The Cola Wars

    Soft drinks have been around for over a hundred years. Over that time they have gone from a surgery drink to a pop culture phenomenon that will never go away. The two brands that have been battling over the years are Coke and Pepsi. While deciding which cola taste better is purely objective, their numbers and successful campaigns are not. Pepsi and Coke have a long history in persuasive campaigns trying to get people to drink their soda over their competitors. Now we are not talking about the different products the companies own outside of soda like chips or cereal; this is all about the soft drinks.

    Over the years they have been trying to entice consumers that their soda is better and offering prizes if people drink their brand of cola. An easy way to determine if one soda was better than the other however would be to simply try them both wouldn’t it? That is exactly what Pepsi thought in 1975. The most famous persuasive campaign of the cola wars was the Pepsi Challenge. It was simple enough; Pepsi representatives set up tables at malls or shopping centers and offered cups of both coke and Pepsi and had shoppers try them to see which tasted better. Pepsi won by a land slide and their new ad campaign sent sales through the roof. This had large effect on the Coca-Cola Company because they then changed their recipe to their drink which consumers hated, thus driving up the sales of Pepsi even more. 

    However, over their years the persuasive campaigns have changed. Now Pepsi is more music based, offering tickets to concerts in the summer and sponsoring the half time show at the Super Bowl. People have also started to become more health conscience and cola companies have taken noticed. Diet drinks are popular with Coke even creating Coke Zero, a diet drink aimed towards men, to help with their sales. Pepsi has started making Pepsi with real sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup. 

    To try and make their brand seem more friendly coke created the #ShareACoke campaign, where their bottles are printed with names on the side and you can share a bottle with the name of someone you care about on it. Pepsi saw a weakness with this campaign however and capitalized on it. People who are angered by their names not featured on the coke cans could enter for a chance to win concert tickets from Pepsi. 

    In the past it was more of a head to head battle for the top spot. The cola companies would talk about why they are better than their competitor. Now the campaigns have changed; it’s more of the companies talking about why they are great instead of talking about why they are better. Soda will be around for a long time and these two companies will always their trying to entice people to drink their brand. 

Papachristos, Anna. "Pepsi vs. Coke: Which Brand Had the Most Successful Summer Campaign?"    1to1 Media. N.p., 15 Aug. 2015. Web. 26 Mar. 2016.

Apple v. FBI

    The subject matter I read up on was the issue of the FBI wanting access to a phone used by a mass shooter, but Apple is refusing to allow access into said phone. The two articles I read are from NBC News and Buzzfeed. 

    The site Buzzfeed is obviously made for millennials so its whole site is aimed towards that demographic. Articles written on Buzzfeed are not always written professionally like the style you would see in a newspaper. Instead a lot of the time the writer will interject their opinion along with attempting to report the news. In this article however the author does not blatantly state their opinion, but there are clearly some personal opinions evident. 

    The NBC News article was written more professional, but at the same time it was looser. While Buzzfeed starts off as if its reader knows what is going on and NBC News article breaks down the story bit by bit. It almost seems like it is trying to make a story that does not seem accessible to an older audience easier for them to understand. In fact, one part of the story it breaks down is when it answers “who uses encryption, anyways? And is it all bad guys?” (Deluca). This seems to suggest right off the bat that the writer is assuming that its reader does not fully grasp the concepts it is about to talk about in the story. 

    While the NBC News and Buzzfeed articles are clearly written for different audiences, what was also different was how they each approached the facts of the story. NBC News reported just the facts and if it delved into an opinion it was the opinion of an expert on the subject and included quotes. 

    However, Buzzfeed also added quotes from experts, but the author also tried to interject their own thoughts on the subject matter. The writer tried to explain the reasoning of Apple’s actions instead of just reporting what Apple said. Instead of saying that Apple was trying to protect your privacy, Buzzfeed mentioned how this is a business strategy so more customers flock over to Apple because other companies sell their data and privacy (Warzel). 

    Both articles were frustrating to read because one reads like it is acting as if the read is stupid and the other reads like it is some person telling what happened, but then giving their opinion on what really is happening. The story itself is very important to be talking about, and it is good that both sites are talking and reporting about it. 

    Both sides also seem to be on the side of Apple not giving in to the FBI, which is a good thing. Where NBC News gives the facts, Buzzfeed questions the motives of Apple. NBC News approaches the subject as if it is just an everyday thing and there is no real urgency. It is almost like it was just trying to make a story the reader has heard more understandable for them. However, Buzzfeed treats this issue with the utmost importance. Both are on the same side, but they are clearly written for different audiences. 

 Deluca, Matthew. "Why Are Apple and the FBI Battling Over an IPhone?" NBC News. NBC News, 17 Feb. 2016. Web. 18 Feb. 2016. 

 Warzel, Charlie. "Apple's FBI Privacy Fight Is A Battle For Our Trust." BuzzFeed. N.p., 17 Feb. 2016. Web. 18 Feb. 2016.

Persuasion Ethics : Politics Are Dirty

When people are running for the highest office in the land, the president of the United State, sometimes campaigns can get pretty ugly. Backs get pushed to walls and desperate times call for desperate measures. It is a do or die situation for people. When that Oval Office calls your name you will do anything you can, right or wrong, to make sure you get to sit there. This was very apparent in the 2000 election with George Bush and fellow republican John McCain.

George W. Bush would go to become the 43rd president of the United States after a brutal campaign that was a fight to the finish since it began. He beat out Democrat Al Gore and Green Party member Ralph Nadar in the general election but it was the republican primaries that biggest breach of ethical persuasion.

While campaigning in South Carolina for their primary Bush had a push-poll and asked voters if they would vote for opponent John McCain if they knew he had fathered a black child. Then there were flyers dispersed that claimed McCain had a "negro child". The poll and flyers were trying to paint McCain in a negative light and make him seem like he is not fit to be president. It was playing on the racially environment of the south. False information was given out, knowingly, to persuade people. This was an extremely unethical situation.

The real situation was that John McCain and his wife adopted a child from Bangladesh. So the information the Bush campaign was giving out was adamantly false and twisted the truth to make people think differently. It is one thing to run a negative ad about a candidate when it's true. Sometimes it can seem backhanded but the truth is the truth. However as  McCain’s national campaign manager Rick Davis said, a smear doesn’t have “to be true to be effective.”

Bush's breach in persuasive ethics ended up being effective because he would go on to hold two terms in office. There was blasted disrespect and offense in his claim about McCain because it made it seem negative to have a black child if you are white. He also tried to falsely paint John McCain as a bad person who did not have an ethical code.

The breach in ethics impacts the situation because it makes people vote in a certain way. They were using false information to persuade people to not vote for McCain. The argument could be made that Bush would still have won if he did not spread the rumor, however he still did it. That is a problem in politics and campaigning. It's an every man for himself do what ever you need to win situation. It sadly also shows that you do not need to be ethical to be president. You just have to be liked better, no matter what the truth is. Ethics gets thrown out of the window. This is just one example of a breach in persuasive ethics on the campaign trail.

Gooding, Richard. "The Trashing of John McCain." Vanity Fair. N.p., 31 Oct. 2004. Web. 28 Jan. 2016.

Depressed TV

The feature I read was a BuzzFeed article on “24 Heartbreaking TV Moments That Made You Cry Your Eyes Out”. I was an excellent list because it gathered scenes from all kinds of TV shows from every era from the ‘70s to the current year. Something I really admired that BuzzFeed di was to make the list they called upon their users to submit choices for the list. This was a really great way to get a large pool of selections from different age groups versus just one guy in his 20s writing up an article overnight. The article will really pull at your heartstrings.

                There were multiple entries that made me tear up from just thinking about, which really means something about the quality of those shows. I think something that really stands out from these choices, and not just the shows, is that the moments are not superficial and they feel very genuine. All of the users that submitted were given credit for their submissions, which I thought was very cool. A lot of the shows that were submitted were ones I really enjoy and some of them are my favorite shows.

                Something I did not like was the fact that there was nothing written about the show or scene other than the brief one sentence description of what happened in the scene. I would have like to have read the reason the scenes were so sad, if it was extremely self-explanatory. So in that respect this did not help me with the styling of how to write my feature. With mine I plan on giving explanations and backgrounds for each idea or topic I provide.     

                I am a huge fan of television since growing up I would watch a lot of it, and not just shows aimed at kids. Since I was little I was watching all the hit prime time shows, and since then I got hooked on TV. Now I actually want to create TV shows that other people can enjoy. The moments in the list is what motivates me because I want to be able to create a show that people get really attached to and then get as emotional as they did with the entire soon this BuzzFeed article. I really want to create a world where my viewers become emotionally invested just like I have become with some of these shows.

Yours or Mine?

The editorial I read was "Abusive and Frivolous Patent Suits" from the New York Times. It was about how Congress is attempting to create a way to weed out moronic patent suits, or people seeing for ridiculous patent infringements. The author(s) pointed out that patents were issued to give inventors complete control over their creations but in recent history so many people have issues law suits against companies for licensing fees, or in other terms, a quick buck. The editorial states that the cost of litigating fees and licensing fees cost up to billions of dollars a year even though the paten suits or so vague it is a wonder they were ever granted.

The author(s) state that lawmakers are concerned about people who use small business over this. They clearly are against the "frivolous patent suits" and are encouraging congress to step up and do something about this. They do accurately represent the facts by using facts to back up their editorial instead of opinion, which that also use. Some words they use, such as "frivolous"  and "careful" while applying their own thoughts on the topic. Towards the end it also says they hope the new rules are not too strict to the point it hurts actual inventors and businesses.

It was very informative, especially considering it's not a widely popular topic. I was able to gather all of the important info from this. The writer did seem to be opinionated, but they were also able to justify their opinion rather than just saying "I'm right and that is all". As stated above they mention how much money is being spent on this and that number is ridiculous, especially considering how that money could be spent elsewhere.

It did a good job of bringing to light a problem not many people know about. I suppose that is what an editorial was supposed to do; talk about something that is not widely known. This topic is also reminiscent of arguments about welfare; how people are taking advantage of the system. People are creating law suits over the smallest of patents.  I know big name companies like Apple and Samsung are always in court trying to settle paten infringements, which is a little frustrating when you think about it. There are things so small you have to wonder if any one person should have ultimate control over it.

The Wolf of Home Entrainment..Street

I read a review of The Wolf of Wall Street Blu Ray set. However you would never have known tat it was for the Blur Ray if you did not read the title. The review itself was basically a review for the movie. It started out praising every little bit of the film including Leonardo DiCaprio’s performance, Jonah Hill’s performance and Martin Scorsese directing. In fact, the reviewer went so far as to say that not only was this the best performance DiCprio gave, the film is one of the Scorsese has made, right up there with Taxi Driver, Goodfellas and Raging Bull.

I have seen the film and let me tell you, wow, the film is insane. It is literally three hours of sex and drugs, and I loved every minute of it. The review kind of made me chuckle because of how tame it actual was. If you have seen the movie you will know how hard it will be. The movie will most likely never see the light of day on cable television because all the censoring would probably cut the films original run time, the hours, to about 15 minutes.

I agreed with the reviewer for the most part. I do think everyone’s performance was top notch, but I would not go as far as saying it is his or her best. Well, it was certainly the best for Jonah Hill, but Dicaprio, and most recently Matthew McCaughey, have put in most substantial roles before. As for Scorsese, I feel like the movie is a nice addition to his filmography, but the three hours feels a little bloated and in fact he struggled in the editing room to get the theatrical cut. The film was original meant for an October release date but was pushed to late December to give him more time in the editing room. I think if he had more time it would have made for a much better movie.

            I would have liked to read an actual review of the special features; however once I read the last paragraph I could not really fault the author for it. The reviewer said there was only one extra and it was the basic making –of video, which was only 17 minutes long. I am a fan of DVD or Blu Ray extras; I must be one of the few people who actually watch the directors commentary. The Blu Ray comes with a DVD and digital copy, and I will most certainly make this a must buy.

This Sly Dog

Anthony Mascarenas

Journalism

3/18/14

This Sly Dog

            The man I chose to read a personal profile on is none other than Rocky himself, Sylvester Stallone. At first I was going to choose Matt Damon, but since I had just watched the Rocky marathon on AMC, I chose Sly Stallone.

            The first line is a brilliant summary of his career saying that in Hollywood Stallone is a bit of a joke and does not get the respect he deserves. It goes on to say that since he has made these mindless action films he is not really given the respect you would expect from someone who is been in this career for so long. The profile then goes on the defense for Stallone by saying they understand why some people think this, but they are wrong. Stallone has made two of the most iconic roles in film history, Rocky and Rambo.  The author then says that say what you will about Stallone, but he has written two characters that both perfectly represent men.  “The romantic and the warrior; the dreamer and the destroyer; the underestimated and the misunderstood; the lonely and the loner; the Rocky and the Rambo.”

            That last line I think did an amazing job to summarize Stallone’s underrated talent. He created two opposite characters that are essentially both sides of a man.  It was no easy feat either. Stallone came from practically nothing, and even suffered an injury at a such a young age that went on to give him his famous droopy lip and slurred speech patterns. This man was really, deep down, Rocky Balboa in the flesh. A man who came from nothing, thought he was nothing, thought he was going to e nothing but then decided to fight and give his best. It all worked out for Stallone, and as the article says, he’s okay with being a joke in Hollywood. He is the type of man who can see everything for what is and he is just happy to be at the party.  Because not many people can be called a joke or not be taken seriously when A movie they wrote won best picture, spawned 6 squeals and earned him an Academy Award nomination in both Acting and Writing.

            There as a little expert I thought perfectly connected Stallone to an everyman in that when Rocky won Best Picture his bow tie was broken, so he did not wear one. However everyone saw that as a sign of disrespect and thought he did not take things seriously. But he did not know it was a big deal and said that if he did know he would have tied a shoelace or something, anything, because he meant no disrespect.