BP 6: R&R (SPE 212)

I never realized how much advertising plays a role in our society until this blog post assignment. I imagined advertising took place on television during commercials and on the radio. Not realizing that advertising is practically everywhere we look. After my twenty-four hour advertising period was complete my list of ads was full. I saw ads I never even knew existed. I am more aware of advertising now than I ever was before. I see them everywhere since my advertising adventure began!

            The most unusual advertising tactic I saw was on a car. I never saw such an unusual advertising in my life. When I got home I researched it and came across more information. When you rent a car from places sometimes they have advertising on it. Also, some people get paid a few hundred dollars a month to drive around with an organizations ad on their car.

            The ad I disliked the most came from a television show. The Voice on the NBC network had one of their contestants drive to the competition in a Kia automobile. There was a 3-4 second pause, when the camera was directly looking at the Kia logo. The male contestant received a call from his daughter on the hand free phone device the Kia car company offers. Before this class I never would have even realized Kia was using advertising directly in the show. I found this ad to be frustrating. I thought it was extremely fake looking and didn’t make me want to purchase a Kia. Of course, this is just my opinion and maybe someone else watching the program found Kia to be appealing.  If I was the advertising agency who created this ad I would have made the ad more realistic looking and not so cheaply designed.

            The most obvious ad I found on my advertising journey was on T-shirts and other clothing materials. There are thousands of people on our campus every day. I never took notice of peoples shirts until now. I found advertising for food places like Subway and Wawa. There were a lot of construction and car towing shirts I saw people wearing as well. The most popular type of advertising on t-shirts and clothing I found were from stores. For example, the typical Hollister or Abercrombie shirt that has their brand name written on the shirt or sweatpants. I believe this is a very smart tactic used by the clothing companies. They already know people buy these clothing items so they know it will be a profit for them. Secondly, while there consumer is wearing their clothing items the company is getting free advertising.  Although, it is getting annoying to see everyone wearing the same type of clothing with the brand name written down the side of the shirt, it is a creative move on the company’s part.
                
              I found the usual advertising while keeping my advertising diary. There are a few main ads I used to see before this assignment that I still see today. This includes ads on the side of your computer when browsing the web, in the newspaper, magazines, and on the sides of buses. These types of advertising have been around for years and will continue to stay. I believe that all the ads I saw, the new and old, all tried their best to catch my attention. Most were cleaver while some like the Kia ad made me want to change the channel.  I found that most advertising can be seen any time of day, depending on where you are and what you are doing. There are some ads that can only be found during the evening hours on television, like the Kia ad on The Voice. Watching television during the prime time hours is when I found the most popular and interesting commercials that did an excellent job advertising a product.

            After this blog post assignment I see ads even more frequent then I did before. I am more aware of where advertising is located and how I truly feel about advertising. I believe the advertising world is in full effect and there will be more creative and catchy ads to come as the years go by.

Advertisements have a big impact on society because they are everywhere as mentioned above. The impact of ads can be positive and negative, just like anything else in the world. Advertisements make a difference in the way we thinks of the world. This is because ads try to persuade people’s decisions and views on different things. Whether it be what restaurant to eat at for dinner or what doctor to go to the next time you’re sick. Ads help us decide many different things throughout the day and lead us to make decisions on pretty much everything. Over time ads will make a difference in the way we think about the world because ads could almost make choices for us. For example, an ad could easily make the decision in where a family goes on vacation depending on the billboard they see for Cancun, Mexico on the highway.  Ads are a big part of our world, but I truly believe there will always be pros can cons to the different ads we see around us. The consumer has to decipher what ad to play into and what to stay away from.

BP6: R&R (SPE 370)

I chose a clover to represent me. This symbol in many ways shows who I am as a person and expresses my past. To some people this is just a clover. They are found in green grasses in the spring time but after picked and considered lucky they are usually thrown to the ground.

 This icon is very special to me for a few reasons. I have a very strong Irish background and I am proud of where my ancestors came from many years ago. Another reason this icon represents me is because I was born on St. Patrick’s Day which is the day we celebrate the Irish descent. I believe it was gift that I was born on such a great day. My name is Jillian Patricia which is an extremely Irish name. The four leaf clover symbolizes me because my favorite color is green. When I was younger I thought all the green decorations on my birthday were for me, not realizing there was a national holiday going on at the same time. Green was always my favorite color and always will be.

 Lastly, I have four people in my immediate family. This includes my mom, dad, sister, and me. I feel that each clove on the four leaf clover represents each of my family members. I think it is special how all the cloves face into the middle almost looking like four hearts, and they all come together at the end with one stem. It makes me believe that even though each of my family members including myself are all very busy, and we each have our own lives we still always come back to the center just like the cloves do with the stem. We have a unique family bond that is as rare as finding an actual four leaf clover on a grassy hill. I believe that a clover icon will always represent who I am because there are so many significant meanings behind it. Seeing a clover makes me happy because it reminds me of where I came from.

In class we discussed Peirce’s 3 types of signs. A four leaf clover would be symbolic. In my mind it is symbolic because it represents something special to me. Now that we learned about vision and the eye it is interesting to think about how an icon such as a four leaf clover can represent a million different things depending on the person. I find that intriguing and I never even thought about that until this class.

Now that the semester is almost over I can analyze this symbol more elaborately. I feel the lines are very to the point and make it easy to make out the clover. It is easy to see the four different parts of the clover which I used to represent each of the members of my family. There are a few different greens in this clover. The top of the clover is the lightest and as you go down to the stem it becomes darker. I feel this shows the difference between the clover itself and the stem. It makes it more interesting to look at having different colors and not just one color green.  Other than line and colors the clover icon I chose is extremely bare. In some way this can relate back to our textbook McCloud. He believes that the more basic a face is the more people can enjoy and relate to it. I feel this way towards my icon being the clover. Since the clover is so plain I could see myself, and my family, and how it relates to my life in so many ways. This would have been much more difficult if the clover was more in-depth and elaborate. This icon represents me in many ways as discussed above. I am now able to analyze this image in a new way. This is something I never would have been able to do before this class.



SPE-370 Essay #3 Image

I found this image on Google Images and the source was Anonymous.

SPE 370 Blog Post 5

The original ad is from an Indonesian website for non-smoking but was found on an American non-smoking ads campaign website. At first when one reads the text “how long can you live?” but may not take much notice at the numbers on the left side of the ad. After looking more in depth at the cigarette the numbers popped out more. It may only take a few seconds to realize what this ad is trying to say. The cigarette being lit and burning down represents one’s life expectancy is also burning and becoming lower and lower. The quote is also asking the audience a question. This open ended question “how long can you live?” really makes one think.  Most healthy people want to live a full prosperous life and this ad makes one view cigarette smoking in a negative light.  

The color used in this ad is very plain. Black, white, and brown are the only colors used. Using only a few basic colors makes it easy to understand what the ad is trying to get across to their audience. If there were lots of colors and designs going on it would be more difficult for the viewer of the ad to grasp the concept. The text size goes from small to large which makes the viewer see how important and meaningful the message is as you read it. “Live” is the last word and since it is the biggest it shows the significant meaning in the word and how it relates to cigarettes.

The repetition in the numbers on the left side are extremely important because it shows how easy is to die at a young age depending on if you smoke a lot or in this case if you smoke the whole cigarette. In the ad the balance is on point. It is easy to look at because of the balance that is taking place. For instance, on the right side it is the text and on the left is the image which is the cigarette. Having two key points in the picture both on different sides makes the picture look evenly proportioned and balanced correctly. The emphasis is directed towards the cigarette because there is black text on both sides of the cigarette. When viewing the ad one looks directly at the image because it is the only thing that isn’t the color black. There is similarity in the advertisement with the numbers. Having similarities and number patterns make it easy for the audience to understand the concept that the ad is trying to convey.

Kenneth Burke is a rhetorical scholar who drew from psychology and religion. Burke is known for being self-taught which something very rare. Burke created the “four masters tropes”. This includes metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, irony. The metaphor in this ad is seeing the cigarette as a time line of your life in years if you smoke, instead of just a cigarette. The metaphor makes this ad have so much meaning that it wouldn’t have without it. If this image was metaphor free it would just simply be a cigarette, which wouldn’t be a very cleaver ad. The metonymy in the advertisement is showing that if one smokes cigarettes they will die faster, which ultimately shortens one’s life. The Metonymy shows this because the text and the image add up to enforce this fact. The synecdoche in the ad refers the cigarette killing people. Obviously, not one cigarette can kill but the synecdoche is making the ad viewer see that cigarettes can do harm. Being able to view one cigarette and relate that to people dying because of smoking shows the synecdoche is present in this ad. Lastly, irony is extremely viewable in this ad. Without the one line question and the numbers on the left side this ad would not be used as a non-smoking campaign image. The image needs text to go along with the picture. It would be representing smoking and could possibly give people the wrong image without text. If there wasn’t irony in this ad one wouldn’t know this was for non-smoking advocates. Having text go along with an image is extremely important. They rely on each other and are better together then separate when relaying a message to the public. This ad shows just that.

Using Burkes tropes and many other design elements and principles one views this image in a new way. If one looks at this image quickly they will not see nearly as much in-depth meaning, as if one analyzes and understands knowledge, artistic, media literate information. This ad shows people every day the negative side effects associated with cigarette smoking. After a few seconds of looking at this image one knows smoking is bad, this is exactly what the creators wanted to get across to their audience. It is safe to say this non-smoking campaign image is successful and shows the truth about cigarettes and did a good job showing that using many different tactics.

SPE 212 Blog Post Five

Illegally downloading music has been a controversial issue for many years. From Youtube to ITunes, there are many ways everyday people can get their hands on the newest tune without paying a dime. The average person who illegally downloads music feels as though it is there right to listen to whatever they want. One believes a ten dollar contribution to the music industry by purchasing a CD will not make a difference, since the singer is already “wealthy”. On the other hand, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is extremely concerned with illegally downloading music and blames it on the lack of music sales for the last few years.

There are many different ways ethics plays a role in the music industry and illegal downloading. People have morals and ethics. Morals are a religious or philosophical code of behavior that may or may not be rational. Ethics is the rational way of deciding what is good for individuals.  Depending on what one believe, morals and ethical beliefs may play a bigger or small role in one’s life. This is why some people illegally download music without an ounce of guilt while others would rather pay the ten dollars to buy the CD and not feel any type of ethical or moral wrongness.

Categorical Imperative asks people to consider what would be the result of everyone acting the same way they themselves wish to act. This is a fascinating idea when thinking of the issue of illegally downloading music. People who download music may feel that since only a small population downloads music, it doesn’t make an overall difference to the people who deserve the credit and money. One would imagine Immanual Kant, who is the creator of categorical imperative would feel very strongly about this issue. Kant would probably ask our generation a simple question. If everyone in the world downloaded music would there be a successful music industry? The answer is obviously no, but without understanding categorical imperative one would never think that deeply about such issue.

It is interesting to think if roles were switched. For instance, if the people doing the illegal downloading would be the ones in the music industry and they had to deal with the issue of people downloading music illegally. One would hope that then these people would see how much harm they are causing to a once successful industry.

Sissela Bok created a three-step model for analyzing an ethical situation that works well with this topic. Number one: consult your conscience. In other words, one needs to think about what is going on during a particular situation and figure out what is truly going on inside one’s head. Number two: seek alternatives. This simply means one must think about or realize all different alternatives one has when in a situation. Number three: hold an imaginary ethical dialogue with everyone involved. This last step seems to be the most important. To follow this step one must hold an imaginary ethical conversation with everyone involved. This is helpful because when one is in a situation many things can go wrong. If one already has an imaginary dialogue in there head it can help the person better understand what is going on at that moment. It helps the person see what could potentially happen if they do a certain thing and what the ethical consequences could be.

Overall, when dealing with the issue of illegally downloading music, is it important to look at ethics and the pros and cons in each situation. Immanuel Kant and Sisseal Box created useful ethical guidelines and questions that one can ask themselves throughout life. Downloading music illegally is wrong when seeing it in a moral or ethical viewpoint.  After learning about Kant and Bok’s teachings one can view the music downloading controversy in a different light. If one knows about ethics and what these scholars have brought to the table, one should never download music illegally ever again. The music industry are the losers in this situation and the people who download music for free and don't get into trouble are the winners, which is truly unfortunate and ethically wrong.