Presentations

I really like Danica's presentation.  I liked the way she interpreted the prompt and had a different take on the essay than everyone else did. I thought that her use of pop culture and how people feel about themselves made the presentation so much more interesting. The images she used were intriguing and got me thinking and kept my focus. I also liked that she talked about the health risks involved with certain trends instead of just why it's bad to be a follower and not create your own image. Overall I really enjoyed the presentation!

Buying an Identity, Destroying the World

The way we as American’s tend to view ourselves is based on our possessions. We buy certain clothes in order to portray ourselves a certain way to others. But not only are we buying things for the wrong reasons, we’re buying TOO MANY things for the wrong reasons. It seems that nowadays there is so much more of everything! There’s one car for every driving member of a household, there’s one TV for every room in the house, everyone has their own cell phone, laptop, and numerous other electronics. This overconsumption is harmful not only to our pocketbooks and our self esteems but also to the environment. With all this buying a lot is going to waste. We’re throwing away products as we aquire new ones and the waste is absolutely tremendous. It’s beautifully illustrated in Faustian Economics when it is said, “our national faith so far has been: there’s always more”.  It’s crazy how we can use and use and use and think that there will be no consequences to our actions. Eventually we’ll run out of things like oil and fossil fuels and then what? We have little alternatives as of right now. Our overconsumption needs to slow down if science is ever going to be able to catch up. 

Advertising and Your Emotions

Advertisers use our emotions to trick us into buying things. They tell you it will somehow improve your quality of life. If it’s clothes, you’ll look better. If it’s a car, it’ll run better and people will think you’re cooler. No matter what it is it’s going to make your life better. In Layouts and Illustrations Caples makes the claim that “the principal consideration in selecting the style of type for your copy is that it should be easy to read. The easiest type for people to read is the type they read most often.” This doesn’t seem like an emotional appeal but that’s the trick of advertising. The familiarity of the text draws you in. It seems comforting and something you’re at home with. The smallest trick goes unnoticed by the consumer, they don’t know why they’re so drawn in by an ad. They may mistake this for attraction to the product. These unnoticed tactics are the scariest, in my opinion. 

Web of Connections

We live in such a technological world that it becomes impossible to avoid advertisements. Not only are advertisements everywhere we turn, they also appeal to us whether we know it or not. Advertisers have honed their skills using ethos, pathos, and logos. The advertisers have learned how to appeal to our emotions to manipulate us into buying their product when in actuality we never wanted it in the first place. They play on our memories and try to get us to reminisce. In Making Connections by Anthony Greene describes this saying, “Visiting your alma mater, catching a whiff of burning leaves or finding a letter from a loved one can bring back vivid memories and events you might not have thought about in years. Item associations let us remember that Italy has good wine, and they help us connect people’s names to their faces.” (Greene 27) If we see an ad over and over and it has a common theme then we’re more apt to remember that brand versus others. For instance the Geico Gecko, Ronald McDonald, and numerous other advertisement mascots allow us a sort of familiarity with the company, we begin to feel as though we know them on a personal level and that’s a tactic that advertisers are well aware of.  Blakeslee describes this control perfectly, “Several decades into the era of consumer capitalism the whiz kids on Madison Avenue have learned fairly well how to attach psychic puppet strings to our minds but they will never really know why their tricks worked.” Advertisers know many ways to draw in potential customers and they don’t really seem to know how they’re doing it but they do know that what they’re doing works.