Ancient Greek copywriting secrets

My kids love a series of books (and accompanying TV shows) called Horrible Histories.

One of our favourites is Groovy Greeks. It turns out the Ancient Greeks invented, among other things, the yo-yo, sundials, catapults and bricks.

And one, of them, Aristotle, also turned out to have a pretty good grasp of what makes great copywriting.

In his teachings on the art of rhetoric, Aristotle proposed that there were three elements to persuasive rhetoric: ethos, pathos and logos.

Ethos relates to the speaker’s (or writer’s) character. In other words, why you should trust them.
Pathos is the emotional appeal of the argument. Getting people’s feelings engaged with their arguments.

Logos is the intellectual component. The reasons why the listener (or reader) should believe them.

That’s precisely the approach we should be taking in our copywriting. When you’re trying to sell something – or modify your reader’s behaviour, feelings or opinions in any way – you can do a lot worse than to follow Aristotle’s three-point plan.

If your reader trusts you, they are more likely to accept your arguments as truthful. If you engage them emotionally in your position, they are more likely to want to go along with you.

And if you give them concrete reasons why what you’re saying is true, you’re on the home straight.
Let’s have a go with three versions of a paragraph of web copy for the fictitious S.Todd Knife Makers.

Ethos

Hello, my name is Sweeney Todd. I have spent the last thirty years of my life perfecting the art of blade making.

For the first ten of those years I studied under Japanese blademaster Riuchi Yakamoto. And shortly after establishing my own cook and hunting knife business, I was inducted into the World Council of Master Bladesmiths.

When you invest in an S. Todd Cook’s Knife, or one of our Hunter’s Choice range, you are placing your trust in a knife whose creation reflects a tradition stretching back over a thousand tears.

Pathos

Picture it. You’re cooking that fancy new sushi dish you promised your wife. Ruby red tuna belly and translucent eel are laid out on your board.

This is no time to start using a sub-par knife. You want to get those fish just so  – and keep all your fingers.

With an S.Todd Sushi Knife you’re in safe hands ... and so is your sushi. More important, your wife has that smile she wore on your wedding day.

Logos

It’s a fact. Most modern cook’s knives just aren’t up to the job. In tests, over 90% of blades on the market use an inferior tempering process known as hot-roll-and-press. It’s a mass production technique used to manufacture cheap knives you see in department stores.

At S.Todd we use a technique perfected by the Japanese in 987 AD. It’s called cold-carbon tempering and it takes 14 hours and over 30 separate processes to create a single blade.

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Ideally we want a version that combines all three approaches. We’ll call it EPL. Why not have a go using the above three as your starting point. Email me your version and I’ll put it up in The Sunfish Copywriting Library and plug it in next month’s edition of Maslen on Marketing.

And I’m telling you this because

The best copywriting must simultaneously convince the reader to trust the writer, want whatever they’re selling and, crucially, believe that there are sound reasons for buying.

Using Aristotle’s EPL, we have a ready-made triple-whammy that guides us to this goal.