It's All About the Heart

Abstract

This chapter aimed to provide responses, within the issue of cardiovascular health, to the effectiveness of the relation between the message's content (“what”) and form (“how”) and the triad of (cognitive-affective-behavioral) effects. The qualitative content analysis, concretely thematic and rhetorical types, was applied to a corpus of five ads from international campaigns (2015-2019) and three static Portuguese ads (2018-2019). One online survey of Portuguese university students (N = 55) was conducted. The findings show that the ads' issues vary from irreparable losses to the encouragement of healthy behaviors. The pathos tends to elicit various reactions (e.g., alarm, call to action, empathy, fear, guilt, hurt, worry). The logos are constructed of discursive devices (e.g., construction of a narrative, use of questions, selection of colors with connotative purposes, descriptions of concepts), evidence, and stylistic devices. Most of the respondents recognize the cognitive and affective influence, but not the behavioral effects.