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Arianna Hilk
Benjamin Henderson
CAS 137H
13 October 2015

Same Goal, Different Methods

Advertisement and informational artifacts elicit certain feelings through
the use of specific tactics and strategies. All aspects of informational artifacts are
perfectly tailored to invoke the viewer to feel certain feelings. Videos made to
convey a certain message are created with precision and a high attention to
detail. Every color, sound, image, and phrase has a special job to help urge the
viewer think a certain way, or do a certain thing. For instance, two separate
videos can be created with the same purpose, but with completely different
tactics. Should You Get Vaccinated? by Piled High and Deeper Comics is a twominute long informational video that explains the benefits of vaccinations. ProVaccination Commercial: The Domino Effect created by Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention urges its audience to get vaccinated by also explaining
the benefits of vaccinations in a more emotional way. Two very different videos

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with the same point. Both videos appeal to the emotions and intelligence of the
audience, yet use the appeals with different strategies to get their similar points
across with the help of the audiences prior knowledge and understanding of
vaccinations.
The video Should You Get Vaccinated? briefly uses an emotional appeal
to help catch the attention of the viewers. This first video appeals to the emotions
of the audience by mentioning children and elderly people the two weaker
subsets of the community. Most people are aware of the benefits of vaccines
when it comes to protecting children and elders, so with the help of the viewers
prior knowledge, the video persuades its watchers to get vaccinated by creating
the need to get vaccinated to help protect the weak. The video uses innocent
children and weak elderly people as examples of people that the viewers can
save if they get themselves vaccinated. The video stirs the viewers emotions by
telling them if they do not get themselves vaccinated, they are risking the lives of
not only themselves, but sweet, innocent children and weak, elderly people. The
video even shows an image of an elderly woman, portraying a stereotypical
grandma, walking very slowly with a walker. Any normal, moral person would
feel some pull of emotions while watching a video that explains just how simple

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it is to help the weakest of the community. The only thing needed to do is receive
an easy vaccination, and grandma will be saved. Because most people already
know that getting themselves vaccinated can help protect the weaker people in
the community, the video adds an emotional appeal to really urge the viewer to
get vaccinated.
There are obviously so many different ways to appeal to the emotions to
the viewers of a video, especially if the viewers already know about the topic of
the video. If the audience has prior knowledge of the topic of the video, less
information is needed, which leaves more room to appeal to emotions. The
second video, Pro-Vaccination Commercial: The Domino Effect, uses a very
different method of emotional appeal, in comparison to the first video. The ProVaccination Commercial: The Domino Effect artifact mainly uses pathos to
appeal to the viewers. As soon as the video starts, a dark black screen is shown
and sad, slow music immediately floods the viewers ears; both of these aspects
of the video really set the sad and serious tone of the video. Then, in a very slow
manner, the video explains what the creator of the video believes happens if the
viewer does not get their child vaccinated. Again, notice the use of a child as the
example it really stirs up the viewers emotions. Next, the video provides an

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interesting analogy to aid in the appeal to emotions a long line of dominos. The
first domino falls over in the video, which leads to the others falling. The analogy
of the one domino being pushed over and fallings, which causes the rest to fall,
represents a community. The one domino that started the fall of the rest
represents an unvaccinated person with a disease in a community. That one
infected persoon causes a major downfall in the community. The domino analogy
appeals to the emotions of the viewer by putting them in the position of the
unvaccinated person by showing just how much damage one person can create if
they are not vaccinated. The second video mainly appeals to the emotions of the
viewer, and the first video focuses more on information on vaccines. Although
the strategies of gaining the viewers attention are different, both video have one
purposefor the viewer to get vaccinated.
The second appeal that both videos include is logos, the appeal to reason.
The first video heavily relies on logos, appealing to the reason and intelligence of
the viewer. The video includes information that the typical person would not
know too much about. Most people know the basics about vaccinations, but this
video goes more in depth about the benefits of vaccinations. The first video,
Should You Get Vaccinated? was created by a scientific video channel, Piled

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High and Deeper. The information included in the video comes from research
done at Stanford University. The video begans by stating that millions of children
each year get the vaccinations that their pediatricians recommend to keep their
immune systems healthy and capable of fighting off horrible diseases, which
common knowledge to most. Then, the video explains how vaccinations
positively impact communities. It explains how few people are affected by
diseases in the modern world, which is significantly less when compared to how
high it was when people did not utilize vaccines. Finally, the last appeal to reason
is when the video explains the term herd immunity, which refers to when
everyone in the community is vaccinated, which creates a shield around the
population that blocks out infected people. Herd immunity is not a very
common phrase that people use on a daily basis, so it benefits the video by
teaching the viewers something new and important about vaccinations. This
video depends on appealing to the intelligence of the viewer, and the viewers
prior common knowledge about vaccines.
The second video, Pro-Vaccination Commercial: The Domino Effect,
mainly takes advantage of pathos; however, it does manage to appeal to the logos
of its viewers. The video explains how easy it is for just one unvaccinated child to

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affect several others, which is something that most people are already aware of.
The video also urges its audience to get vaccinated as soon as possible because it
could help prevent an epidemic. This video only briefly appeals to logos, but the
small amount of information about vaccines included in the video is sufficient.
The video does not overwhelm the audience with an abundance of facts and
statistics, yet it still manages to get its message across by appealing to pathos. The
video is meant for viewers who already have a basic understanding of vaccines,
which allows it to focus mainly on stirring the emotions of the viewer.
After understanding how exactly each video appeals to pathos and logos
in different ways, it is clear that both videos, Should You Get Vaccinated? by
Piled High and Deeper Comics and Pro-Vaccination Commercial: The Domino
Effect by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention use pathos and logos, with
different focuses on the appeals to get their message across. These two different
videos prove that it is very possible, and common, to share the same message
while using different advertising techniques. Both videos rely on the audiences
prior knowledge about vaccines, and then take that knowledge and expand on it
by explaining more in-depth facts and statistics. Each video appeals to the
emotions of the viewer in different ways, as well. Through different uses of

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Aristotles rhetorical appeals, pathos and logos, each video manages to encourage
the viewer to get vaccinated. Although each video has a different method of
persuasion, both have the same purpose to urge the viewer to get vaccinated.
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