Term paper

I think I just about understand what you are looking for from us for this term paper. I was planning on taking different advertisements from different types of media, just like we had to do for the last post but obviously do more of them and go more in depth with my analysis. The only thing I wanted to ask is if you want our opinion of if we think that the campaign does a good or bad job of persuading people. I know it is just a campaign analysis, so were you also interested in our personal opinion. Other than that I feel confident in what you are looking for from me.

Greenpeace ad's

The Greenpeace campaign, just like any campaign uses different persuasive techniques in order to convince their audience to join their side. When originally choosing the Greenpeace campaign I did research just based on what the campaign is all about rather than the persuasive techniques that the campaign may be using in order to win me over. After doing some research I found Greenpeace to be a strong organization that does their best in order spread the word of environmental issues being faced by the world and have successfully adopted many members to help. The campaign has even been influential regarding policy decisions in many countries all across the world. The campaign uses many techniques including the three artistic proofs, ethos, logs, and pathos, lobbying, enthymeme, and cause-and-effect reasoning in different ad campaigns they have created.

The first Greenpeace campaign commercial I watched was titled “Earth Day: Give Earth a Hand” which I found on YouTube. The commercial begins by showing peoples wants whether its car, an Iphone, electronic device shown in dark colors that seem more serious but capture attention. Then the commercial slowly changes its audience to think more logically by using logos and beings to show statements such as “I want water, I want food” which always hits another one of Aristotle’s three appeals pathos, the commercial makes the audience feel that they can do something. The commercial uses a metaphor extension having people’s hands being the vehicle in the advertisement and the tenor to be the ocean, grass, and the earth. As compared to other Greenpeace commercials I have seen this one seems to be less intense and graphic then others. I have found this to be very usually for Greenpeace considered other commercials I watched including on named Dove Onslaught(er) which beings with a small girl frowning staring directly right at the camera, then rapidly begins flashing through images of different animals living in forest in Indonesia slowly these images become disturbing pictures of the wilderness being destroyed and animals dying at the end statistic appear on the screen that are reasons to fight against the companies that produce dove products. I found this to be almost too dramatic and hard to take very serious because it is so ridiculous. I decided to see if advertisements for Greenpeace differed depending on the media that it is on. After looking at a number of ads for Greenpeace it is clear they often try to include pathos in all of their ads. The print images seemed t always contains a bit of rhetorical visual techniques including metaphor extensions, synecdoche, and metaphors. However, although I do respect the campaign and think they have done a lot I don’t know if I necessarily find their techniques to be one hundred percent effective.

As surprising as it is however if you take a visit to their online website that was created by them it is so peaceful and it makes the audience member feel more trustworthy towards the group because of all the information and things that the website has to offer. Aside from the website I have found that the ads generally all try and do the same thing. However, although I do respect the campaign and think they have done a lot I don’t know if I necessarily find their techniques to be one hundred percent effective. Greenpeace focus a lot of their attention on pathos, many of their campaigns directed to produce fear and emotion of the future. I do find it appropriate to use pathos in any persuasive campaign I do think that Greenpeace does go over bored with some of their ads. Using more logos in some ads can be used appropriately along with pathos. Many of their images are designed in order to shock the viewers and show the horrible environmental damages cause by humans.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odI7pQFyjso

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ep9MFiWXR8M

campaign analysis

I am not one to be very interested in politics and political campaigns, so when I heard that for my next presentation I was to talk about some sort of campaign analysis I was a little apprehensive. After doing some research I came across a campaign that was not all about politics and that I would not mind writing a long term paper on. “Greenpeace is an independent global campaigning organization that acts to change attitudes and behavior, to protect and conserve the environment and to promote peace” Greenpeace focuses on issues involving the earth such as climate change, forests, oceans, agriculture, toxic pollution and nuclear. The organization believes that the earth needs a voice, change, and a solution.

 I will be focusing on some of these aspects within my speech and paper but mainly about ocean and ocean life. I will cover marine reserves, and polar oceans how they are doing and what we can do to help. Marine reserves and their habitats need to be protected and could possibly give hope at reversing global fisheries decline. My target audience would be any legal adults that are willing to listen and help give a voice. I will need to find research to prove that our oceans and ocean life are in danger and what is causing this, and what can be done to help stop it. I will also need to research why this is such a controversy, many claim that there is nothing that can be done about the pollution that is being done to our oceans because there is nowhere else to put the waste and that trying to find some way to help is a big waste of time. As of right now I do not believe there are any circumstances or events that change the way the public views this controversy. Personally maybe the only event that changed the way I saw and felt about ocean and ocean life what watching Disney’s Oceans and getting to see the seriousness of this issue.

Dissoi Logoi

To be able to effectively persuade someone in to believing something there needs to be some sort of disagreement within the argument. When having an opinion about something whether it is about abortion, gay marriage, or The War on Drugs, there are always two sides your personal opinion and the opposing or counter side of the argument which is referred to as dissoi logoi. I recently gave a speech about animal rights and animal cruelty and how is inhuman and should be made illegal in the United States. Now while many do agree with this some say that animal testing is necessary and needs to be done in order to release any product to the public safely. The dissoi logoi public statement for me argument would be something along the lines of, animal testing and animal research have played a pivotal role in ensuring the safety for cosmetics, pharmaceutical, and household cleaning products. Animal testing has helped with many things including medical treatment, cures, preventions, vaccinations, and many more things that are essential to the human health.

Each side of animal testing do what they can to frame the issue by giving very little detail about the opposing side in order to persuade their audience. An example of how anti animal testing organizations frame would be how they talk about all the negative horrible things that are being done to animal in labs by showing pictures or telling stories as gruesome as they possibly can. However they do not share with people how beneficial and how many people have been helped because of animal testing. Pro animal testing organizations seem to give more statistics of all the people that have been helped without saying what is being done to the animals for people to be helped. The difference in the evidence is simply that pro animal testing organizations talk about animals being killed where the opposing side talks about the people are being saved because of it. I think that both sides generally have the same target audience all ages can be interested in something like this and neither side seem to favor a particular age. If any this is a bigger issue for adults because they can understand and help more than children can.

However many assumptions are made when it comes to animal testing especially people that are for animal testing. Many would assume that they could be consider killers and do not have any love toward animals and are only testing the products to protect themselves and their companies which is not true. I did a lot of research before choosing a side. The reason I am against animal testing is because it has been proven that there are alternatives to animal testing that are safe and effective. I am also a very big animal lover so when coming into this I was hostile toward animal testing. Although I am against it I do understand why animal testing is done, I don’t necessarily agree with it but both sides have their arguments and neither is right or wrong that is up to the audience to decide.

3 persuasive advertisments

When creating an advertisement, companies main purpose is to persuade their viewers into believing what they are saying or selling really does work. The first commercial advertisement that came to mind was the proactive commercials. I have always taken a sort of interest to proactive commercials considering they play on almost every channel on television and seem to be about two minutes long. Acne commercial targeted audience can vary they use teens and young adults in the commercial because that is normally the age where people develop acne but it can be for any person that suffers from acne. There are many things in this ad that caught my eye as them trying to persuade their audience. First proactive commercials never have failed to have a celebrity endorser to sell their product, from Julianne Huff all the way to Justin Bieber. This uses one of the six cues in heuristic decisions, authority. Also the commercials shows two women the inventors of proactive standing in lab coats telling us how great their product is which makes the audience put more trust in the product. Another thing I found to be persuasively compelling was the scarcity with in the commercial. “Call now and get our tea green moisturizer absolutely free!” What really caught my eye about this commercial was not only the celebrity endorsers or the women in lab coats, but even the graphics popping up on the screen catches your eye this is a very well made ad that had a lot of thinking put into it.

The next advertisement that caught my attention was the phony sham wow commercials. This ad’s are generally targeted for adults to elders. This is a cleaning tool children can use it but the adults are the ones that are going to buy it. These are the commercials that people laugh and see as ridiculous but there is always that thought in the back of everyone’s head, does it actually work? So the company might as well through in as many free items as they can so instead of their audience wondering if the product actually works, they go out and buy it because might as well right I mean you’re getting more then you are paying for, or are you? These commercials use a lot of scarcity probably more than any other in order to sell their product. Also the man selling the product adds one or Aristotle’s rhetoric, ethos. He is easily likable and seems to have a lot of charisma and seems to be very trust worthy by showing example after example of how much time and money this little cloth could save.

For my last example I did not want to use another commercial advertisement so I sought out to find a persuasive opinioned article. The article I came across titled, Is persuasion dead? By Matt Miller found on the New York Times website is an article that discusses how it is merely impossible now a days to change someone’s mind into making them think something completely else. The reason I used this article was because it was a persuasive essay that persuaded me to believe that persuasion does not exist anymore. The writer uses logos in order to make it seem as if people are not trying to persuade anymore but to win. This can target a very wide audience maybe from teenage years up. The male writer is not trying to sell any product he just simply wants people to hear him and agree with him. Now this is not a major news topic and was actually written in June in 2005. This article was written and posted to the New York Times website so this automatically grabbed my attention because of the authority of the New York Times. I am now learning that persuasion happens everywhere, to convincing someone to go to the restaurant you want to go to, to getting America to vote for you as the president of the United States.

 

online ad

Surprisingly, it actually took me a very long time to find an advertisement that I found to be good enough for this blog post. Many of the ads that I came across were already used in class discussion so I was unable to use them. I eventually settled with an ad that is advertising Sony headphones. The image is of a woman on an airplane with a child sitting behind her. The women is wearing a pair of Sony headphones and looks very relaxed, as the child behind her has his feet up on her chair and has a gaming system in his hand. In advertising many companies choose to include one of Burke’s four master tropes which include metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony.

 In this particular case Sony decided to use a metaphor, which is seeing something in terms of something else. Instead of using an actual human head Sony replaced the young boys head with a mega phone instead. The company did this to show that there headphones are the best at blocking out all noises that could interrupt the peacefulness that comes when a person purchases Sony headphones. The child is a metaphor for something loud that could possibly ruin the experience of the headphones but does not because the headphones are of such good quality.  For this advertisement the tenor is the child, or Childs head and the vehicle is the megaphone. Also by having the advertisement take place in an airplane was a positive choice for this ad Airplanes can be stressful and loud and no one wants a loud noisy child sitting behind them irritating them for the entire trip. Sony shows how they can help rid of something like this happening. I think in a sense this ad also includes some metonymy, loudness is not something that can be drawn, is needs a symbol of some sort in order to portray loudness. The megaphone is the symbol used. I think that Sony did a good job with their ad and defiantly got their point across of how well the headphones work. It is an easy metaphor that most people can understand at first glance.

Company logo's

I decided to use the Baskin Robbins logo for this blog post. The reason behind the name Baskin Robbin came from the inventors. Two brother-in-laws that wanted to start an ice cream shop, Burton Baskin, and Irvine Robbins. From a project I have done in the past I already some things about the Baskin Robbin logo. Many people may not notice but the pink in the logo that go with the B and R actually are pink to show the number thirty-one which is the amount of flavors that is offered at Baskin Robbin. The use the number 31 for a different ice cream flavor for each day of the month. The logo is not too detailed; it is simply an upper case B and R with only two colors blue and pink. The font it very fun and happy looking, with some of the sides of the letters being uneven to each other.

I felt by using pink and blue as the color choice this helps the company appeal to both girls and boys of all ages. However the true reason the company used pink in their design was because of the pink spoons that are given to customers when they ask for samples, the blue representing the quality and excellent of the ice cream. Also having the font be fun and loud looking makes it seem like if someone were to go to get ice cream at Baskin Robbin they are going to have  a fantastic time. Some times when presenting the logo the company places it on a sort of tilt making it seem even more fun and care free which defiantly appeals to children as well as adults. The reason the font is more intercut then the original logo which was changed in 2006 was to make it more stylized and modern for today’s world. I feel that the logo does successfully incorporate the company’s mission for advertising. It’s simple but still has the hidden 31 in it making people think about it more. The colors appeal to their 31 fun and different flavors that the ice cream store offers. I think Baskin Robbin did a great job with their logo.

Lines in cartoons

Although I have never actually seen this cartoon character used before, I found it to contain a lot of the lines and things in art that we discussed earlier in the week in class. This cartoon was named “old school graffiti cartoon” illustrated by John Johnson. The first thing my eyes were drawn to when first looking at this drawing was the artist use of gestural quality lines. The artist used very ridged and jaggy lines to create the cartoons hands, ears, hair and head. Almost the entire drawing is a gestural line. By using these types of lines it almost gives the viewer an idea or feel of how this character might feel or act. To me is seems like the cartoon skater is a dare devil or someone that’s angry in some way. The character has no face giving it almost a dark feeling, if I was another cartoon character I would not mess with this skater.

Also in some way this drawing is directional. When first viewing the image my eyes went from the characters left hand all the way up to his head and then back down to his right hand and then down to the skateboard. I suppose in some way this could be considered an representational drawing, the work resembles what we see, we can all tell that this is a person, but in reality this is nothing what a person looks like. The use of lines also for some reason makes me feel that this character is a very good skater; it may not have anything to do with line. It just may be simply because the cartoon looks like he is doing a trick in the air. Even the place many of the lines which are mostly all straight lines even create a face without barley any detail at all. It is amazing what just a simple straight line can be used to create. By drawing with one line I am able to feel emotion and see a real character.

Symbols

It was hard for me to first think of something that really can capture my personality and symbolize me as a person. I have a very laid back easy going personality and wanted to find something that is somewhat like that. As strange as it may sound I finally decided on a surfboard or surfing to symbolize me and my personality. Now surfboards do not necessarily have a particular thing that they represent but I decided to think further into it. In order to ride a surfboard properly you need to have balance and harmony not only with the board but with the waves as well. This is how my life usually, having balance and harmony with all of my relationships is crucial to having good healthy relationships which I currently do with everyone in my life. Surfboards in some way “go with the flow” of things flowing through the water and riding the wave and does a surfer rarely ever encounter a bump in the way while riding the wave. Like I mentioned early I am a very easy going person and do go with the flow of things and never normally cause any type of drama or anything like that. Also it is said that if a person dreams that they are surfing a surfboard represents a person ability to control their emotions and the ups and downs that people encounter in their lives. Some may say it is a bad thing but I never normally get upset I feel that if something is not right or does not go the way that is hoped it would to move on and just keep going, everything does happen for a reason, and if something bad happens something good will fall in place of that. I never let my emotions get the best of me. Finally peace, when a surfer is deck diving underneath the waves in order to get through the ocean to paddle further out there is that moment underwater of pure silence and peace. I do consider myself to be a very peaceful person. So the things that are done will surfing, riding the wave and keep moving forward, balancing to stay on the board, going underwater and having a few seconds away from the real world all in my opinion represent me and how my life is.