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Persuasion and the Olympics

As the 2016 Summer Olympics near, I’m continually being persuaded to watch. Social media is playing a huge role in that and it’s working a lot of angles. Persuasion is largely emotional, so stories titled “Olympians and their pets” or “What special items are Olympians packing to Rio?” are definitely working on me. I love to see the competitors’ REAL lives, it helps me connect with them emotionally. Though I cannot relate to running a race or competing in any sport, I can relate to owning a puppy or having a stuffed animal that I’ve loved since birth.

All of this persuasion is in order to encourage me to participate in the Olympic games, by watching and cheering for team USA. TV ratings and advertisements will both promote and prove the success of such persuasive tactics. If I’m persuaded to watch the Olympics, companies will have the opportunity to attempt to persuade me to purchase their products. Networks will be able to say they successfully persuaded me to watch their network and therefore sell that advertising time at a premium (think about the Superbowl and the most expensive advertisements of all time). I’m being persuaded to watch in hopes of being persuaded to buy. That’s what you get in a consumer culture, I guess!

But as we focus on the Olympics themselves, the persuasion has been happening my entire life. I’ve been watching the Olympics faithfully for 20+ years. I’m not a huge sports person, but I believe in America. I love watching the competitors and feeling the pride in winning races and competitions as an American. I also love that this years Olympics (and I would guess those to come) is giving me the opportunity to connect with the competitors in a way I’ve never been able to before.

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Consumer Literacy/Mainstream Culture

I started this blog post by trying to explore how we can change mainstream culture if it’s so deeply rooted in history and what has always been. It is literally impossible to change the past, so the only thing we can try to change is the future. I really enjoyed the blog about Consumer Literacy because it focused on teaching children in order to change the future.  

We are a culture of consumerism. We place our on value on our monetary accomplishments and we live above our means more often than not in order to prove our value to those around us.  As a society, how do we break that cycle? Borchers’ definition of mainstream culture focuses on what has been historically accepted within our culture since its origination. Definitions like this don’t take into consideration the ability of the people to change their culture. If we think about the mainstream culture in America it was VASTLY different than our mainstream culture of today.  The reason for that change is because parents chose to teach their children (or allowed the world to teach them) something different than what has always been.

It’s so important in our world to continually challenge the ideas of what’s always been. We have the power to change the future. I think about the upcoming presidential election and all of the pressure put on voting age adults to vote. Campaigns claiming to get out and vote, make it to the polls, even jokes about putting special pokemon at the polling locations to encourage young people to get to the polls and vote. I challenge the opposite. If 2/3 of the voting population chooses to abstain, we need to figure out why. Are they uneducated about the candidates? Then good, don’t vote. Get educated and try again. If we’re not voting because we don’t believe in the system, we need to explore how to change the system to be one we believe in.

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Persuasion and Advertising

In reading through Chapter 13 of Persuasion in the Media Age by Timothy Borchers, I’m really fascinated by how well they characterize advertising.  “Advertising, he writes, is ubiquitous, symbiotic, profane, and magical,” (354).  Borchers goes on to explain how advertising is all around us - in the clothes we wear, the stores we go to, the car we drive (and you’ve already purchased that one!), the radio, TV, internet.  We literally can see advertising anywhere.  I’m pretty sure the only way to avoid it is to go to a deserted area naked, and even then, don’t allow yourself to see a tree and think of your evergreen scented air freshener.  I remember reading once (I think this might have been i your LA 2211 class, Dr. Munsell) that the age advertisers are focusing on currently is 6 months.  That means that from the time we are infants and throughout the rest of our lives we are receiving advertisement messages. So, this isn’t Earth shattering news, we maybe expected a book on persuasion to show us really how much advertising is around us.  

Borchers goes on to explain how advertising is symbiotic.  It is successful and ubiquitous because we make it that way.  It works because I sit here writing on a laptop that is shouting it’s brand name at me so that when I go to purchase a new one, I think back to this very moment and consider, yeah that acer was a trusty fellow who always helped me with my tumblr blog.  Ok, so that goes right along with the ubiquity - we’re not super shocked about it, but it’s probably the first time we’ve ever considered ourselves to be in a symbiotic relationship with advertisers.  Advertising is profane.  We remember what surprises us, we remember what makes us feel strongly in any particular way.  That’s why we remember what we were doing when the greatest or most tragic events in history took place - because we felt.  So advertisers use that to their advantage.  If they can make us feel anything - even shock or outrage - they’ve succeeded.  So, that’s the dirty little secret of shock advertising - it was all a big plan to get you to feel anything and it was easy to get you to feel angry or shocked or outraged...so they did.

This last one really gets me.  Advertising is magical.  As in, it creates some kind of magic.  This is the part Borchers spends the least time on and I’m so disappointed by that, because it’s the first time he’s telling me something that REALLY surprised me.  I mean, I’ve spent my whole life trying to find magic (thanks to Disney) and now someone tells me I see it all around me but you skip right past it?  Not cool.  One example provided is that when you buy a certain cleaning product, you expect it to work well and when it does you feel powerful.  But was that the magic in the ad or in the product?  Another provided visualization is that when you drive a certain kind of car you feel like a different person.  But is that because the ad told you would or because the car actually delivers.  Is it the ad or the product that elicits the magic?  I guess one could argue that in the same way one argues which came first: chickens or eggs....

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As I reflect on Dr. Munsell’s myriad of lecture videos I’m starting to ponder my subject for paper 1.  I think I have a subject in mind, but I might have to do a little more research first.  My goal here will be to find a commercial that provides opportunity for significant, in depth analysis so that I can consider as many of the theories as possible motivators and influences available.  

The second part of the commercial that I’m considering is what is interesting to me.  I’ve been interested in commercials because of the product, because of the actors and because of the persuasion.  It would be a really fun project if I could find a commercial that interests me in all 3 of those categories. 

I’m considering all of the following:

This Wells Fargo commercial is famous around our company - they even put up a sneak preview each season before it airs on TV so that the employees may get their fill of it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjMcYh5QPX4 

This StateFarm commercial is entertaining, as long as you know the basketball players featured, but is it effective in persuading me to purchase the product? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmyxOGG11jc

I’m still not sure where paper 1 will lead me, but I’m excited to see what I find!  Maybe the perfect commercial will come along soon - I guess I’d better get to watching TV!

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What the heck is persuasion anyway?

So, you're sitting on your sofa watching Game of Thrones and you see a commercial for I've cream. You now want ice cream so you indulge yourself. Have you been persuaded? You see the same commercial 30 minutes later but your already full of ice cream. Did the advertisement fail? Persuasion is tricky stuff. Sometimes its easier to get a bearing on what something is by fighting out what its not. Persuasion is different than coercion. Coercion indicates there is not choice, where as persuasion is the ability to encourage someone to use their free will to do, think or feel something (in my own, super simplified words). I've never considered persuasion and coercion on a continuum, but that's exactly what Timothy Borchers describes in chapter 1 of Persuasion on the Media Age. So if you draw a line with an arrow on each end and write persuasion on one side and coercion on the other, you'll begin to see that there are aspects of both in most arguments. I think what I'm most excited about learning this semester with Dr. Munsell is the ability to persuade without trickery or manipulation. And also the ability to see trickery and manipulation as what they are before I let them impact my decisions...more to come!

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Chapter 1 has me thinking....