Annotated Bibliography: Netflix: A Categorical Catastrophe in Rhetoric
Annotated Bibliography
Editor’s Note: This annotated bibliography was developed in conjunction with my paper, Netflix: A Categorical Catastrophe in Rhetoric, and covers the topic areas of that paper, which include the foundations of Aristotle’s rhetorical principles and understanding context.
Although customer communication in today’s business world should be directed at customers, it is frequently focused on a different audience: shareholders. While the bottom line of any business always speaks to the shareholders, one of the biggest keys to maintaining a burgeoning bottom line is an understanding of how to speak to customers. This understanding can result in a successful communication that prompts customers to act in the business’s best bottom-line interests. Achieving this level of customer communication requires the use of ancient Aristotelian rhetorical theories and tactics, as well as a dedicated focus on the context within which that communication is relayed. While it may be difficult for some business executives to determine when they have reached a level of contextual knowledge that will then allow them to create a successful customer communication, the following resources can provide direction regarding content creation that includes Aristotle’s rhetorical foundations, as well as methods for building a solid situational context knowledge base.
Aristotelian Rhetorical Foundations
The following resources reflect observations and analyses of successful and unsuccessful rhetoric. The examples of successful rhetoric demonstrate utilization of Aristotle’s three main rhetorical principles: ethos, pathos, and logos. The examples of unsuccessful rhetoric are shown to demonstrate a lack of Aristotle’s rhetorical principles. Most of these resources showcase rhetoric in written format, but a few resources highlight how Aristotle’s rhetoric can be applied to visual content. All of these resources provide rhetorical analysis that can be easily applied to a business setting and customer-centered communication.
Brooks, Helen. “Using Persuasive Communication to Plan Your Marketing Campaigns.” Further, 12 Oct. 2017, www.further.co.uk/blog/persuasive-communication/.
Brooks provides background on human brain functionality and the three objectives of the brain: cognitive, affective, and conative. She then shows how Aristotle’s rhetorical foundations of ethos, pathos, and logos can motivate consumers to act on each of those brain objective levels. She gives detailed examples focused specifically on marketing products to consumers and the tactics a business could use when trying to maximize ethos, pathos, and logos for each level of the brain. Brooks emphasizes applying Aristotle’s rhetorical foundations to all marketing campaigns in conjunction with situational analysis and other related consumer data to maximize revenue generation.
Chamorro-Premuzic, Tomas. “Why Bad Guys Win at Work.” Harvard Business Review, 4 Nov. 2015, hbr.org/2015/11/why-bad-guys-win-at-work.
Chamorro-Premuzic discusses the three dark triad traits in people: psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism. Chamorro-Premuzic cites numerous studies throughout his article to show that while Machiavellian executives can be strong leaders with a high level of career satisfaction, their personal gain is typically at the expense of the group of people with whom they work. Not only can strong Machiavellian-type professionals hurt their colleagues, but they have also been found to have low job performance and negative work behaviors (e.g., bullying, theft, absenteeism, etc.). Chamorro-Premuzic finds that the professionals who have a moderate level of Machiavellian traits are typically the most successful in their careers, albeit still commonly poorly viewed by colleagues.
Martin, Sarah E., and Cynthia L. King. “Ethos and Senior Leader Communication: Examining Responses to a Policy Change Memo.” PsycEXTRA Dataset, 2010, doi:10.1037/e660672010-001.
Martin and King argue that persuasive senior leadership is a result of use of all three of Aristotle’s rhetorical foundations—ethos, pathos, and logos—with ethos being the most important factor in persuasive rhetoric. They examine a policy memo given to employees of a large government financial organization, and compare the intended message to the received message. Through a series of interviews with audience members, Martin and King used a grounded theory approach to monitor and analyze similarities and differences between the speaker’s intended message and the audience’s reception of the message. They then make the claim that the audience’s perceived level of the speaker’s ethos directly influences how the audience receives the message. King and Martin provide several examples of how audiences can evaluate ethos in a speaker and how those evaluations can best be used in business communication.
Phillips, Brad. “Six Reasons Netflix CEO Reed Hastings' Apology Failed.” Mr. Media Training, 19 Sept. 2011, www.mrmediatraining.com/2011/09/19/six-reasons-netflix-ceo-reed-hastings-apology-failed/.
Phillips provides an analysis of an apologetic email sent from the Netflix CEO to consumers following a poorly-received price increase. He examines the language of the email and points out how the CEO failed to apply Aristotle’s basic rhetorical principles of ethos, pathos, and logos. Phillips explains that even though the CEO was attempting an apology, the CEO’s obvious Machiavellian attitude and tactics worked against the company because it worked against the consumer. Throughout the article, he also offers suggestions for content that would more closely align with Aristotle’s rhetorical foundations and would have likely been more well-received by consumers.
Roeloffs, Gabe. “Using Ethos, Pathos, and Logos to Design Effective Websites.” Medium, Medium, 9 May 2015, medium.com/@gaberoeloffs/using-pathos-ethos-and-logos-to-design-effective-websites-4229ad29d6fa.
Roeloffs discusses the importance of Aristotle’s ethos, pathos, and logos when communicating with potential customers through a company website. He defines ethos as professionalism, pathos as a connection with the potential customer, and logos as the information provided on the website. He then provides pragmatic and tangible advice for creating a website that is persuasive and motivates a potential customer to purchase the company’s product or service. Roelffs offers numerous visual examples of companies who have established a solid customer base through the successful use of ethos, pathos, and logos and emphasizes how this focus on Aristotle’s rhetorical foundations is crucial to building a profitable business.
Smith, Craig R. “Aristotle's Rhetoric.” Rhetoric and Human Consciousness: A History, 5th ed., Waveland Press, Inc., 2017, pp. 66–98.
Smith provides an overview of Aristotle’s life and the philosophical emphasis that went into his development of the three rhetorical pillars—ethos, pathos, and logos—that are still in use today. Aristotle viewed rhetoric as an art that people should use to survive and prosper in the world, and he developed explicit strategies and tactics that all people could use. Smith provides explanations and examples for ethos (credibility), pathos (frame of mind), and logos (logic), as well as lexis (style) and taxis (organization). Smith gives a real-life example of Aristotle’s rhetoric used successfully with a recount of Senator Daniel Webster’s speeches during his political career.
Toxboe, Anders. “Designing for Logos, Pathos, and Ethos.” UI Patterns, User Interface Design Patterns Library, 29 Sept. 2010, ui-patterns.com/blog/Designing-for-logos-pathos-and-ethos.
Toxboe states that Aristotle’s three main rhetorical components, ethos, pathos, and logos, can be applied to visual design on websites. Visual design that incorporates these three rhetorical components will help increase customer conversion (e.g., purchasing a product or service). Toxboe includes several visual examples for each rhetorical component from companies that have successfully utilized ethos, pathos, and logos on their websites. He also makes the claim that all three rhetorical components are necessary for success, as well as the order in which a company chooses to implement each component on the website.
Wang, Xueyu. “Appeals to Ethos and Pathos in Post-Crisis Communication: A Case Study of Press Conferences Handling Tianjin Blasts.” International Journal of English Linguistics, vol. 6, no. 1, 31 Jan. 2016, pp. 100–109, doi:10.5539/ijel.v6n1p100.
Wang examines crisis communication and the failure of many companies and organizations to utilize Aristotelian theories in their rhetoric during this critical time. He provides background regarding two of Aristotle’s three pillars of rhetoric—ethos and pathos—and then applies those rhetorical principles to the rhetoric used by city officials following a series of explosions at Tinajin Port in China in 2015. Wang provides examples of ethos and pathos using excerpts from several press conferences featuring city officials discussing the explosions. Wang also analyzes how city officials’ language at subsequent press conferences changes as the context of the situation evolves, due to both emerging information about the actual situation and the negative reaction from city residents to early press conferences regarding the situation.
Understanding Context
Businesses that understand not only the changing needs of their customers, but why those needs change and the types of environments that influence their purchasing decisions also understand the profound value of context. The following resources examine how companies can best address their changing customer needs and contexts through positioning their products and services in a customer-centered mindset, rather than a product-centered mindset. These resources also explain how to technology, as well as traditional customer life cycle analysis, can help companies track and gather the requisite data for establishing an understanding of customer context, as well as how to create content for that ever-evolving context. In today’s technology-dependent business world, understanding individual customer context has never been easier…or more complex.
Brennan, Liam. “Behaviors, Emotions and Moments: A New Approach to Audience Targeting.” Ad Age, 24 Mar. 2017, adage.com/article/digitalnext/bem-a-approach-audience-targeting/308383/.
Brennan proposes companies find a middle ground between mass target marketing and segmentation marketing through Behaviors, Emotions, and Moments (BEM) marketing. Through this model, Brennan examines customer context through analysis of their purchasing behavior, potential emotional attachment to a product, and environmental triggers that may motivate a customer to purchase a specific product. He believes this model helps minimize the “valuable waste” customers who companies miss through mass target marketing and segmentation marketing. Brennan also provides real-life examples of companies who have successfully implemented BEM marketing in ad campaigns and how this advanced audience context knowledge helps grow a company’s revenue.
Davenport, Thomas H., et al. “Know What Your Customers Want Before They Do.” Harvard Business Review, 28 Oct. 2011, hbr.org/2011/12/know-what-your-customers-want-before-they-do?referral=03759&cm_vc=rr_item_page.bottom.
Davenport, DalleMule, and Lucker provide a thorough analysis of next best offers (NBOs), which are defined as customer offerings based on social, mobile, and location information. In order to provide customers with the most relevant and personalized NBO, companies must know their audience members as individuals, rather than a mass of people. Davenport, et al. examine how a company should define their objectives when using NBOs, how to gather data about individual audience members to apply to their NBOs, and how to execute their NBOs once the objectives and customer information are established. They emphasize the importance of knowing the customer’s purchasing context. Aside from the basic demographic information, Davenport notes that it is imperative to know the customer’s purchasing channel, motive, the outlying factors, and time of day.
Douglas, Tania. “To Design Better Tech, Understand Context.” TED: Ideas Worth Spreading, Aug. 2017, www.ted.com/talks/tania_douglas_to_design_better_tech_understand_context#t-562126.
Tania Douglas discusses the importance of understanding context prior to developing biomedical devices for use in Africa. She explains how biomedical engineers initially sought out to design a hearing aid that would work for residents of s senior living facility. After spending time reviewing the existing products and not finding any obvious defects or deficiencies, the engineers decided to speak with the residents who used the hearing aids. Once onsite at the facility, the engineers realized that the hearing aids were not the problem, but rather, the facility design resulted in poor acoustics, which caused residents to believe their hearing aids were not working properly. Ms. Douglas stresses the importance of understanding not only an audience, but the physical context of the audience as well.
Gill, James. “Getting to Know Your Audience: How and Why You Should.” Further, 5 Dec. 2017, www.further.co.uk/blog/know-audience-how-why/.
Gill explains that companies need to understand the context of their audience in order to successfully sell their products or services. He believes the product will not sell itself; rather, the company needs to know why the customer would benefit from the product and sell the product based on customer needs—not product specifications. Gill states that companies need to go beyond the typical demographic customer data and gather information about customer needs, wants, and behaviors. He then offers tools for companies to use to find and gather this information. Gill believes a key factor in finding individual customer data is through accessing customer online search habits, as well as who and what companies spark their online engagement. He concludes by providing a snapshot of how to put together this information in a marketing persona.
Kakkar, Vaibhav. “Contextual Marketing: The Next Big Wave In Customer Conversion.” Conversion Sciences, 19 Oct. 2017, conversionsciences.com/blog/contextual-marketing/.
Vaibhav defines and examines contextual marketing. He explains how this shift to marketing the right product at the right time to the right customer is a shift from product-centered marketing to customer-centered marketing. He discusses the requisite information companies need about each individual audience member in order for contextual marketing to be effective. Vaibhav then provides real-life marketing examples from companies who gathered enough contextual information about their audience members to launch successful marketing campaigns. He concludes by emphasizing the need to constantly test and revise customer data because context is constantly changing.
McCormack, Krista C. “Ethos, Pathos, and Logos: The Benefits of Aristotelian Rhetoric in the Courtroom.” Washington University Jurisprudence Review, vol. 7, no. 1, 2014, pp. 131-155.
McCormack focuses her argument on the use of Aristotelian rhetoric in the courtroom, but notes that this ancient form of oration is still relevant and successful in all aspects of today’s modern world where rhetoric is required. A trial lawyer can best serve their client’s claim by employing the use of ethos, logos, and pathos. McCormack puts more weight on logos, but argues that without ethos and pathos, the sole use of logos may not hold enough persuasive power to convince an audience of the speaker’s claim. She emphasizes the importance of understanding the full context of the situation (i.e., the client, the jury, the issue, etc.), and notes that without a full understanding of context, an orator may fail at persuading an audience even with the use of ethos, logos, and pathos. McCormack illustrates the use of ethos, logos, and pathos in the courtroom with an explanatory example of a lawyer’s strategic and tactical roles throughout the trial process.
Salazar, María Del Carmen, and María E. Fránquiz. “The Transformation of Ms. Corazón: Creating Humanizing Spaces for Mexican Immigrant Students in Secondary ESL Classrooms.” Multicultural Perspectives, vol. 10, no. 4, 2008, pp. 185–191, doi:10.1080/15332860802526073.
Salazar and Fránquiz detail an ESL classroom taught by Ms. Corazon. They discuss how Ms. Corazon followed set rules regarding ESL teaching techniques without much success. When Ms. Corazon changes her teaching techniques to factor in her students’ frame of mind and the context in which they were living and learning, she began to see improvement in her students’ English language skills. Salazar and Fránquiz focus on the importance of the situation-specific lessons learned (e.g., allowing students’ native language and cultural practices in English-learning classrooms), but the overall message of understanding an audience’s context can easily be applied to all rhetorical situations.
Wrench, Jason S. et al. “Audience Analysis.” Stand up, Speak Out: The Practice and Ethics of Public Speaking, FlatWorld, 2017.
Wrench discusses the importance of understanding audience context prior to the creation of any speech. He provides a list of audience attributes that every speaker should know and understand about their audience prior to presenting a speech to them. He then explains why a speaker’s understanding of these attributes can result in a persuasive speech that ignites an intended action, or when those attributes are ignored, an unsuccessfully persuasive speech that does not motivate the audience to act in accordance with the speaker’s intent. Wrench emphasizes an audience-centered speech, but cautions against too much focus on the audience so the speaker is not perceived as pandering to the audience.
Understanding the positive effect on a company’s bottom line brought about by the proper use of Aristotle’s rhetorical principles, ethos, pathos, and logos, is paramount to succeeding in today’s competitive business world. With numerous media channels available and companies fighting for customers in each of those media channels, it is crucial that the message customers receive from a company must include ethos, pathos, and logos designed specifically for that customer. Deciding how to create content that resonates with individual audience members requires a complete understanding of audience context. This context can change in a heartbeat, and companies that understand the changing contextual landscape and how to assess their evolving customers within such an ever-altering contextual landscape will likely see the result in a burgeoning bottom line.