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.