Before we go any further, let’s acknowledge the thing.

Ethos, pathos, logos. Athos, Porthos, Aramis.

These are not the same words. They are, however, extremely similar words, arranged in groups of three, and if you’ve ever sat in a marketing seminar and heard someone introduce Aristotle’s three modes of persuasion, there is a reasonable chance that part of your brain quietly started drawing a tiny sword*.

This is not a coincidence worth wasting. Because it turns out that Athos, Porthos, and Aramis are — if you squint at them the right way — a rather good illustration of the three concepts. Which we’ll come back to.

First, the framework itself. Because it’s genuinely one of the most useful things anyone has ever said about communication, and it was said approximately 2,350 years ago by a man who had never written a landing page, and it still applies to every piece of marketing written this morning.

_{*And if you’re of a certain age, it’s probably being held by a dog}

What Aristotle actually said

Aristotle’s Rhetoric is a manual for persuasion*. His argument, simplified considerably: there are three things that make communication persuasive, and all three need to be present for it to work properly.

The first is ethos — the credibility of the speaker. Are you someone worth listening to? Do you know what you’re talking about? Do you have the kind of track record or character that earns trust?

The second is pathos — the emotional resonance of the message. Does this connect to something the audience actually cares about? Does it make them feel the thing that moves them toward the right decision?

The third is logos — the logic of the argument. Is there a coherent case here? Is the reasoning sound? Are the claims evidenced?

None of these is sufficient alone. Logos without ethos is a technically correct argument from someone the audience doesn’t trust — and people don’t follow technically correct arguments from people they don’t trust; they find reasons to disagree. Ethos without pathos is a credible person saying something the audience doesn’t care about. Pathos without logos is an emotional appeal with no substance behind it, which works briefly and damages trust permanently.

Together, all three, in the right proportion for the context — that’s persuasion. That’s what moves people from interested to convinced.

_{*Aristotle, Rhetoric, c. 350 BC. Aristotle also discussed kairos — the right timing — and lexis — the right style — but these didn’t make it into the Three** Musketeers analogy and have therefore been quietly omitted. Sorry, kairos.}

_{**If we stretched it to five I’d eventually have to explain Albert.}

Which brings us to the Musketeers

Alexandre Dumas published The Three Musketeers in 1844. Aristotle published Rhetoric around 350 BC. They did not collaborate. And yet…

Athos / Ethos

The quiet one. The credible one. The one you follow without being told why.

Athos is the musketeer with no apparent need to prove himself, which is how you know he doesn’t need to*. He has done things. He has history. There is weight to him that the others don’t have, and it communicates itself without announcement. When Athos speaks, people listen — not because he is loud or persuasive, but because he is clearly someone whose judgement has been tested.

This is ethos. It is not a certificate you display. It is not a list of awards. It is the accumulated weight of having done the thing you claim to be able to do, made visible through how you talk about it, what you say and what you don’t say, whether your track record is legible to the person reading.

In marketing, ethos is your credibility. It’s the named clients, the specific results, the case study that actually says what changed rather than just that things got better. It’s the willingness to be specific where specificity is verifiable, and to stay quiet where it isn’t.

Ethos is also, importantly, the thing that marketing cannot manufacture and can only demonstrate. You cannot write your way to credibility. You can write in a way that makes existing credibility legible — or in a way that obscures it — but the credibility itself has to already be there.

_{*Athos is not, in the novel, a particularly good communicator. He is taciturn to the point of social dysfunction and has significant unresolved personal trauma. He is, however, unquestionably credible. People follow him because he is clearly someone who has done things and suffered things and come through them with his integrity intact. Which is, as it happens, exactly how ethos works.}

In practice: Ethos

• Named clients: Specific client names (with permission) do more than “leading organisations across multiple sectors.” The specificity is the credibility.
• Concrete results: “Response rates increased by 34%” beats “significant improvement in engagement.” If you have the number, use it.
• Honest scope: Saying what you do and what you don’t do is itself an ethos signal. Specialists are more credible than people who do everything.
• Tone: Confident without overreaching. Credibility sounds like someone who doesn’t need to persuade you they’re credible.

Porthos / Pathos

The loud one. The vital one. The one who makes you feel something before you know what you think.

Porthos is A Lot*. He is big and enthusiastic and not particularly subtle and absolutely impossible to ignore. He doesn’t calculate his emotional effect — he simply has one, by force of presence. In the room, something happens when Porthos arrives, and it happens before he’s said a word.

Pathos is not manipulation. This is a misunderstanding worth clearing up. Manipulation is a false emotional appeal — creating a feeling that isn’t warranted by the reality of the situation. Pathos is a true emotional appeal — connecting what’s real about your offer to what actually matters to your audience.

The difference is that manipulation requires the audience not to think too hard. Pathos survives scrutiny. When a piece of marketing makes you feel something and then, upon reflection, you find that the feeling was appropriate to the actual situation, the actual stakes, the actual thing on offer — that’s pathos working correctly.

In practice, pathos in marketing usually means one of two things: understanding what problem the audience is actually trying to solve and describing it with enough precision that they feel understood; or showing what changes for someone when the thing you offer works the way it should. Not features. Not capabilities. The actual difference it makes to a specific person in a specific situation.

This is harder than it looks, because it requires knowing the audience well enough to know what they actually care about — which is frequently not what the company thinks they care about, and rarely what appears in the marketing brief.

_{*Porthos is, again, in the novel, not exactly a sophisticated emotional communicator — he is mostly trying to impress people and occasionally succeeds accidentally. But his physical presence, his energy, his obvious delight in being alive do create an emotional response in the people around him. He makes you feel something, even if that something is mostly mild exasperation. This is pathos, broadly defined.}

In practice: Pathos

• Start with the problem: Name the specific frustration, pressure, or gap the audience is dealing with before you mention anything you offer. If they feel understood, they’ll keep reading.
• Show the after: Not “our platform improves workflow efficiency.” What does a Tuesday look like when it works? Be specific about what changes.
• One person, not everyone: Pathos is easier to create for a specific person than for a demographic. Write for one reader. The others will recognise themselve
• Earned emotion: The feeling should be warranted by the reality. If you’re asking for more emotion than the situation justifies, the reader will feel the gap.

Aramis / Logos

The precise one. The one doing the actual thinking while the other two are being vivid about it.

Aramis is the musketeer you underestimate*. He is quieter than Porthos, less immediately magnetic than Athos. But he is the one who has worked out the plan, considered the alternatives, and knows what happens next. The thinking is done by Aramis. The others make it feel necessary and credible.

Logos is the part of the argument that holds up when someone stops feeling the feeling and starts asking questions. And they will ask questions — not in the moment of reading, usually, but later, in a meeting where they have to justify the decision to someone who wasn’t in the room.

This is the thing B2B marketing often forgets. The person you’re writing for is not always the person who makes the final decision. They are frequently someone who has to take the case elsewhere — upward, laterally, to a committee — and they need the logic to travel with them. If your marketing is all ethos and pathos, the reader is convinced but cannot convince anyone else, because they have feelings but not arguments.

Logos in marketing is: the specific claim, the evidence that supports it, the reasoning that connects one to the other. It is the case study with actual numbers. It is the comparison that is specific rather than vague. It is the explanation of why the thing works, not just the assertion that it does.

Logos is also the thing most likely to be cut in an edit because it makes the piece “too long” or “too detailed.” This is usually a mistake. The reader who needs the detail will leave without it. The reader who doesn’t need the detail will skim it. Cutting it for the skimmer costs you the reader who needed it.

_{*Aramis is in fact the most duplicitous of the four, with an elaborate secret life and a habit of lying about almost everything. He is, however, the one who does the careful planning, the intellectual work, the consideration of consequences. His logos is excellent even if his ethos is arguably compromised. This is a tension that Aristotle would have recognised.}

In practice: Logos

• Evidence over assertion: “Our clients see results” is an assertion. “Three clients reduced their sales cycle by an average of six weeks” is evidence. Use evidence.
• Make the case travel: Assume your reader has to justify the decision to someone who won’t read your piece. Give them the argument, not just the conclusion.
• Explain the mechanism: Not just what happens but why. The reader who understands the logic is more convinced than the reader who has only seen the outcome.
• Specific comparisons: “Better than alternatives” is not a claim. “Unlike X approach, which requires Y, ours does Z” is. Be willing to be specific about the comparison.

All for one

D’Artagnan — the fourth musketeer, the one who isn’t in the name — spends most of the novel learning to work with the other three*. He arrives with talent and enthusiasm and no idea how to use them in combination. By the end, he has learned to read the situation: when to lead with credibility, when to lead with feeling, when to make the argument.

This is, more or less, what good marketing requires.

Not a fixed formula — the right proportion of each depends on the audience, the context, the stage of the relationship, and what’s already been established. A client who already trusts you needs more logos and less ethos. A cold audience who doesn’t know you exists needs ethos before anything else**. A piece of content designed to move someone who is almost decided needs pathos — the final connection between what they want and what you offer — more than either of the others.

The question to ask of any piece of marketing isn’t “is this good writing?” It’s “which of the three does this piece need most, and does it have it?” And then, one level down: “does the ethos hold up under scrutiny, or is it asserted? Does the pathos connect to something real, or is it manufactured? Does the logos give the reader something they can take elsewhere, or does it rely on the feeling surviving the meeting?”

Aristotle asked these questions in 350 BC about speeches given in the Athenian assembly.

The Athenian assembly is no longer with us.

The questions are.

_{*D’Artagnan, in this framework, is the marketer — young, enthusiastic, technically capable, perpetually trying to work out which of the three to lead with in a given situation, and getting it wrong about as often as right. The novel, from this perspective, is about learning to use all three in the right order. This may be a stretch but at this point I am fully committed to it.}

_{**The order matters. Logos before ethos produces a technically correct argument from an untrustworthy source. Pathos before ethos produces an emotional appeal from a stranger, which feels manipulative. Ethos before pathos before logos is not a rule, but it’s a reasonable default: establish why you should be listened to, give the reader a reason to care, then show your working.}