Persuaders

• What in "The Persuaders" surprised you (or not)? Name one new thing you learned about marketing or politics from watching the film. Name one new thing you learned about yourself from watching the film, or one thing that the film reiterated about yourself.

When it comes to advertising, nothing really surprises me. I say this as an Advertising major and as an incredibly cynical person. The public, especially the American public, is indulged everyday with advertisements. Our TV shows have advertisements. Our movies have advertisements. We see advertisements when we do research on the internet. We even see it on other people's bodies, in forms of t-shirts and tattoos. The notion that we are oversaturated and numbed to ads isn't exactly a stunning development. 50 years ago, people wore suits and nice pants. Today we wear t-shirts with logos promoting all sorts of things, from music to movies to food. When you walk around campus, you can run into a student passing out flyers for a bar, or a poster for a club. 99% of the time, you also never see anybody taking a good, hard look at any of the ads. With so much clutter, there really is no one thing to focus on.

One thing I learned about advertising in the documentary is that product placement is not simply a company going to a network and asking to be in the show. Rather, it is the other way around, with the networks pitching shows to companies. I'm not sure if I learned anything about myself from this, as I knew most of the things they talked about. Advertising is really no different than any other industry. It's full of sociopaths who only care about the bottom line and themselves, which leads to terrible "outside of the box" things like the Song campaign that tried way too hard, and that nut who used his wacko psychology to explain that people like certain things. Despite the fact I find his results to be repugnant, I have a modicum of respect for Frank Luntz. The way he played with language was startling. The first key that anyone in advertising or marketing needs to realize is that the masses are not nearly as smart as they think they are, and easily manipulated, something Luntz realized immediately.

• "The Persuaders" begins by questioning the increase in the amount of advertising we typically encounter in our daily lives. How would you assess the amount of advertising you see? Too much? Too little? Just right? In your view, what difference does it make to know that people today see much more advertising in their daily lives than people 20 or 30 years ago?

The answer to this is very simple. Yes. Yes yes yes. We are absolutely overloaded with advertising. As mentioned, it's absolutely everywhere. On clothing, on cars, on the things we carry, on the walls, in the skies. Everywhere. And the problem for advertisers is that everyone is trying to stand out. But when everyone tries to standout, nobody stands out. And it gets especially annoying when advertisers are specifically targeting one demographic very hard. For example, during last year's MLB playoffs, they cycled about 5 different commercials nonstop, and most of them targeted older men. A particularly annoying Viagra commercial repeated over and over, and being a person who doesn't need Viagra, I found it unnecessary.

I think comparing it to ads from 20-30 years ago is too short a distance. There was product placement and t-shirts and billboards and all that jazz 20-30 years ago. It wasn't that much different. Looking back about 40-50 years ago is where it gets interesting, because the problem in advertising wasn't the amount, but rather the presentation. Take this incredibly offensive Jell-O commercial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCKxWQCs3f0. It's full of racism and stereotyping. While people wore nice, logoless clothing, and there was less advertising overall, advertising was more malcious. Cartoons like The Flintstones pushed cigarettes. Advertisements as a whole were incredibly racist and misogynistic, treating women like objects whose only purpose in life was to serve man. It's quality vs. quantity, and I think that was much more damaging to society than the gigantic amount of advertising we are served up everyday.

Myth of the Photographic Truth

In the first image, we see a woman taking a normal shower. Nothing is wrong.

However, once the uncropped image is revealed, we see an entirely different story. The woman is still taking a shower, but an ominous figure is outside of the shower, waiting to murder her. It immediately goes from a terrifying event to a normal, monotonous part of the day with one simple crop.

Final Image

The Medium is Photoshop

If Photoshop is to be considered a medium, then its contents are the brushes, erasers, filters, text tools, and various image editing tools included.

What Photoshop does to society is create artists out of people who never thought they had any skill, or for that matter people with no skill. It is no longer necessary to splurge on paints and canvasses and lessons to create art. Society can now create works of art on their computers with clicks of the mouse and clacks of the keyboard.

At the same time Photoshop can be a weapon. Not a deadly one, per se, but a mental one. People can use Photoshop's contents as a tool for humiliation. A person's head can be pasted on the body of someone in a degrading position. Collages of hate can be made. In addition, another negative aspect is the issue of Fair Use. People in the internet age take and edit whatever image they please in Photoshop, despite the fact that it may be copyright infringement.

Image Redo

When looking over my original image, the first two things that came to my mind were "tacky" and "amateur." My image really looked like something a 7th grader would do if he were told to do this assignment. I found a more suitable color for the image. The blue does not violate the viewer's eyes like the red and green did. The childish lightning bolts were replaced with the to-the-point arrows in maroon. The white circles were an allusion to clouds, as I wanted to visualize how the sky is the limit with the Ipod Touch's technology. It makes each medium stand out, as well. I did not want to add anything more complex (one idea was to make a web like the internet's web) as I thought it would be too distracting.

The Mediums of the iPod Touch

The iPod Touch is a device that represents all five senses through its different uses. It is a fascinating thing, in that it can represent mediums to the individual and to multiple people through just one of them.

The primary objective of iPods have always been to play music. But "music" is such a restrictive term, as it does not fully encapsulate what kind of communication that the audio files put on an iPod. Of course, music is a fantastic way to broadcast ideas and views to the masses, moreso than speeches and the like. By putting words to a tune, the message that is contained in the song is much more accessible to the public, as it makes it easier to remember and recite. In addition, non-song files can also spread messages to the public. College professors can record lectures and put them up for download. Speeches can be converted into digital files, as can books and radio shows.

In addition, the iPod Touch can also play movie files and downloadable video games, which take the music experience futher. Both forms can take an idea, but are not restricted by being audio only. Movies can display ideas and communication, but they have the added bonus of visuals, which makes explanations easier to convey. The next step up is the video game. Video games take the idea of movies further by allowing the user to interact with its universe.

The Ipod Touch, though, is a multifaceted tool, and in fact is almost a miniature computer. Through different applications, one can communicate with the world, despite the fact the Touch has no microphone. The included internet browser and wi-fi access allows anyone, without even downloading a thing, to communicate with the world. Access to sites like Facebook and Twitter can allow an Ipod Touch user to communicate with the world through text. Downloadable applications can enhance the communication. The Facebook application and Twitter applications can streamline the access to the sites and make communication easier. Other applications like AIM can allow people to directly communicate with other people via text immediately, even if they are on the other side of the world.

So, despite the fact that on a Touch one cannot see or talk to another person, they can still communicate with the world in a number of ways.

Innovative Mediums

1. Text Messaging




2. Internet



3. Video Games