A Cultural Analysis of Malaysian Youtube Advertisements Using Aristotle’s Persuasive Techniques

A Cultural  Analysis of Malaysian Youtube Advertisements Using Aristotle’s Persuasive Techniques 

Nurul Izzati Ahmad Shahrul¹, Nor Azah Mohd Rathi², Haliza Abdul Ghani³, Zaemah Abdul Kadir⁴ 

^1,2,3,4Academy Of Language Studies, Mara University Of Technology

DOI : https://dx.doi.org/10.47772/IJRISS.2024.808079

Received: 13 August 2024; Accepted: 23 August 2024; Published: 31 August 2024

ABSTRACT

Most companies utilise technological advancement to broaden their reach to larger-scale audiences with the presence of various social media platforms. YouTube which is a free online sharing website has been used by advertisersas their top choice to execute their marketing strategies. Marketing managers need to advertise their products with charming persuasive strategies and incorporate appeals that connect to audiencesto persuade the audiences’ purchase decisions. The main purpose of this study is to analyse Aristotle’s Persuasive Techniques used in Malaysian YouTube video advertisements from a cultural perspective. This study adopted a qualitative approach involving data samples from three video advertisements from different brands selected from their official YouTube channel. Data is analysed using content analysis from a cultural perspective, with Aristotle’s persuasive appeals as the foundation. The findings showed each advertisement employs persuasive strategies to engage its audiences. These findings are hoped to offer a better understanding of the use of persuasive strategies and to prove that culture is also an appeal that can be incorporated into persuasive strategies to successfully deliver intended messages to the audiences.

Keywords: YouTube advertisements; Aristotle’s Persuasive Techniques; cultural perspective

INTRODUCTION

Video advertising’s main function is delivering a brand’s promotional messages to reach certain target audiences in the format of a video advertisement. It is a form of digital display advertisement that plays before, during, or after a video streaming content on the internet. With the existence of various social media platforms and the Internet accessible anywhere at any time, these technological advancements have significantly helped companies to seek bigger opportunities to expand their business to a larger scale of audiences. YouTube is one of the most popular sites among Internet users. Thus, many advertisers have sought the platform which is a free online video-sharing website to promote their brand as well as their products. Video advertisers need to create an advertisement that delivers a message that convinces the audiences of the credibility and charm their brand possessesas a way to persuade audiences to purchase their products. Aristotle’s Persuasive Techniques, also known as Aristotle’s Persuasive Appeals or Rhetorical Elements are commonly used by advertisers in advertisements as they are shown to be an effective persuasive strategy. Culture is also an important element that influences audiences to be engaged with the promotional content. Most advertisers have incorporated cultural elements in their advertisements to attract more viewers.

Background of Study

Advertisers have chosen YouTube as one of the platforms to promote their products. YouTube, founded in 2005, is a free online video-sharing website that allows users to watch, like, share and comment. Many companies have decided to use YouTube as the main platform of advertising due to its large scale of viewers and audiences. Meanwhile, a video advertisement is a form of digital display advertisement in which it embodies promotional content that plays before, during or after a video streaming content on the internet. As stated by Odabaşı (2017) in Yarar’s (2020) study, advertising is one of the effective tools that is significant in transferring meaning from consumer to cultural products. Nowadays, video advertisements can be seenprevalent throughout almost every site on the Internet.

Durmaz, Mucahit and Oruç (2011) claimed that cultural properties influence the behaviours of consumers towards the advertised products and advertisements. To support the research, findings in Sani, Yunus and Kamaluddin’s (2018) study have also revealed that cultural aspects do play a big role in influencing and determining audiences’ attitudes towards global product advertisements. To break through the global market, companies must overcome cultural boundaries. Since global markets and businesses become competitive over the years, thus expanding the audience’s target group is a necessary way of modern marketing and incorporating culture in advertising strategies is an effective way to reach audiences of different cultural backgrounds. The academicians in both studies agreed that culture drives one’s determination to purchase goods and services. As indicated by Sani et. Al (2018), this results in many global marketers executing advertising campaigns to suit many cultures so that they can be positively accepted globally.

Malaysia is a country of diversity; therefore, it cannot be helped that the target audience of advertising would be quite a challenge due to the unjust focus on a huge number of audiences since Malaysian society is composed of citizens of different cultures. According to the statistics by Statistics Govt My in 2010, as cited by Yasmin, Farooq and Zreen (2018) in their study, Malaysia is a cultural mosaic made up of 50% Malay population, 23% Chinese, 7% Indians, 8% foreigners and 12% other nationals. Thus, in an advertising campaign, cultural differences must be taken into consideration for the advertisement to be accepted locally. Deng, Jivan, and Hassan (1994) used Malays and Chinese as an instance to portray these cultural differences. The Malays are always defined by possessing a strong Islamic faith, whereas the Chinese are always portrayed by their economic success. Valaei, Rezaei, Ismail and Oh (2016) indicated, “The more knowledge an e-commerce company possesses about the cultural values of Malaysians, the less likely its online strategies will fail.”

Aristotle’s persuasive techniques, also known as Aristotle’s Persuasive Appeals or Rhetorical Elements are widely used as persuasive appeals that function to convince and persuade

whoever the information and messages are conveyed to. Derived from Greek words, Ethos, Pathos, and Logos are elements with different functions in delivering a message. Ethos, the first element in this persuasive technique, symbolises the message sender’s credibility. Slee (2013) in Han, Shin, Chung, and Koo (2019) elaborated that in online communications, one’s credibility could be defined by their reputation among other online users as that proves trust worthiness.

Meanwhile, pathos psychologically impacts the audience through the emotional tone or mood of speech to persuade them to make a decision. According to Demirdöğen (2010), Aristotle mentioned justice, generosity, courage, gentleness and wisdom as essential appeals not only to emotional persuasion but it refers to ethos as well.. Finally, the last of the three elements is logos in which the message delivered contains the appeals of intellect and logic. English, Kaye and Monica (2011) indicated that logos appeal allows audiences to evaluate the information of the content and decide whether the message is logical and valid in which sources such as facts and statistics are heavily used to ensure the level of reliability in the information of the advertisement.

Objectives of the Study

The purpose of this study is to analyse Aristotle’s Persuasive Techniques used in Malaysian YouTube video advertisements from a cultural perspective. The followings are the  objectives of studies:

1. To identify Aristotle’s persuasive techniques showcased in selected Malaysian YouTube advertisements.
2. To analyse the identified Aristotle’s persuasive techniques in selected Malaysian YouTube advertisements from a cultural perspective.

Significance of the Study

This study will help to increase cultural awareness among advertisers and people in the marketing and business fields. Incorporating culture and Aristotle’s persuasive techniques in a video advertisement can leave an impact on viewers especially if they can relate very much to the cultural portrayals. This research is also beneficial to other disciplines of knowledge such as the Communication and Business Marketing fields as it is evident that Logos, Pathos and Ethos studied in this paper are a set of strategic persuasive techniques that could be useful in communication and marketing strategies. Besides that, this study is also significant in showing the importance of locals’ acceptance of a brand and its products if familiar cultural elements and appropriate use of Rhetorical Elements are portrayed in advertisements.

Limitation of the Study

The cultural perspective is only limited to Malaysian culture and perspectives. The data of the study will be collected by using digital materials, specifically video advertisements which are advertised by brand advertisers on their official channel from 2014-2020 with explanations from related studies. Other than that, communication between the viewers and the advertisers is not examined in the sense that the comment section will not be part of the analysis.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Digital platforms have been used as one of the methods for marketers to advertise products. Online advertising is used as a strategy for marketers to create awareness and increase brand equity.Among the digital platforms, YouTube has become a popular choice of communication medium among marketers to place their advertisements online. Reino and Hay (2016) agreed with this claim, and they added that YouTube is an online platform where users are allowed to upload, share and watch videos and today it has become the global leader in the video streaming market with over a billion videos viewed every day.YouTube provides several formats of advertisements that can appear on a video which are display ads, sponsored ads, overlay ads, skippable video ads, non-skippable video ads and bumper ads.

Video Advertising on YouTube

In video advertising, engagement value is important. Rodriguez (2017) in her study claimed that the success of a YouTube advertisement partially depended on the viewers’ engagement with the video. The findings of her study involving 221 survey participants in the Dominican Republic and the United States of different ages, genders, education, ethnicities, and occupations revealed that a multiplicity of cues in video advertisements such as music, scenery, narration, the physical appearance of actors were crucial in participants’ engagement and ultimately influencing them to purchase the product or service because the cues were found to make target consumers feeling engaged or related, having a better understanding, and remembering the advertisements. Therefore, it is evident that engagement is important in ensuring effectiveness. The claim is supported by another related study by Jerome, Shan and Khong (2010) on the impacts of online advertising features in which the results based on 150 respondents in the researchers’ survey found that the use of the three features which are multimedia, pictures and content in a promotional content will very much influence consumers’ favourable attitude towards brand and purchase intention. Thus, a successful YouTube advertisement partially depends on the engagement attributes of their content to attract audiences.

Cultural Influence

Cultural influence is one of the most important advertising features that ensure advertising success. Valaei, Rezaei, Ismail, and Oh (2016) and other academicians in their study agreed that most business failures happened due to the lack of proper attention to cultural perspectives in their advertising strategies. The findings of their study suggest that marketing managers have toconsider a formulation of online advertising and brands with the adoption of cultural dimensions of a country in their promotional content to get the target audiences to feel ‘close to home’. relatable. This is supported by Sani, Yunus and Kamaluddin (2018) in their study where cultural elements such as religion, language and cultural norms havea significant influence on customer acceptance of global product advertisements. Aware that various cultures in the world may influence the effectiveness of marketing strategy, more global marketers nowadays execute their advertising campaigns to suit many cultures so that they can be positively accepted globally. The academicians in both studies agreed that culture drives one’s determination to purchase goods and services.

Target audiences’ trust in a brand and its products is determined by the consistency of advertisers portraying their cultural values in advertisements. Yarar (2019) in his study on Halal advertising on YouTube: a case study of fast-food brands in Malaysia discovered that brands and advertisements with their promotional content containing target audiences’ important cultural values consistently will receive unwavering trust from them. The analysis based on advertisements from four major fast-food brands’ YouTube Channels witnessed three out of the four brands (KFC, Mcdonald’s and Burger King) paid attention to make sure halal logos and certificates were advertised on their advertisements for their products and brands to be culturally accepted by Malaysian target audiences who are mostly Muslims. The cultural emphasis in certain advertisements shows that the advertisers studied their target audiences’ cultural values.

All in all, adopting the cultural values of target audiences in promotional content indeed leads to favourable reactions and attitudes from them toward the brand and the products sold. However, advertising managers should do meticulous research on the appropriate cultural context of the target audiences and be aware of the cultural line that should not be crossed. If these cultural issues could be handled by advertisers with ease, their content and conveyance of messages would make a good advertisement and be accepted by intended audiences in such a way that it will be accepted by people of other cultures. (Valaei et al., 2016).

Aristotle’s Persuasive Speech Techniques

Aristotle’s Rhetorical concept boasts three main persuasion appeals which are Logos, Ethos, and Pathos to each of their functions. Vu (2017) explained that during the Aristotle era (384-322) BC, rhetoric was highly appreciated as a way for sages to teach citizens persuading their 19 audience to secure their rights to democracy. Rhetorical appeals were then continuously practiced by the first century, not just to convince anyone, but they were also used in literature and speech beautifying. Today, Vu (2017) continued, these three persuasive elements are widely recognised and commonly used in the business field to influence consumers’ purchase decisions. Yu (2016), verifying this affirmation, elaborated on how these elements are used: ethos appeal is achieved depending on the character of the speaker, emotional strategies are used as pathos to achieve persuasion and logos appeal is achieved by logical reasonings from sources. Most of the time, Yu (2016) continued, that all three appeals could be integrated into one advertisement to enhance its persuasive power.

Past Studieson Aristotle’s Persuasive Techniques Usedin Analysing Video Advertisements

Several studies have investigated the use of these persuasive appeals in video advertising. In previous research done by Ibrahim et al. (2019), they carried out an analysis on the application of Aristotle’s persuasion techniques on video advertisements advertised by McDonald’s Malaysia. The data was gathered through the interpretation of rhetorical analysis of one video advertisement of 22 McDonald’s Malaysia. The findings revealed that Aristotle’s Persuasive Appeals were indeed used in the promotional content. The result showed that with the use of emotional appeal, pathos was more engaging among audiences rather than the rational quality of the advertisements, implying that the logic of health and nutrition claims are not salient concerns.

In another study, Purba (2017) did a discourse analysis of describing persuasive strategies used in fifty samples of women cosmetics in skin whitening product video advertisements which were taken from the official website of the products, YouTube, and from the advertisement on television. The advertisements of different brands such as Wardah, Pond’s, Garnier and Fair & Lovely were analysed according to Aristotle’s theory of persuasion (ethos, logos and pathos). In this study, the researcher identified and further elaborated the strategies used in the advertisements and later gave logical reasonings for the strategies used. The findings of this study found that Aristotle’s persuasive appeals were indeed used in the advertisements wherein there were 32 utterances categorised as Ethos, 12 as Pathos, and 6 as Logos. The researcher concluded that along with other persuasion technique models, Aristotle’s theory of persuasion could also be seen used in video advertisements.

Finally, Rabab’ah and Khawaldeh’s (2016) study explored the different persuasive appeals used in English and Arabic TV advertisements related to marketing electronics, 23 particularly televisions, air conditioners and cameras. Thestudy revealed that many appeals were used in the sample ads to attract theviewers’attention as well as persuade them to purchase the advertising company’s product.

Method

This study used a qualitative method as itanalysed the persuasive techniques and cultural perspectives used in the three Malaysian YouTube advertisements from their brands’ official YouTube channel. This study also employed a qualitative method in the form of content analysis as it analysed digital materials. Video advertisements were used to gather the data needed for the process of analysis with secondary sources such as journals were used to support the findings.

Sample of the Study

The sample in this study was the video advertisements taken from YouTube Malaysia only. The researcher selected three video commercials from three different brands on their official channel based on several qualities that would help in the analysing process. Firstly, the advertisements would possess adequate logos, ethos, and pathos elements and were related to the Malaysian environment and culture. Secondly, the video advertisements chosen were either in English or Bahasa Melayu. Additionally, the duration for each of the videos ranged from 1 to 3 minutes, because lengthy advertisements would reduce engagement quality.

Data Collection and Data Analysis Procedure

The data collection procedure for this study took place on the YouTube Website to find suitable advertisements of different brands on their official channel. The data was collected by selecting and watching several video advertisements of famous companies and brands on the Malaysia YouTube website. The next step was to select the best three according to the researcher’s listed criteria of representation of cultural perspectives and Aristotle’s Persuasive Techniques. The data gathered was investigated from the aspect of the Malaysian cultural context that included cultural perspectives such as symbols, language, beliefs, values, and artifacts.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

The findings of this study will answer the following research questions:

1. What are Aristotle’s persuasive techniques used in the Malaysian YouTube Advertisements?
2. How are Aristotle’s Persuasive techniques used in the cultural perspective in the Malaysian YouTube Advertisements

Aristotle’s persuasive techniques used in the Malaysian YouTube advertisement

Table 1: Mc Donald’s Happy Meal

McDonald’s Happy Meal advertisement was advertised to promote the brand’s signature kids’ meal to their Malaysian target audience, especially Malaysian families. Based on Table I, Aristotle’s persuasive appeals were used significantly to deliver the key message to the viewers. In the aspect of ethos, McDonald’s demonstrated its credibility by inserting its in-depth knowledge of Malaysian people’s culture and lifestyles, benefiting their long years of connection with the country. Happy Meal was portrayed as a reward by parents for their children’s achieving success. Besides that, the accompaniment of the Malaysian folk song ‘Rasa Sayang’ in the commercial video showcased McDonald’s credibility as it indicated that they had already studied their target audiences’ cultural heritages.

From the aspect of pathos appeals, two subcomponents were found widely used in the advertisements which were tone and engagement. Generally, the advertisement evoked a nostalgic feeling from the audience through the accompaniment of the instrumental version of the folk song “Rasa Sayang” as the background music. Compared to the original version, which was way more cheerful, the version used in the advertisement was rather softer which would influence audiences to remember childhood memories of growing up experiencing the same parenting styles.

Meanwhile, for logos appeal, conciseness was seen evidently in the advertisement. Conciseness was apparent with the use of code-mixing in the narration “Sometimes, we are tough. Sometimes, we are tender. And sometimes we show it with a Happy Meal. However, you show it, it is still–Rasa Sayang.” Code-mixing was a form of directness in the context of this commercial advertisement which could be easily comprehended by the local audiences despite theutterances breaking the grammatical rules of both Malay and English language.

Table 2: Foodpanda

This advertisement was brought by Foodpanda, one of the leading food delivery services in Malaysia. Based on Table II, the aspect of ethos rhetoric was obvious in this advertisement as the brand’s values were mainly delivered through the credibility of their spokesperson, Nabila Huda, a well-known celebrity in Malaysia.

Pathos appeals that were employed in this Foodpanda advertisement drew feelings of suspense as the celebrity had the action of a sudden brake when she remembered that she could get her food using Foodpanda delivery, followed by a sense of relief because her problem was solved. Besides the upbeat background music used in the whole advertisement, there were also a few sound effects that tried to deliver the effect of suspense. The mimics shown on Nabila Huda’s face played a big role in stirring emotions among audiences.

For logos, clarity of the intended message could be seen as every time Nabila Huda experienced an inevitable situation, she would seek Foodpanda as a solution to her problem.The arrangement of the plot was quite simple as it focused on Nabila Huda’s life and when she was facing a problem, she opted for Foodpanda to solve her problems.

Table 3: National and Malaysia Day

In conjunction with the celebration of National and Malaysia Day, Petronas, the country’s leading oil and gas company brought a strong message of patriotism in their advertisement reflecting that Malaysians’ lives are intertwined and connected regardless of their diverse background. Towards the end of the video, their well-recognised logo appeared, displaying that the organisation collectively wished Happy Independence and Malaysia Day.

Based on Table III, pathos appeals were found to be used significantly in this advertisement with the music composition by the Malaysian Philharmonic Youth Orchestra played as the background music. The music accompaniment complemented the plotline showcased in the advertisement. With the brilliant combination of music and flow of the story, the advertisement had achieved to excite patriotism and gratefulness among Malaysian audiences. The advertisement also inserted a pathos appeal that was engaging to the target audiences by displaying scenes of how the characters unknowingly crossed each other’s paths lives.

Logos appeals were also found, highlighting two subcomponents: clarity and conciseness. The advertisement could logically be comprehended by the audience because of the characters repetitively saying “take care” to each other as seen at minutes 00:18, 00:24, 00:55, 01:23 at 01:44 – 01:45. The scenes were to remind the viewers to take care of themselves and the people around them. Apart from that, the use of hashtags (#) such as #takecare was a way to direct the conciseness of the intended message in the advertisement since hashtags helped to stress an important message on social media platforms.

Aristotle’s Persuasive Techniques Usedinthe Cultural Perspective in the Malaysian YouTube Advertisements

Ethos appeals emphasise the advertiser’s credibility and authority to deliver the key idea of an advertisement. A brand’s credibility could potentially win audiences’ hearts especially when their delivery of a message was associated with their cultural and environmental perspectives. In the McDonald’s advertisement promoting Happy Meal, the Malaysian folk song ‘Rasa Sayang’ was used as the background music and the slogan ‘Rasa Happy, Rasa Sayang (Happy Feeling, Loving Feeling)’ while the advertisement reenacted real-life scenes of parent-children’s relationships in Malaysia. While giving out the nostalgic childhood feeling, the key idea delivered was clear; McDonald’s product Happy Meal was given by Malaysian parents to reward their kids for their good behaviours. Therefore, this was to show McDonald’s had fully studied Malaysians’ family traditions and that their product Happy Meal is every parent’s best choice of reward for their children.

Another way to show credibility was by having someone of high credibility endorse a company’s brand as a spoke person or face of the brand. In the Foodpanda advertisement, they collaborated with Nabila Huda, who is a well-known celebrity in Malaysia. In the advertisement, she acted out living her life as a career woman and at the same time, a wife. She demonstrated how she trusted Foodpanda’s versatility in delivering food, groceries, and pick-up services. Her natural acting had a positive influence on thelocal people’s positive acceptance of Foodpanda.

Pathos is an appeal that plays with emotions. Pathos advertisements do not only evoke one’s feelings but anticipate their responses too. Based on the researcher’s observations on the selected YouTube advertisements, there was one thing in common between them, which was the use of background music. For instance, in McDonald’s soft background music was played as it functioned to deliver the key idea of their advertisement which was the nostalgic parent-children relationships in Malaysia. Petronas’ advertisement, with every change of its story plot revolving around their characters, the music pattern also changed as if the music ‘builds’ the development of the video. Based on the advertisements, the emphasis on pathos refers to the change in facial reactions. For example, in the scene of theFoodpanda video, Nabila Huda suddenly braked her car midway driving to work as she just realised that she had forgotten her lunch box. Her dreadful facial expression changed into a very bright smile as an idea crossed her mind. She started making an order on the Foodpanda application. This chain of actions emphasised how people could sometimes be unintentionally forgetful but that could be eventually solved with Foodpanda.

Logos appeal helps the audience to interpret a message logically. The clarity of the intended message in the advertisement could be seen and comprehended easily by the audience. Logos usually relate to factual information. However, in the selected video advertisements, the logos appeal mostly circled the real-life reenactments of Malaysians’ lifestyles. For example, McDonald’s incorporated the reality of Malaysians’ parenting styles in educating their children as a logos appeal in their advertisement. Generally, in most Malaysians’ households regardless of race and religion, the parents would reward their children with fast food and McDonald’s was one of their best picks. The audiences would feel connected and accept the advertisement as the idea was convincing and close to their hearts.

From the selected advertisements, it was noticed that code-mixing had also become the choice for some of the brands to convey their intended messages concisely. For example, the ungrammatically correct ‘How-ever you show it, it’s still—Rasa Sayang’ and ‘Rasa Happy, Rasa Sayang’ in McDonald’s advertisement. Besides code-mixing, the use of hashtags (#) could also be seen in some of the advertisements. In recent years, hashtags have been being used widely by Malaysians across Internet and social media platforms especially since many of them are exposed to technological advances and are always up to date with the latest news. Hashtags are added to digital content to determine a specific topic or campaign. For example, Petronas, added #takecare at the end of their advertisement in their Independence Day celebration ad to remind Malaysians to care for each other.

CONCLUSIONS

In conclusion, Aristotle’s persuasive techniques are used in the three selected Malaysian YouTube advertisements, namely McDonald’s, Food Panda, Petronas Merdeka and Malaysia Day. Based on ethos, credibility is one of the important elements in video advertisement. Nabila Huda, a public figure with more than 10 years of experience in this industry was used as a spokesperson in Foodpanda advertisement.This finding is aligned with a study by English, Sweetser and Ancu (2011) in which participants watched three YouTube clips about health care and the result disclosed that ethos, or source credibility, was the highest-ranked appeal in terms of credibility chosen by the participants, followed by logos and pathos.

Besides that, it was found that the element of pathos had been fully utilised to gain anticipated reactions from the audiences. It was observed that utterances by narrators and characters were noticeably fewer in advertisements. The element of musical background is used in the advertisement as portrayed in McDonald’s advertisement where the ‘Rasa Sayang’ song was used. ‘Rasa Sayang’ is a cultural song that is popular among Malaysians and it has been used to engage Malaysians’ audiences to view the advertisements.

It was evident that the integration of logos subcomponents which were clarity and conciseness had facilitated to increase in the effectiveness level of the videos. The clarity of the intended message in the advertisement could be seen and comprehended easily by the audience. The logos appeals mostly circled the real-life reenactments of Malaysians’ lifestyles. For example, McDonald’s incorporated the reality of Malaysians’ parenting styles in educating their children as a logos appeal in its advertisement. The audiences would feel connected and accept the advertisement as the idea was convincing and close to their hearts. Other than that, the use of hashtags (#) could also be seen in some of the advertisements to express directness as portrayed in Petronas Merdeka Day and Malaysia Day advertisements.

From the aspect of logos, it was noticed that code-mixing had become the choice for some of the brands to convey their intended messages concisely. This is a result of the wide use of both code-mixing and code-switching by Malaysians in their daily lives along with code-switching. Waris (2012) in his study indicated that code-switching and code-mixing are common traits in the speech pattern of an average bilingualor multilingual in any human society across the world. It was also mentioned that code-mixed sentences were described as pieces of one language used while a speaker is using another language.

For pathos, background music that was related to Malaysian culture such as in a McDonald’s advertisement, using Rasa Sayang as their background music would make one remember nostalgic feelings during childhood.

As for the implications, this study has provided insights into what Rhetorical Elements are and how they are used from the point of a cultural perspective. This study will help advertisers and people in the marketing and business fields become more aware of the importance of incorporating the cultural backgrounds of their target audiences in Aristotle’s persuasive appeals in their digital promotional campaigns. Other than that, the findings of this study will also be significant to other disciplines of knowledge as well such as the Communication and Business Marketing fields. This is because Logos, Pathos, and Ethos are a set of strategic persuasive techniques that can guide marketers in developing their communication skills. Besides that, this study is crucial to prove the importance of locals’ acceptance of start-up companies or foreign brands that wish to expand their business in a target country. The findings have revealed that native people’s familiar cultural elements were widely used by advertisers in their advertisements as rhetorical appeals.

For future research, more studies should be done on this topic by using a more detailed method. Rather than only focusing on one data collection method, a mixed method can be used to measure the effectiveness of the advertisements from the audiences’ point of view. By doing so, the study will be more reliable and informative since the data are not only analysed through the advertisement, but it also takes the opinion of the audience into account. By opting for a mixed methodology, the researchers can obtain rich and stable data which eventually will provide them with more insights on the field. topic of interest. With that, a more holistic conclusion can be drawn from future research. Other than that, this study onlyanalysed video advertisements from YouTube Malaysia. To make it more interesting, it is suggested that future researchers conduct another study of the same topic and method on local and foreign video advertisements.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The authors would like to acknowledge the management of the Academy of Language Studies, Mara University of Technology for providing an internal grant to conduct the study.

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