The Persuaders (MC101)

What is advertising? Is it informing the public about a product or service, or is it just a fancy way of persuading them to buy it? I think it's a mix of both. We watched a movie in my MC101 class called The Persuaders which talked about different theories advertisers had to successfully get into the consumer's mind...
The first was Clotaire Rapaille who thought he had a way to figure out the consumer's hidden desires. He said no one can ever really know why people do what they do. He had a theory that people have three parts of the brain, the reptilian brain that controlled all the basic instincts, the limbic brain that controlled emotions, and the cortex that controlled higher reasoning. His theory stated that the reptilian brain always won. Always. When interviewed, he used the example of small cars versus big ones. He said even if environmentalists urge people to buy smaller cars, they will buy the bigger ones because the small ones are too small. I don't really believe that because I think that some people care about the environment too and want small cars. After all, everyone has different taste.
Frank Luntz was another man who said advertisers should tell consumers what they want to hear. He said, "Eighty percent of life is emotion, and only twenty percent is intellect." He elaborated by explaining that he could always change what people were thinking about, but he could never change what they feel because that is something deeper. He talked about word choice and how that is an important factor of gaining consumer trust. His example was politicians using "climate change" instead of "global warming" because it made the public feel more comfortable.
I agree with Frank Luntz more because people rely more on their personal feelings and want the producers to make them feel special and like they need the product. However, I also believe in the right for the people to know what exactly the product is that they are getting. I don't like those cell phone or insurance commercials that just say how they are better than the other. They should spend more time trying to be there for the consumer and trying to be genuine than just competing.

A Night of Television (MC101)

Television. It's the good ol' way to waste a few hours of spare time. I couldn't imagine what it could have been like to only have a few channels like my parents did back in the day, since I have over 500 of them. News, cartoons, movies, radio, etc. So many options! But are all these options really a good thing? I think so. Yes, on some shows or channels the content may be too graphic for the younger audience, but there are channels dedicated to just them as well. Many people believe that television content should be more censored, but I don't see the point. For example, I love the show Sex and the City. Of course it does not come on HBO anymore, so I watch the syndicated version on Style Network. Most of the cuss words and other choice words are bleeped out and whatever nudity was it in it edited out as well. My guess would be that no children are watching the show and the people that are are either grown up enough to not care about the content or are the same people that watch the trashy girls on Jerseylicious. Not a big deal if you ask me.
Then there is CBS. My favorite show - The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson - comes on that channel. I am a huge fan. He is my favorite comedian and I like how he uses social media to interact with the viewers. He has a special segment every night dedicated to "tweetmail," questions viewers tweet or email him and his awesome robot sidekick (who also has a twitter). The show comes on at 11:35 at night and I would hope that the parents who don't want to their kids to watch the show already put them to bed. So why bleep out some curse words? He's allowed to say "balls," "penis," and "damn." I guess the channel is trying to uphold their reputation no matter what time the shows come on...
Another show I watched the other night is Tia and Tamera, the twin sisters' reality TV show on Style Network. My brother is the production assistant and the show and he lets me know how much of the show is actually reality. Let's just say, not much is. There are writers that make up the storyline of the season and they are told to be very dramatic with each other. The whole show is a roller coaster that goes from sisters who love each other to crying cat fights and back again. They cry at least every ten minutes, and even though my brother said they do cry a lot, they really caked it on for the show. I understand that this is to make money, but being portrayed as over-emotional on national TV does not sound good to me.
People look at television for entertainment, and the amount of time each person spends watching it varies greatly. I'm not a big fan of censoring TV content because I believe that the parents should be the refs between their kids and what they watch. Besides, most channels, at least in my opinion, censor the wrong thing. Craig Ferguson has fun with it by inserting fun words, like "tutti fruit" or "ay caramba" instead of curses, but what are a few curse words opposed to the extreme partying shown on Jersey Shore? The cultivation theory states that the "constant exposure to the same images develops a commonality outlook." I am a fairly liberal person and I understand that cursing does offend a lot of people and that seeing it on TV may influence some kids to do it, but they have plenty more exposure to it than just TV, like movies and video games. This generation is way more uncensored that the ones in the past, that's obvious, and that is because our exposure to violence and sex in everything we watch, but I think that people need to take a closer look at what exactly they censor rather than how much of it.