Skechers Ad Deconstruction

 In this advertisement Skechers shoes are being marketed. They use the familiar sex sales technique to hook its audience. This ad shows a man who is with a beautiful woman which represents both success and happiness in our culture. This ad symbolizes that what you have determines what you get. They are showing you that this young man's pair of Skechers shoes has helped him attract this lovely woman. This ads message is that if you're cool, if you like action, and if you want a woman like this one that you should buy a pair of Skechers shoes. 

   The ad is effective in drawing your attention with the cliche sex sales hook, but to me this ad is unsuccessful overall. I'm a young man, which whom they are targeting in this ad,  and my opinion on this ad reflects their success to make sell their product. After the hook draws my attention the ad fails to retain my attention for three significant reasons. The first one is their slogan, "We put the  S in action!" I don't understand it because it's like a joke without a pun, no one laughs and there's that odd moment of silence. My second reason is that it doesn't make sense why they're in the snow, it doesn't connect with any of the other elements of the ad. The slogan doesn't connect with the environment and neither does the product nor it's hook. It leaves me with the impression that they are suppose to seem "cool," but I feel like it only complicates the message of the ad. The last element of this ad that sticks out to me is the whip, what does it represent? It has nothing to do with the background, but it is action like the slogan. Still there's no s in whip or action so it just really disconnects me from the ad. 

This ad would be better if she didn't have the whip, if she had Skechers shoes too, and lastly if the slogan had to do with being cool. If they wanted to make it better with the action theme, they should take away the glacier element and replace is with fire. I think this Skechers ad is a lot more successful than this one.

    

    This ad is so more effective to me for several reasons. One reason is because it's simple to understand and the message's delivery is very effective. They are using a celebrity, Karl Malone a.k.a. The Mailman because he always delivers the goods. Karl Malone is one of the most famous basketball players, this Hall of Famer has the second most amount of career moments. This ad attracts basketball fans and it especially targets older/middle aged men because Malone is retired and the ad says "Get back in the Game," which implies that whoever they are targeting has left the game. This to me really connects with it's target audience and has a simple effective delivery compared to the unsuccessful sex sales hook that failed to connect with it's target audience.

Evantureland

     There are so many problems in the world today, but to me one sticks out more than the rest. Global warming is a serious issue that everyone should take seriously. We should use more alternative fuels and sources of energy. I believe that we must work on making tomorrow better than today because it's the right thing to do.

     Not only will expanding our production of alternative sources of energy to help preserve the world's environment, but it will create more jobs and stimulate the economy. What makes humanity so great is that it learns from it's mistakes and there is always hope for tomorrow to be better than yesterday and today.

     Michael Jordan once said "Some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, others make it happen." In this society our community works together to make it happen. We know what we want, what we wish, and we won't stop until we get the job done.

    We want a world with cleaner air, less environmental damage, and most importantly we want to dedicate our lives to improving our world.

     Knowledge and choice are big parts of our culture. We use our knowledge to make decisions on what and/or how we are going to do something. Everyone's vote counts, there is no higher authority than the community as a whole. All of our propositions are proposed by a committee or a petition. All of our proposed propositions and laws are decided by our community's popular vote. Our votes can override anyone or any organization in the community and it's up to us to apply our knowledge to our votes to better our community.

    It's our use of our knowledge that separates our community from the rest. There is no one who is poor and no one who is rich, violence is created through a feeling of shame that turns into rage. Since their are no inequalities socially and economically our community works better as a whole and as a result there is little to no violence. Our community does not tolerate crime and our committee decides how to handle crimes accordingly by applying dispensary action, but our community has the opportunity to override their decision with the popular vote. Usually acts of theft or violence result in being exiled from the community, but acts of crime are very rare.

     Although Evantureland's primary focus is on making the future better than today, there are still a variety of jobs. You do what you want to do without any creating any socio-economic divisions, in other words it's up to you to decide whether you want to be a doctor, farmer, engineer, or scientist and you won't be treated differently socially or economically. Same pay and social status, no one is inferior or superior to another.

This community is devoted to changing the world with our innovations and environmental products that can reshape our world's use of energy and gasoline. Our social and economic structure can be used to influence other communities that look to reduce their rates of violence and increase production of products that help preserve the environment.

We don't want to run the world, we want to teach it, we want to change it not for ourselves but simply for the future of our planet and all of it's inhabitants.

What I Received from The Giver

There were a lot of things that really stood out to me in the book and connected with some aspects of our culture. Here are just a few of them.

     In the community there is no violence because of sameness and to me this symbolizes how our world still has violence between people because of differences. The community in The Giver works so cohesively because of Sameness and I think that Lowry is trying to tell us that our culture is divided and there would be less violence and more cohesiveness if we accepted our differences for one common goal, to make the world a better place.

Einstein once said, "If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed." We shouldn't mind other's beliefs on things such as religion and we should put aside our differences and be good simply because it's morally the right thing to do. We should want to better mankind regardless of cultural and religious differences and try and avoid violence at all costs.

     I found it interesting how in The Giver the community is controlled by their lack of choice, while we are divided by our choices. We've been learning how the media and advertisers are dividing us by our interests and we our divided within society by our choices. Just think of the way people perceive someone to be by their appearance, we're judging people without even knowing it.

     I believe that Lowry is implying that we have choice, but are we always making our own choices? In other words, are some of our choices being made for us by others? We've learned in class that our choices are definitely influenced by others. I think Lowry is showing us that this is what happens if we lose our freedom of choice, she is reminding us to stay in control of our choices rather than being controlled by our choices. We should try and make our own choices and not judge others on their own choices.

    Lowry creates the community without emotions and color and it really made me think of how much we take our vision for granted. People in my history class can't even stay awake through a black and white video and it represents how some people forget that at sometime that black and white videos were all we had. Before that, there were no motion pictures.

    I'm glad that we have color now, but I think that everyone should see something in black and white to appreciate what we have today and not to take it for granted. The world is a beautiful place and I'm glad that we have cameras to take pictures, because as they say a picture is worth a thousand words.

     In the Giver we see how people are separated by their age and treated differently based on their age. Elders live in the House of the Old, their is the Childless Adults area, and the nurturing center. We come to learn in the novel that the Giver is rarely used and only used when something comes up that's never came up before. This shows how our society takes elders wisdom for granted.

    I believe that younger people simply don't have the patience they once did to listen to elders. They are so excited about video games, Facebook, and life in the fast lane that they find it hard to sit down and hear of an elder's advice or hear a story of significance from their life. I just think that our culture is beginning to take elder's wisdom for granted. When Rosemary died the Giver lost her memories, we need to remember that we don't get to just download our grandparents memories and that time is limited so you should take the time to learn from someone with lots of life experience.

    I believe that the last paragraph connects with how Lowry sets up the family unit that does not have love and has kids and parents selected for one another. They are created by genetic scientists. Lowry shows a family that has no love, no grandparents, no warm feeling around holidays. What she wrote connects with us today, the family isn't valued as it once was.

    A family watching a televisions show together once or twice a week was really common back in the day and now everyone has cell phones, they're on the go and they don't want to slow down now to take leisure time. I believe she's saying that families should stay close and not drift apart like how they seem to be in today's culture.

That was just a few ideas that came to me as I read the novel and I thought that it signified what some writers call a "cultural crisis."

The Giver: Sameness, Good or Bad?

     In Lois Lowry's The Giver Jonas is selected to be the Receiver of Memories and he comes to learn that when his community decided to go to sameness they were getting rid of color, emotion, and choice. At first the Giver tells him it's to "protect" them from making the wrong choices. He told him how differences and emotions played a role in the creation of war.

I thought it would be nice to take a look at the benefits of sameness and society without sameness.

       Benefits of Sameness

• There are no fears, no war, and no pain.
• The community does not miss the freedom of choice because they have not experienced it and they have not heard of it.
• There is no bad weather.
• There is no love, but there is no sadness as well.
• Death is not publicly acknowledged, they perceive that someone released has moved to Elsewhere.
• They do not know what lies beyond their community, they do not know the world as a whole but there is no desire to learn that which they have not been taught. Questions are rarely asked, which means there are no feelings of concern or doubt.
• They are genetically modified by scientists, no one is that different. Since no one is that different the society is believed to get along better and more cohesively.
• The absence of color strengthens the absence of choice, no one envy's anyone over clothes or possessions. 
• There is no stress to make decisions and since the community makes decisions for you, you can't make the wrong choice because you have no choice.
• With the absence of knowledge you do not know of a past, you only know what the community wants you to know and that's all you need to know in life.
• You do not want to know more because you do not know that there is more to learn and that the community is restricting it from you.
• There is no real family, family units are assigned by the Committee of Elders. When children grow up their parents go to live with the Childless Adults, then the House of the Old and there are no grandparents. No family love means no love lost.
• With a Receiver of Memories you do not need to suffer from pain, anger, and sorrow.

     Benefits of Differences

• There are fears, there is war, and there is pain and suffering. There is individual strength that allows people to conquer their fears, to fight wars, and to over come pain.
• We have the freedom of choice and we embrace it. We will fight to keep it because it is took a long time to get and we aren't going to let it just go out the door.
• There is bad weather, but it allows us to value the days that are better than others.
• There is sadness, there is grief, but there is love that conquers all.
• We acknowledge death and while we know that we aren't immortal we know that are days of life aren't limitless so we value every breath we take.
• We know of other towns, cities, states, countries, and even planets. We know that there is so much more than our community and that's why we desire to learn more, the room for knowledge is limitless. That is why we ask so many questions, because we want answers.
• We have made major advancements in genetic engineering but we have not been genetically modifying people, at least not that I know of. We have lots of differences, but all of our DNA is over 99% the same anyway. We know people with differences can work together cohesively and it's something that people have been trying to improve on together.
• Color is something that is often overlooked, but we value the beauty of color and we love the freedom of choice that comes with it.
• We make our own decisions, and we make mistakes but we try to learn from them. We try to prevent history from repeating itself.
• We value our freedom of knowledge, we are limitless in what we can do with what we learn because we don't have books that are restricted.
• We have grandparents, we love our families, and we grieve over our lost ones but our grief symbolizes more than just our suffering, It symbolizes how much that person felt to us, it means that their life strongly impacted yours in a positive way and that your love for them goes on. You miss them because they were there for you and you were there for them, but our own life continues and our family's bond remains strong.
• We have no receiver of memories because we have our own memories, which are priceless.

     I appreciate our world and all of the differences that come with it. There may be suffering, but there is pride in our accomplishments. There is pride in not ourselves, not even our just our country, but as humans. We strive to do better than before, to learn and create things that we never could've imagined, to boldly go where no one has gone before. Most importantly there is hope.

Albert Einstein once said, "Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning."

"Perfect" Sentence

In a world where perfection is unreachable, the room for  improvement is limitless and I strive to continue to progress not only as a filmmaker but as a person.