I feel very fortunate to have studied classical rhetoric in college and then later on in my graduate work. Now the field of classical rhetoric is a deep and fascinating subject. And this course provides just a high level overview. Most importantly, it presents the strategies and techniques I personally have used in my day to day work and communications. Now let's talk about how I've been able to use classical rhetoric in actual practice. In recent years, most of the work I've done has been in healthcare and pharmaceutical advertising.

And in every ad campaign that I do for a product, I am using classical rhetorical principles and strategies. Let's start with audience analysis. Every campaign begins with audience research in the area of pharmaceutical advertising, Invariably research, physicians attitudes towards medications in a given therapeutic category. Research has conducted pre campaign where we're trying to identify physicians attitudes, and also during the course of a given campaign where we develop messages and test those messages before formally introducing them in actual promotional content. Now, let's talk about the area of rhetorical research. And by the way, Aristotle never called a rhetorical research.

He called it exploring the available means of persuasion by studying things like ethos, logos, and pathos. Personally, I call it rhetorical research, because it's the process of identifying all the ways that we will be able to build messaging to advance our product or service or the position that we're taking. Building believability is typically an essential part of developing campaign strategy. In pharmaceutical advertising, we typically enlist the support of ko ELLs, which is an acronym for key opinion leaders. These are respected physicians who lend their credibility to the brand. In other words, they speak favorably about a given medication and the help it could provide to patients in need.

In terms of leveraging logic, I will frequently use data points that show for example, the efficacy of a given medication, or the number of patients who are successfully taking it now, in terms of evoking emotion, is a critical part of developing messaging and strategy. This is achieved basically two ways through the telling the story of patients who are suffering and the images of those patients invoking the feelings of sadness about the problems that these patients are facing in terms of their given condition. But most importantly, ultimately leaving our readers or listeners with the feeling of hope that by taking the approved medication, they will be able to successfully fight their illness. What about arrangement and outlining, certainly every communication project you work on is going to vary in terms of its length, its tone, whether it's formal or informal. But think about arrangement and outline eight from the standpoint of a traditional print ad, where the headline is your introduction, grabbing the reader, and bringing him or her heart into the story, you're trying to tell the middle part of the ad being the body where you explain your position, and outline your key selling points.

And of course, the conclusion being that strong call to action, where you say to the reader or listener, buy this product, vote for this candidate, or embrace this particular view that we're espousing. As I've mentioned, every communication situation is different. As a persuasive writer communicator, it's up to you to identify what Aristotle called the available means of persuasion in any situation. raesha