can’t think of a good example of that.
Sue Grabowski: Uh, well, I’m trying to think of one where, um, I’m trying an example. Here’s an example that I’m pulling off,
Matt Bailey: off the web. But folks, we are trying so hard not to be completely political here. It’s, it’s tough, but it is really, really tough to attack.
A person rather than their position is the substance of the entire past presidential campaigns of the decade.
Sue Grabowski: Here’s an, here’s the example. After Sally presents an eloquent and compelling case for a more equitable taxation system, Sam asks the audience whether we should believe [00:58:00] anything from a woman who isn’t married, was once arrested and smells a bit weird.
Matt Bailey: Is that from 1930? I
Sue Grabowski: dunno. Isn’t that
Matt Bailey: funny?
Sue Grabowski: That, that’s a good, that’s a good, my goodness’s neutral example.
Matt Bailey: Well, well, here’s a question. Do we do this to each other in, in, in business, in a work environment?
Sue Grabowski: Oh, all the time. It goes to, what it does is it goes to the credibility issue.
Matt Bailey: Yeah.
Sue Grabowski: You attack the credibility, but it’s in, it’s, it’s in, it’s in things that really have nothing to do with the credibility of the person.
Mm-hmm. Um, but in, uh. It’s it’s external perceptions or whatever. You could be talking about a specific issue and you slide in some personal characteristic.
Matt Bailey: Mm-hmm.
Sue Grabowski: But it happens all the time in business. Oh,
Matt Bailey: absolutely. Uh, like, I can’t believe you’re gonna give that account to that guy, you know? Didn’t he show up drunk you?
Something like that. Yeah. I saw
Sue Grabowski: him at the Christmas party. [00:59:00] Right?
Matt Bailey: Yeah. Yeah. So it, it’s that personal attack rather than the logic of why are you doing this? Why is this person getting this or Right. Yeah. We don’t do that at all.
Sue Grabowski: Character based
Matt Bailey: mm-hmm.
Sue Grabowski: Stuff that’s, which it’s office completely subjective.
It is.
Matt Bailey: That’s what office politics is all about is Ad Hom and I don’t like them, and so I’m going to go after character rather than actual factual.
Sue Grabowski: Yeah. That does, it does play into credibility. I don’t know. Mm-hmm. I mean, it’s, it plays into the three things that, that affect persuasion.
Matt Bailey: Mm-hmm.
Sue Grabowski: Because that feeds into emotion.
Matt Bailey: Mm-hmm.
Sue Grabowski: Um, if you hit a hot button about somebody true or untrue,
Matt Bailey: yeah.
Sue Grabowski: Uh, it can definitely affect their how effective, the persuasion.
Matt Bailey: So if ad hominem is a false argument, but yet it is effective [01:00:00] in chipping away credibility. Mm-hmm. So, well, that’s why we see so much of it,
Sue Grabowski: because we believe, um,
Matt Bailey: but the implication of it is regardless of it being a false argument, it’s effective.
Right. And we’re gonna see it. Same thing with strawman. It’s effective, it’s effective at taking away credibility.
Sue Grabowski: Right.
Matt Bailey: That is I, yeah, we’ve kind of come full circle around. Yeah. How depressing. I was trying to, I was
Sue Grabowski: trying to find, um, I mean there’s, there’s a, there’s a verse in Proverbs about what we, and I’m, I’m looking for it. I can’t find it readily language, but it’s about that we, it’s whatever, it’s not what tickles our ears.
It’s that it’s, it’s, it’s our, our lowest, like our basis, [01:01:00] we, we believe what’s our base and our basis levels. Mm-hmm. And that’s what ad Hominin plays into is in, in these surface things that, um, that most people will use to make a decision on, not on the depths of thinking or evaluating something properly.
Mm-hmm.
Matt Bailey: No, because we, and, and that gets back to the, the passivity. Of taking in information that if we were truly active in taking in information in with a, a strong filter that evaluates, what am I hearing then? You would be not immune, but you would be aware of what’s happening when you passively take in, uh, when you passively see the headlines on Twitter or what’s being shared on Facebook, uh, what’s in your newsfeed, what’s even, [01:02:00] I even have a problem now with some of the news services coming out that are just summaries of the news.
Sue Grabowski: Yeah.
Matt Bailey: And you know, again, all you’re getting is they’re repeating so and so said this. Right? Then they give their opinion. Well that didn’t tell me can I actually see the candidate’s speech. Can I see what they said? Can I have, can I watch the whole speech? What, instead of telling me what you say they said,
Sue Grabowski: yeah, let me hear for, for myself.
Matt Bailey: Hear that for myself and, and in context and many things like that.
Sue Grabowski: But we skim, we don’t read. And so our persuasion, yes. The, the way that the, the act of thoughtful persuasion, I mean maybe this is full circle, right? Mm-hmm. Is, is a, is becoming to me a lost art because people are so quick to make judgements off of things that are not credible.
Matt Bailey: Mm-hmm.
Sue Grabowski: Not logical and are only emotional.
Matt Bailey: [01:03:00] Right.
Sue Grabowski: Um, and as a communicator, it makes our, our jobs tougher because we have to remember that we’ve, we’ve got this much time.
Matt Bailey: Mm-hmm.
Sue Grabowski: To get them to make an, you know, to make a judgment. Right. Right. And we’re trying to lead them to a conclusion that would persuade them
Matt Bailey: mm-hmm.
Sue Grabowski: Versus what we used to be able to, like in Aristotle’s time, have actual discourse with thoughtful
Matt Bailey: Yeah.
Sue Grabowski: Thoughtful argumentation.
Matt Bailey: It is interesting because Aristotle makes a specific point about emotion and really it’s the only one of the three that he gives a warning about, that if you rely too much on emotion, uh, essentially what he says is you’re gonna wear ’em out.
You’re gonna wear ’em out, and you will lose credibility. Yeah. And so I thought it was just very interesting [01:04:00] that emotion is the one that he warns about using the most. Because it’s temporary, it can wear down your audience. And if you use it too much, they’ll know what’s coming and become immune to it.
And so while we say that rhetoric is, or persuasion is, is choosing among logic, emotion, credibility, by no means is it using just one, right? It is using a combination of the three, but it’s also an understanding what are the limits to each of these.
Mm-hmm.
And if I’m using 90% of motion as my appeal all the time, it’s gonna wear thin.
It will and it will break because people can take only so much of it. Uh, I, I try and find some more, but he makes great, great points about not relying solely, or that even though you can get people emotionally [01:05:00] interested and emotionally on board, you still need to give the framework of the logic.
Mm-hmm.
You need to give ’em, I, I would say, you know, logic is sort of the handrails to hold onto. Mm-hmm. That in order to stay emotionally involved, I have to have something firm
Sue Grabowski: steady. Yeah. That’s a good visual that I can go
Matt Bailey: back to. Oh yeah, that’s right. Let’s go.
Sue Grabowski: And that goes to credibility. It’s the sturdy, it’s the sturdy part.
Mm-hmm. Those two things anchor you. And the logic takes you, I mean, the emotion takes you up the stairs, right? Yeah.
Matt Bailey: Right. Absolutely. But you, yeah, you can’t rely on it solely. Yeah. I’m trying to think because, um, whether it was a speaker, I think it was a speaker that I heard, and all it was was story after story after story.
Oh, yeah. And it all kind of revolved around him. And about 20 minutes in, I’m just wondering, what’s your point? Where are you going? And he’s trying to build up to this big [01:06:00] emotional climax of the thing. But everyone was so detached by the time he got there. It wore them out because we, it wore out because you’d already told too many stories.
Mm-hmm. And now you’re on their last one. And we’re all looking for lunch. It’s, it just, it fell flat. And I didn’t even feel bad for ’em because this was canned. Mm-hmm.
You
could just see how canned it was and how it was just made to appeal to emotion and there was nothing of it when it was done. It was just, I was just glad to get out of the room.
Right. And I think everyone else was too, because no one really stuck around. It was all fluff. It’s just he was trying to take you on an emotional ride to get you to buy his tape set or his, his, you know, video set of training or whatever. But he gave you no logic. And because it was all emotion, there was no credibility established.
Um, I’m trying to think of some other ways where emotion was just used [01:07:00] way, way too much. And it ended up just really kind of falling flat.
Sue Grabowski: I just know that we do, we do a lot of work for Children’s Hospital and we have to balance, and we’ve got some pretty dramatic stories that we can share. And yes, it can definitely bring a tear to your eye as you’re watching, you’ve seen some of their, their, we haven’t done their, their, uh, you know, broadcast commercials.
We’ve written a lot of stories about the kids. You’ve got, you’ve gotta balance it. People can only take so much pain.
Matt Bailey: Sarah McLaughlin’s commercials for the homeless puppies. The, the As. DCA, it’s pretty rough. Oh, I heard a comedian saying, even the dogs are like, really Sarah?
By the end of, it’s like, if you don’t give, you’re a heartless bastard, you don’t care.
Sue Grabowski: Yeah. I do wanna turn that within about, and, and I’m not really even a big pet lover. Yeah. It’s like too [01:08:00] much. Oh, it,
Matt Bailey: it’s terrible. It’s ter it is pure emotion. And I, the funny thing is, is you know, even the ones for the, you know, feeding kids in Africa, they’re not that bad.
Definitely. They’re solid. They will drunk.
Sue Grabowski: I think the ca the pet ones are
Matt Bailey: worse, but yeah, Sarah McLaughlin and the, and the pets, the dogs that just, oh, it, it just gotta turning. Right. ’cause it just, it makes you feel like, I can’t do this. I’m
a
loser.
Sue Grabowski: Big
Matt Bailey: loser.
Sue Grabowski: Oh my gosh.
Matt Bailey: If I don’t give right now, I am a worthless human being.
If I don’t give right now.
That I think that that one is, is probably one of the prime, prime things of, of utilizing emotion above all else. And it makes you feel like crap. Yeah. I mean, you can’t, you’ve gotta
Sue Grabowski: balance it. You gotta have, there’s almost like, I need a little bit of [01:09:00] light
Matt Bailey: Yeah.
Sue Grabowski: At the end. Um, or I need like, gimme some fact, give some, gimme some data mixed in with that.
With that, with that. Like mist I need, I need a little bit of, yeah.
Matt Bailey: Nine outta 10 people who watch this commercial are heartless.
Sue Grabowski: Gimme a cracker with that. They don’t care. One and cheese. Yeah.
Matt Bailey: Oh my goodness. Yeah. So that, yeah. Great. That was one that. I, that’s what I was looking for, is just pure, unadulterated emotion geared to get a reaction out of you.
And I think most times the reaction is changing. The channel
Sue Grabowski: doesn’t help it. I don’t like Sarah McLaughlin’s voice anyway, so it doesn’t, it’s like it’s already already doomed in my mind.
Matt Bailey: Oh, what our Are the angels? Oh, come on. It’s such a perfect song for that whiny
Sue Grabowski: voice. Perfect song for dogs that are dying. We just totally rip that one apart, didn’t we? I think they raised a lot of money through that one, though.
Matt Bailey: I wouldn’t be surprised. You’re guilting people. I mean, that’s what [01:10:00] it does, that it’s pure emotion. So the resulting emotion is guilt, uh, that I’ve gotta do something about this. I, I’m terrible. How could I not know? This isn’t going on it. It’s disturbing and it’s meant to be disturbing.
Sue Grabowski: Mm-hmm.
Matt Bailey: Which is highly manipulative.
Sue Grabowski: Agreed.
Matt Bailey: I can’t think of anything even beyond that. That’s pretty much the limit. There you go. So this has been our, our show on rhetoric.
Sue Grabowski: We, we have to give props.
Matt Bailey: Yes, absolutely. I won’t, well, lemme say this isn’t by any means an exhaustive review of rhetoric. Uh, um, no, we could go much, um, no. Much more into it, but, uh, yeah, this has been just really, if you haven’t picked up a copy of Aristotle’s Rhetoric.
Sue Grabowski: Yeah, everybody, everybody should have one. You should. And we need to thank, uh, Dr. Kim Phipps.
Matt Bailey: Absolutely.
Sue Grabowski: Who is president at [01:11:00] Messiah University.
Matt Bailey: Yes.
Sue Grabowski: In Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to, for her, um, getting both Matt and I and our other classmates, geeked out about Aristo at a very young age. Thank you, Dr. We’re talking about it.
Matt Bailey: Thank you. Thank you. Yes. 25
Sue Grabowski: years later. So,
Matt Bailey: absolutely. And I, I’d, I’d love to call some of the other people in the class and, you know, that I know. Took it and ask them, do you, do you think about it? Does it come up at all? Am I the only one who’s geeked out about the whole thing? I mean, it, it, that’s what led into naming my agency site logic, uh, was the whole logic, emotion, credibility of things.
And so, yeah. It it’s pretty deeply ingrained.
Sue Grabowski: It is. It is. Um, what it is, is it’s a, uh, snapshot of human nature.
Matt Bailey: Yeah.
Sue Grabowski: And he, he compartmentalized it. Yep. These are the things we value as flesh and blood.
Matt Bailey: Mm-hmm.
Sue Grabowski: Humans. And if you want to [01:12:00] bring other humans alongside you, you’re gonna have to integrate those three.
So Yep.
Matt Bailey: It is the original sales manual.
Sue Grabowski: Mm-hmm.
Matt Bailey: And so if you wanna go all the way back to the beginning and read the first sales manual, it’s the rhetoric of Aristotle or Aristotle’s rhetoric. Mm-hmm. Um. Available maybe at booksellers near you,
Sue Grabowski: just go online and mute it or
Matt Bailey: go online and get it down to your keyboard somewhere.
Yeah, for about 99 cents. Yeah. Or free. Or
Sue Grabowski: free. I think it’s, it’s on one of those classic book
Matt Bailey: I, well, what you’re paying for is better translation.
Sue Grabowski: Yeah.
Matt Bailey: The free version is probably been translated in the early 19 hundreds and so you still have some stilted language in there. Uh, so if you pay, you’re paying for a, a better translation.
Sue, thanks for coming over.
Sue Grabowski: You’re welcome, Matt. Good to be back with you.
Matt Bailey: Hey, I’m looking forward to doing a lot more and thanks again. Thanks. Alright.
Introduction: You’ve been listening to Endless Coffee Cup with Matt Bailey at [01:13:00] Sue Grabowski. Subscribe and listen to other [email protected]. If you found our podcast interesting, share it with others.
Sue Grabowski: My chair’s getting squeaky.
Matt Bailey: I know it’s squeaky chairs in this one. You gotta find a way to sit and stay there. I’m actually looking at different mics because this is good if it’s. Completely silent around. [01:14:00] I was using it and as soon as the air conditioning would kick on, it sounded like we were in a car.
Oh.
Then I tried to do it in a bar and it just picked up. It got us, but everything around a pretty good microphones. But then I tried running two different microphones out of it and it picked up the two different microphones differently.
Oh.
So I was looking to see what some people were using. Some people will use headphones with a microphone.
That way you’re still kind of hearing immediately if the levels are good or not. So I don’t know. This has been the hardest part is finding microphones. Just this is
Sue Grabowski: first world problems.
Matt Bailey: I can sense the, the compassion,
Sue Grabowski: first world problems. I need to find the right mic.
