Rhetorical Marketing

Marketing as the Scientific Art of Persuasion

A Retrospective Note on a 1981 Marketing Theory

Stanley Y. Klos
Originally developed at The Pennsylvania State University, 1981
Retrospective note, 2026

Origins of the Theory

In 1981, while pursuing doctoral studies in Mass Communications and Marketing at The Pennsylvania State University, I developed a theoretical model intended to address a fundamental question: What is marketing?

My academic path to that question had begun with graduate work in rhetorical theory at Idaho State University. My particular interest was the application of ancient rhetorical principles to modern mass persuasion. In studying twentieth-century rhetoric, including the rhetoric of World War II, I examined how the classical canons could operate through contemporary institutions and technologies. Among the examples I considered were the Nazi Party's speaker system in connection with dispositio, or organization; Franklin D. Roosevelt's fireside chats in connection with pronuntiatio, or delivery; and Winston Churchill's use of elocutio, or style, particularly his choice and arrangement of language to address and rally the British public. Although some of Churchill's most famous speeches, including “Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat” and “We Shall Fight on the Beaches,” were delivered in the House of Commons rather than as radio broadcasts, Churchill also used direct BBC broadcasts during the perilous summer of 1940 to strengthen public resolve.

At Penn State, I extended this approach to marketing. Rather than beginning with the customary activities associated with marketing, such as products, pricing, advertising, promotion, selling, and distribution, I sought the underlying principle that might explain why these activities worked.

I returned to Aristotle's conception of rhetoric as the faculty of discovering in a particular case the available means of persuasion. I expanded that formulation by adding a critical second function: implementation.

The resulting definition was

Marketing: The scientific art of discovering and implementing all the available means of persuasion for any given case.

“Scientific” referred to the systematic examination of the communicator, audience, circumstances, evidence, and measurable response. “Art” recognized that human communication occurs under conditions in which truth may be uncertain, incomplete, or probabilistic and in which judgment must therefore supplement exact knowledge.

The theory also distinguished between artistic and inartistic persuasion. Inartistic means included external inducement or compulsion, such as bribery, extortion, and physical coercion. I defined artistic persuasion, taking from Wayne C. Booth's work, more narrowly as

Awakening a voluntary inclination in the audience or consumer to act.

Voluntary human choice was therefore central to the theory.

The Global Model

Two diagrams from November 1981 survive from the original work. The first is a Global Model of the persuasive process.

The model begins with case analysis. Communication has an objective, which may be to inform, entertain, or persuade, and a scope, which may be interpersonal, small-group, or mass communication.

The communicator and receiver enter the persuasive encounter with their own goals, beliefs, attitudes, and experiences. Persuasion, therefore, cannot be understood solely by examining the message. The communicator must understand the audience and discover areas of common ground between the communicator and receiver.

The model also recognizes antecedent ethos, the reputation or credibility already possessed by the communicator in the mind of the receiver before a particular communication occurs.

From these circumstances comes the construction of the message. My model placed the message at the center of the five classical canons of rhetoric, the framework developed in the ancient rhetorical tradition and set forth systematically in works including the Rhetorica ad Herennium and Quintilian's Institutio Oratoria. Each canon addresses a different part of the persuasive process:

1. Inventio (Invention), Finding: discovering what to say and the persuasive materials available in the particular case. This includes the three principal modes of proof: ethos (ethical appeal), logos (logical appeal), and pathos (emotional appeal).
2. Dispositio (Organization or Arrangement), Ordering: determining how the discovered persuasive materials should be organized to achieve their intended effect.
3. Elocutio (Style), Choosing: selecting the language, figures of speech, imagery, phrasing, and manner of expression through which the argument will be communicated.
4. Memoria (Memory), Remembering: traditionally, committing the discourse to memory so that it could be delivered effectively. In my marketing application, I also considered the other side of memory, what the audience or consumer remembers, using advertising jingles and other techniques designed to create recognition and recall.
5. Pronuntiatio (Delivery), Presenting: traditionally, the vocal and physical presentation of the discourse. Applied to modern mass communication and marketing, delivery expands to include the means by which the persuasive message is presented to the audience, including voice, imagery, visual presentation, broadcast media, and other characteristics of execution.

The five canons were conceived as interacting functions rather than a rigid sequence. A decision about style could affect delivery; delivery could affect organization; the requirements of memory could influence style; and each could require reconsideration of what had originally been discovered through invention. The message was therefore placed at the center of these five interdependent functions in the 1981 Global Model.

The first of these canons, Invention, received particular attention in my marketing model. It concerned the discovery of the persuasive materials available in the particular case and incorporated the three classical proofs of ethos, logos, and pathos.

Ethos concerned the perceived credibility of the communicator. Logos encompassed rational argument. I divided logical appeal broadly between induction and deduction. Inductive techniques included statistics, examples, and arguments from authority. Deductive persuasion included the enthymeme, in which part of an argument is left unstated and supplied by the audience.

One advertising example I used was the claim:

“Nothing relieves pain faster than Bayer Aspirin.”

I treated the claim as a categorical advertising enthymeme. The audience supplies an unstated practical premise, such as “I have pain,” and is encouraged to reach the desired conclusion, “I will take Bayer Aspirin.” Yet the categorical wording also permits scrutiny. “Nothing relieves pain faster” establishes that Bayer is unsurpassed in speed; it does not necessarily establish that Bayer is uniquely faster than every alternative. I used the deliberately humorous counter-reading that, since “nothing” relieves pain faster than Bayer, the consumer might conclude that the last thing he should do is take Bayer and instead take “nothing.” The example illustrated both the persuasive economy and logical vulnerability of the enthymeme.

Another example was Joe DiMaggio's promotion of Mr. Coffee and the phrase:

“Mr. Coffee knows how to say good morning.”

The advertisement could operate simultaneously through several persuasive mechanisms. DiMaggio supplied an argument from authority and brought substantial antecedent ethos as one of America's most celebrated athletes and public figures. The proposition invited deductive reasoning: either one knows or does not know how to “say good morning”; Mr. Coffee knows how; therefore, the consumer is invited to prefer Mr. Coffee. Yet DiMaggio's selection carried associations extending well beyond baseball. Who could appear to need the invigorating effects of a morning cup of coffee more than the great athlete who had also been married to Marilyn Monroe? 

To an audience familiar with both figures, the pairing could introduce a subtle suggestion of masculine vitality, romance, and even sexual vigor without any such claim being stated. Whether or not that implication was consciously intended by the advertising agency, it demonstrates how antecedent ethos can generate pathos through associations supplied by the audience itself. The advertisement simultaneously evoked morning, home, coffee, familiarity, celebrity, energy, and masculinity. Even the personification of the appliance, “Mr. Coffee knows how to say good morning,” provided an example of elocutio, or style.

Pathos addressed emotional appeals and how emotion could awaken an inclination toward voluntary action. A memorable example I used was Coca-Cola's celebrated 1971 “Hilltop” commercial, in which a diverse group of young people gathered on an Italian hillside and sang “I'd Like to Buy the World a Coke,” which subsequently became associated with “I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing.” The advertisement offered remarkably little rational argument about the qualities of Coca-Cola itself. Instead, it associated the product with youth, harmony, fellowship, optimism, and a world temporarily freed from division. The emotional appeal was the argument.

Yet the commercial also demonstrated how the classical proofs could operate simultaneously. Its central proposition, the desire to buy the world a Coke, conveyed generosity and a willingness to give, qualities associated with Liberality under Character in my Ethos model. Thus, the same advertising idea could generate pathos by awakening feelings of fellowship and human unity while reinforcing ethos by presenting the giver and, by association, Coca-Cola itself as generous and benevolent. The product consequently became more than a soft drink within the persuasive message; it became a symbolic means of sharing something with another person.

This interaction was important to my conception of Invention. Ethos, logos, and pathos were analytical distinctions, but effective persuasion did not require them to operate independently. A single word, image, personality, musical phrase, or proposition could employ several proofs simultaneously, with the audience completing much of the meaning from its own beliefs, experiences, and associations.

Organization, or dispositio, addressed the arrangement of persuasive materials. In adapting the classical canon to marketing, I considered the traditional marketing elements of product, price, place, and promotion as components that could themselves be selected and arranged to produce a persuasive effect. The marketer was therefore organizing more than the words and images of an advertisement. The product being offered, its price, where and to whom it was offered, and the manner in which it was promoted could work together as parts of the persuasive case.

One example I recall using was Nike's emergence from its early identity as a specialized running shoe into a broader consumer brand. I discussed what I understood in 1981 to have been a Seattle test-market experience in which Nike discovered that a relatively low price could work against an unfamiliar premium product. Rather than communicating value, the price could suggest inferior quality to consumers who lacked the specialized knowledge of serious runners. Raising the price could therefore contribute to repositioning the shoe as a premium product. In this sense, price was itself part of the persuasive argument.

The documented 1977 “There Is No Finish Line” campaign provides the stronger surviving example of the broader repositioning I was examining. Created by John Brown & Partners when Nike had no particular new shoe to feature, the advertisement shifted attention away from product specifications and price toward the identity and aspirations of the runner. Its central proposition, “There Is No Finish Line,” transformed the persuasive case from what this shoe does to what kind of person you are when you run.

For my purposes, the example demonstrated the interaction of Invention and Dispositio. Invention required defining the product, understanding the audience, and discovering the proposition capable of moving that audience. Dispositio was then concerned with arranging the marketing variables, product, price, place, and promotion around that proposition. A technically sophisticated running shoe could mean one thing to an experienced runner and something entirely different to a casual consumer encountering an unfamiliar brand. The persuasive arrangement therefore had to account for both the product and the receiver.

The advertisement also demonstrated the interdependence of the classical canons and proofs. Pathos appealed to aspiration, perseverance, and self-mastery. Ethos associated Nike with people who understood and shared the runner's commitment. Elocutio, or style, compressed the proposition into the memorable phrase “There Is No Finish Line.” Memoria followed because the phrase could remain with the receiver long after exposure to the advertisement.

The larger theoretical point was that marketing variables could themselves function rhetorically. Price communicates. Product communicates. Place communicates. Promotion communicates. Their meaning changes according to the audience and the circumstances in which they are encountered. Thus, in adapting dispositio to marketing, I was concerned with arranging the entire persuasive offering, rather than merely arranging the words of an advertisement.

Style, or elocutio, examined the expressive form of marketing communication: the choice of words, sounds, images, figures of speech, rhythm, and other devices through which the persuasive proposition was expressed. In applying the classical canon to advertising, I was particularly interested in how figures of speech and other stylistic devices could make an otherwise ordinary product proposition vivid, memorable, and persuasive. Style was therefore more than ornamentation. The manner in which something was expressed could become part of the persuasive argument itself.

The advertising of the 1960s and 1970s provided abundant examples. Alka-Seltzer's famous “Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh what a relief it is” transformed the physical sound of tablets dissolving in water into onomatopoeia. The consumer could almost hear the product working. Sound, product demonstration, rhyme, and repetition were compressed into a phrase that simultaneously contributed to Style, Delivery, and Memory.

Another Alka-Seltzer commercial used the memorable complaint “I can't believe I ate the whole thing.” The exaggerated distress of a man suffering after an enormous meal provided an example of hyperbole, dramatizing the problem for which Alka-Seltzer offered relief. The exaggeration also employed humor and therefore crossed from Style into Pathos. The audience recognized the familiar experience of overeating while enjoying its comic exaggeration.

State Farm's “Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there” offered a particularly clear simile. A large and impersonal insurance company was compared explicitly with something familiar and reassuring: a good neighbor. The figure of speech accomplished more than stylistic elegance. It transferred qualities associated with the neighbor, including availability, trust, familiarity, and willingness to help, to the corporation. The simile therefore operated simultaneously through Elocutio and Ethos. Its musical setting further carried the proposition into Memoria; Barry Manilow's melody helped make the phrase enduringly memorable.

The Chiffon margarine campaign provided an example of personification. “Mother Nature” appeared as an actual woman who could taste Chiffon, mistake it for butter, discover that she had been deceived, and indignantly warn, “It's not nice to fool Mother Nature.” Nature, an abstraction, was given personality, judgment, emotions, and even the power to retaliate with thunder and lightning. The personification allowed Chiffon to make its underlying product claim indirectly: the margarine tasted sufficiently like butter to deceive even Nature herself. Thus, a figure of speech became a persuasive demonstration of the product proposition.

Burger King's “Hold the pickles, hold the lettuce” illustrated the persuasive use of repetition, parallel construction, rhythm, and rhyme. The stylistic pattern reinforced the larger marketing proposition that customers could have a hamburger prepared according to their individual preferences. Once again, elocutio did more than make the advertisement entertaining. The structure of the language reinforced the product's positioning around consumer choice, while the jingle carried that proposition into Memory.

The 7UP campaign's designation of the product as “The Uncola” demonstrated another powerful stylistic technique: defining a product through deliberate negation and contrast. Rather than competing with Coca-Cola and Pepsi as another cola, 7UP linguistically created an opposing category. The invented word “Uncola” communicated in only a few syllables that 7UP belonged in the soft-drink market while being fundamentally different from the dominant cola products. Here Style interacted directly with Invention and Organization because the linguistic device helped establish the product's competitive position.

These examples illustrated an important feature of my model. The classical canons and proofs were analytically distinguishable, but in actual marketing they continually overlapped. Onomatopoeia could aid Memory; hyperbole could produce Pathos; simile could establish Ethos; personification could communicate a product claim; repetition could reinforce positioning; and a coined expression such as “Uncola” could help define an entire market category.

Thus, elocutio in marketing was not simply the task of making an advertisement sound attractive. Style could change how the audience understood the product itself. The choice of language could create associations, simplify arguments, establish distinctions, stimulate emotion, reinforce credibility, and make the resulting proposition easier to remember. In that sense, figures of speech became additional available means of persuasion to be discovered and implemented for the particular case.

Memory, or memoria, required a significant adaptation from classical rhetoric to modern marketing. Traditionally, memoria concerned the speaker's ability to remember and command the discourse for effective delivery. In my marketing application, I also considered memory from the opposite direction: what does the audience or consumer remember after the communication has ended? If persuasion was intended ultimately to influence voluntary action, the persuasive proposition often had to survive in memory until the occasion for that action arose. Advertising jingles provided an especially effective means of accomplishing this because melody, rhythm, rhyme, repetition, and verbal pattern could attach information to memory more effectively than an ordinary product statement.

Oscar Mayer's familiar “My Bologna Has a First Name” jingle provided an almost literal demonstration of memoria. Rather than merely repeating the company name, the commercial taught consumers to spell it: “O-S-C-A-R” followed by “M-A-Y-E-R.” A potentially difficult brand name became a rhythmic exercise that children and adults could reproduce from memory. The advertisement therefore did more than create brand recognition. It enlisted the audience in rehearsing the brand name, turning repetition itself into a mnemonic device.

McDonald's employed the same principle differently in its Big Mac ingredients jingle. The rapid recitation of the burger's components, beginning with “two all-beef patties” and ending with the sesame-seed bun, converted a relatively cumbersome list of product attributes into a rhythmic verbal sequence. The consumer was effectively taught the composition of the product through repetition and cadence. Here memoria worked directly with Invention, because the ingredients constituted part of the product argument, and with Elocutio, because rhythm and verbal arrangement made that information memorable.

The Band-Aid campaign provided another form of mnemonic reinforcement. Its central play on the word “stuck” linked the physical function of the product with the consumer's mental attachment to the brand. The product sticks to the consumer, while the brand name figuratively becomes “stuck” in the consumer's memory. Repetition, rhyme, music, and wordplay therefore reinforced both the product benefit and brand identification. The persuasive objective was particularly valuable in a product category in which a trademarked brand name could otherwise become confused with the generic product.

Meow Mix reduced the technique almost to its simplest possible form. The commercial's singing cat repeatedly vocalized “meow” to a recognizable melody, while the brand name itself incorporated the same sound. The audience required virtually no product argument to connect the sound, the animal, and the brand: cat → meow → Meow Mix. Repetition and melody established an immediate associative pathway that could later be activated when the consumer encountered the product on a supermarket shelf.

These examples demonstrated that memoria in marketing involved considerably more than remembering an advertisement. Effective memory could preserve a brand name, spelling, product attributes, product benefit, category association, emotional response, or purchasing proposition until the consumer later encountered an opportunity to act.

They also illustrated the interdependence of the five canons. A jingle required Invention to determine what should be remembered, Elocutio to find the words, rhyme, rhythm, or other expressive device that would make it memorable, Dispositio to arrange those elements effectively, and Pronuntiatio to deliver them through voice, music, performance, and media. Memoria described what remained after those other elements had done their work.

In this adaptation, the ancient rhetorical problem was therefore transformed. The classical speaker asked, “How will I remember what I intend to say?” The marketer also had to ask, “How will the consumer remember what I have said when the opportunity to choose or act occurs?”

That distinction was central to my application of memoria to marketing. Persuasion could occur at one moment while the desired action might occur hours, days, or months later. Memory became the bridge between the persuasive communication and the subsequent voluntary act.

By 2026, however, the transformation of memoria extended beyond the audience's ability to remember a message. In contemporary digital marketing, memory had become reciprocal. The marketer continued to seek a place in the consumer's memory, while digital systems increasingly retained information about the consumer through browsing histories, search behavior, purchasing records, cookies, device identifiers, customer databases, and other forms of behavioral data. Thus, by 2026, memoria operated in two directions: human memory retained the message, while algorithmic memory retained information about the audience.

At the same time, consumers increasingly employed external forms of memory, relying upon search engines, smartphones, digital archives, recommendation systems, and AI systems to retrieve information they once might have retained mentally. This cognitive offloading altered the task of marketing communication. Unaided recall remained valuable, but recognition, distinctiveness, and retrievability assumed greater importance in an environment in which information could increasingly be summoned rather than remembered.

Delivery, or pronuntiatio, required another substantial adaptation when classical rhetoric was applied to twentieth-century marketing. Traditionally, delivery concerned the speaker's presentation of the discourse through voice, gesture, timing, and physical presence before an audience. Modern marketing separated the communicator from much of the audience and therefore required the persuasive proposition to be delivered through multiple channels.

In my marketing model, I considered a three-pronged system of delivery to the public: television, print and outdoor advertising, and the dealer or salesperson who ultimately presented the product directly to the consumer. The same persuasive proposition could be delivered nationally through television, reinforced visually through magazine and newspaper advertisements and billboards, and finally communicated interpersonally at the point of sale. Pronuntiatio had effectively expanded from the delivery of a speech to the coordinated delivery of a persuasive proposition across media and people.

My principal example came from direct experience with Mercedes-Benz of North America. In 1981, through contacts of my father, Dr. Louis A. Klos, I received an internship in which I was charged with analyzing the Mercedes-Benz dealer-training program created by Sidney Aronson and recommending improvements to both the scripts and their delivery. The training materials employed automated LaBelle La Vision slide-show cartridges, then a leading technology for standardized dealership sales training, combining synchronized narration with projected visual images. These audiovisual modules educated dealership personnel about the engineering, construction, safety, and distinctive features of Mercedes-Benz automobiles while providing salespeople with a consistent and carefully structured way of communicating those qualities to prospective customers.

The assignment gave me an unusually practical opportunity to examine pronuntiatio in modern marketing. Rather than asking how a single orator should deliver a persuasive discourse, I was examining how a national organization could use technology to deliver essentially the same persuasive proposition to salespeople dispersed among dealerships, who would then communicate it personally to individual consumers. My recommendations concerning the scripts involved elocutio, or style, while recommendations concerning narration, pacing, synchronization of words and images, and audiovisual presentation involved pronuntiatio, or delivery. The training program therefore demonstrated the interdependence of the classical canons that I was attempting to capture in the Global Model.

The public advertising proposition was memorable: “Engineered Like No Other Car in the World.” The dealer-training materials enabled salespeople to transform that broad advertising claim into a detailed interpersonal presentation. Engineering, construction quality, safety, suspension, crash protection, and other technical characteristics could be explained at the dealership as evidence supporting a proposition the consumer may already have encountered through mass advertising.

I particularly remember the emphasis placed upon craftsmanship and individual responsibility for quality. The training materials described the care with which important components were manufactured, inspected, and approved. These details supplied Logos, evidence supporting the engineering claim, while simultaneously contributing to Ethos, the reputation of Mercedes-Benz for competence, craftsmanship, and exacting standards.

One small physical detail became especially useful at the point of sale. Mercedes-Benz automobiles carried a cursive reproduction of Gottlieb Daimler's signature near the lower passenger side of the windshield. Dealer personnel could use the signature as a tangible symbol connecting the automobile before the customer with the engineering heritage of the company. A small visual detail on the product could thus become part of the salesperson's delivery of the larger persuasive proposition.

This demonstrated why dealer training belonged within pronuntiatio. A national advertising campaign might create awareness and interest, but the persuasive proposition could be strengthened, weakened, or altered when communicated by individual salespeople. Training provided those salespeople with the knowledge, language, examples, and product details necessary to deliver the intended proposition consistently. The dealer became, in effect, the final human medium through which the corporate message was delivered.

The three delivery channels consequently reinforced one another. Television combined image, movement, sound, voice, and demonstration. Print and outdoor advertising reduced the proposition to memorable words and images that could be repeatedly encountered. Dealer training and personal selling restored interpersonal communication to the process, allowing the salesperson to explain, demonstrate, answer questions, and adapt the presentation to the particular consumer.

The Mercedes-Benz example also brought the five classical canons together within a single marketing case. Inventio discovered the central proposition of engineering excellence. Dispositio arranged product, price, place, and promotion around that positioning. Elocutio expressed the proposition memorably as “Engineered Like No Other Car in the World.” Memoria helped preserve that proposition in the consumer's mind. Pronuntiatio delivered and reinforced it through mass media and, ultimately, the trained Mercedes-Benz salesperson.

Thus, my conception of pronuntiatio extended beyond the choice of medium. In modern marketing, delivery involved the coordination and consistency of a persuasive proposition across mass media, product presentation, and human representatives. The classical question had been: How should the orator deliver the discourse? The corresponding marketing question became: How should an organization deliver its persuasive proposition through the available channels so that the consumer encounters a coherent case for voluntary action?

At that point, the process returned to the receiver and completed the Global Model. After encountering the persuasive communication, the receiver responded. I classified that response broadly as positive, negative, or indifferent and then subjected it to measurement of effectiveness. The result became feedback rather than merely an endpoint. It could alter the marketer's understanding of the receiver's goals, beliefs, attitudes, and experiences; reveal whether the assumed common ground actually existed; affect antecedent ethos; and require reconsideration of Invention, Organization, Style, Memory, or Delivery in the next persuasive effort.

Marketing was therefore conceived as a continuing and self-correcting process of discovery, implementation, measurement, feedback, and adaptation. The marketer discovered the available means of persuasion for the particular case, implemented them through the five interacting canons, observed the receiver's voluntary response, measured their effectiveness, and used what was learned to approach the next case with greater knowledge. In this way, the feedback loop completed the meaning of my 1981 definition of marketing as “the scientific art of discovering and implementing all the available means of persuasion for any given case.”

The Ethos Model

The second surviving diagram attempted to explain one component of Invention that I considered essential throughout the marketing process: Ethos, or Ethical Appeal. Although treated analytically as one of the three proofs within Invention, ethos could permeate the entire marketing mix because decisions concerning product, price, place, and promotion could each influence the audience's or consumer's perception of the communicator's character, intelligence, and goodwill.

The model proposed three principal foundations of persuasive credibility:

Character, Intelligence, and Good Will.

Character incorporated classical virtues including liberality, justice, magnanimity, courage, magnificence, gentleness, and temperance, with subsidiary concepts such as willingness to give, open-mindedness, lawfulness, kindness, calmness, and self-restraint. These qualities mattered rhetorically because the audience could use the communicator's observable conduct to make judgments about the character behind the persuasive proposition.

Intelligence was broader than knowledge alone. It included wisdom, represented through sagacity, common sense, competency, and knowledge, and prudence, represented through good taste, tact, and moderation. The distinction was important because possession of information did not necessarily demonstrate sound judgment. Persuasive credibility depended upon the audience perceiving that the communicator both understood the subject and exercised intelligence in applying that understanding.

Good Will addressed the communicator's perceived relationship with the audience. It included candor and straightforwardness, friendship, appropriate praise of the audience, and, most importantly, genuine interest in the welfare of the audience. A communicator might possess knowledge and competence yet remain unpersuasive if the audience believed that those abilities were being exercised without regard for its interests.

At the center of the model was Choice. Character, intelligence, and goodwill acquire persuasive significance when they are manifested through choices observable by an audience or consumer. Ethos, therefore, cannot simply be asserted by a communicator. The audience infers credibility from what the communicator chooses to say and do, what evidence is presented, how competing claims are treated, and how the audience itself is regarded.

This also helps explain why I considered ethos relevant beyond the boundaries of a particular advertisement. A company's choices concerning the quality of its product, the fairness or positioning of its price, the manner and location of its place or distribution, and the truthfulness and character of its promotion could all contribute to the ethos accumulated by the organization. Today's marketing choice could therefore become part of tomorrow's antecedent ethos.

The model consequently distinguished between ethos manifested within the immediate persuasive communication and antecedent ethos, the reputation or credibility already possessed by the communicator in the mind of the receiver. The two were dynamic rather than independent. Past choices contributed to antecedent ethos; present choices could reinforce or diminish it; and the resulting judgment would accompany the communicator into the next persuasive encounter.

Ethos then interacted with antecedent ethos, common ground, logos, and pathos in the process of Invention and ultimately fed into the larger Global Model. As the marketing examples discussed in this memorandum demonstrate, these proofs and canons were analytical distinctions rather than isolated compartments. A single marketing choice could operate through several of them simultaneously.

What the Model Might Become in 2026

The two surviving models should remain historically intact as artifacts of the theory developed in 1981. If the theory were reconsidered in 2026, however, several modifications would strengthen it without altering its original architecture.

First, measurement of effectiveness should be expanded beyond the original classifications of positive, negative, and indifferent response. Contemporary analysis could distinguish among attention, comprehension, emotional response, recall, acceptance or rejection, attitude change, intention, action, repeated action, and persistence of behavior. These measures would permit the feedback mechanism to identify more precisely where a persuasive effort succeeded or failed.

Second, the original treatment of Memoria could be expanded through contemporary knowledge of consumer recall, brand recognition, repeated exposure, search behavior, and digital reinforcement. The underlying 1981 adaptation remains useful: classical memoria asked how the speaker could remember the discourse, while marketing also had to ask how the audience or consumer would remember the persuasive proposition when the later opportunity to act arose. Modern technology has vastly increased the marketer's ability to reinforce that memory across time and media.

Third, the original feedback mechanism has become far more consequential than I could have anticipated in 1981. Digital advertising, A/B testing, search engines, recommendation systems, social media, behavioral targeting, and artificial intelligence can observe receiver behavior, measure responses, alter persuasive propositions, and test them again with extraordinary speed. What appeared in the original Global Model as a feedback loop can now operate continuously and, increasingly, at the level of the individual consumer.

This development strengthens the empirical dimension of what I called the “scientific art” of marketing. Discovery can now be informed by enormous quantities of behavioral data; implementation can be altered almost instantaneously; and effectiveness can be measured with a precision unavailable to the twentieth-century mass marketer. Yet greater scientific capability does not eliminate the need for art. Human beings continue to differ in goals, beliefs, attitudes, experiences, circumstances, and judgments. The particular case remains particular.

Technology also raises the most serious question confronting a contemporary version of the model: Where does persuasion end and manipulation begin?

My 1981 theory attempted to establish an ethical boundary between artistic persuasion and inartistic means of producing action. In doing so, I drew upon Yves R. Simon's conception of persuasion in his 1951 work, Philosophy of Democratic Government. Simon wrote:

“To persuade a man is to awaken in him a voluntary inclination toward a certain course of action . . . persuasion implies the operation of free choice.”

Adapting Simon's formulation specifically to marketing, I defined artistic persuasion more simply as:

“Awakening a voluntary inclination in the audience or consumer to act.”

The word “voluntary” is critical. The 1981 formulation presupposed an audience possessing meaningful agency. Contemporary digital systems complicate that assumption. Algorithms can observe behavior, infer preferences, segment individuals, identify patterns and vulnerabilities, vary persuasive propositions, measure responses, and continuously optimize subsequent communications. Persuasion can therefore progress from presenting reasons and appeals to nudging behavior to the systematic optimization of behavioral response.

The critical ethical question becomes: At what point does persuasion cease awakening a voluntary inclination and begin engineering one?

Behavioral targeting, psychographic micro-targeting, and AI-assisted personalization make that question increasingly consequential. The ability to discover and implement more effective means of persuasion creates a corresponding responsibility to determine whether the resulting inclination remains meaningfully voluntary. A communication may succeed in producing the desired action while failing the more demanding ethical test of whether the receiver retained meaningful agency in reaching that decision.

A contemporary version of the model should therefore make human agency explicit. Success cannot be measured solely by whether the desired action occurred. The theory must also ask whether the receiver or consumer retained meaningful freedom to evaluate the persuasive proposition, consider alternatives, and choose among them. This suggests an ethical principle that might be described as Consent-Based Marketing: persuasive communication should preserve the audience's meaningful capacity to choose. Consent in this sense extends beyond formal acceptance of terms or technical compliance with disclosure requirements. It concerns the integrity of the persuasive process itself.

This principle returns the problem to the three foundations of persuasive credibility identified in the original model. Character constrains what the persuader is willing to do. Intelligence governs the understanding and responsible use of increasingly powerful persuasive technologies. Good Will asks whether those capabilities are exercised with genuine regard for the welfare and autonomy of the person being persuaded.

The ethical problem created by increasingly powerful persuasive technology is therefore embedded in the same question that concerned the original theory in 1981: What does it mean to awaken, rather than compel, a human inclination to act?

Retrospective

The original paper explaining these models has been lost, as have the subsidiary diagrams or analyses I prepared concerning Invention,  Organization, Style, Memory, and Delivery. This retrospective account should therefore not be regarded as a reconstruction of the lost 1981 paper.

Only two of the original diagrams survive: the Global Model dated November 10, 1981, and the Ethos Model dated November 13, 1981. The other seven (Logos, Pathos, Dispositio, Elecutio, Memoria, & Pronuntiatio) along the the original paper are lost. Nevertheless,  the two surviving models constitute the primary documentary evidence of the theory as it existed at that time. The definitions, subsidiary models, advertising examples, Mercedes-Benz dealer-training experience, and applications of the classical canons described in this memorandum are based upon my recollections in 2026 of the work I undertook in 1981. The explanations and observations concerning their broader significance include retrospective interpretation developed while examining the surviving materials forty-five years later.

The project was never completed or published, despite the encouragement of my Marketing Theory professor, Leland L. Beik, who urged me to pursue publication and suggested developing the theory as the subject of my doctoral dissertation. Instead, my professional interests increasingly shifted from doctoral study toward entrepreneurial ventures, including the acquisition, preservation, and adaptive reuse of historic properties on the Jersey Shore and in State College itself. The academic road represented by these diagrams was consequently left unfinished, and the proposed dissertation was never undertaken.

Forty-five years later, however, the central question remains recognizable.

Marketing seeks to understand an audience or consumer sufficiently well to discover what may influence voluntary choice. It selects and implements persuasive means appropriate to the particular circumstances, delivers them through available channels, observes the resulting response, measures effectiveness, learns from that response, and adapts the next persuasive effort accordingly.

The surviving Global Model attempted to represent this as a continuous system rather than a linear act of communication. Goals, beliefs, attitudes, experiences, common ground, and antecedent ethos informed the discovery process. Inventio, Dispositio, Elocutio, Memoria, and Pronuntiatio provided the framework through which persuasive means were discovered, arranged, expressed, remembered, and delivered. The receiver's response supplied the empirical test, and feedback returned what had been learned to the system.

Technology has transformed the speed, precision, reach, and scale at which this process can occur. It has not eliminated the underlying human problem. Indeed, artificial intelligence and individualized persuasion may make the relationship among persuasion, choice, and human agency more consequential than it appeared in 1981.

Seen across forty-five years, the central problem of persuasion has therefore changed less than its technological environment. The tools available to discover, reach, analyze, and influence an audience have become extraordinarily more powerful, while the underlying ethical question remains remarkably similar. If persuasion is the awakening of a voluntary inclination to act, then increasingly sophisticated persuasive technologies make the preservation of that voluntariness more important. Character, Intelligence, and Good Will consequently assume greater significance in 2026 because the capacity to persuade has increasingly become a capacity to influence individual behavior with a precision and persistence that could scarcely have been anticipated in 1981. The enduring question is whether that power is used to awaken human inclination while preserving meaningful choice or to diminish the agency upon which voluntary persuasion depends.

The proposition with which the work began therefore remains a useful statement of the question, whether or not it ultimately constitutes a sufficient definition of marketing:

Marketing is the scientific art of discovering and implementing all the available means of persuasion for any given case.

Its corresponding ethical limitation remains equally important:

Artistic persuasion is the awakening of a voluntary inclination in the audience or consumer to act.

Taken together, these propositions express both the power and the limitation of the original theory. The first asks how the available means of persuasion may be discovered and employed; the second establishes voluntariness as the boundary within which their use remains persuasive rather than coercive. The technological capabilities of 2026 alter the available means dramatically, but they do not remove that distinction. They make it more consequential.

The two surviving 1981 models are preserved with this retrospective memorandum, together with updated 2026 renderings, as records of an unfinished inquiry into the relationship among rhetoric, marketing, persuasion, and voluntary human choice.