This TED Talk spoke to me spiritually, I guess you could say. I really enjoyed how Lisa Miller used her own personal story regarding conception struggles to give the audience a personal anecdote to base her argument off of. Her raw emotion and demeanor throughout her presentation were super powerful in conveying the message of the importance of spirituality in her life to the audience. Her use of evidence, the studies she has done, and the interesting facts she threw in about Alpha Waves and the Earth’s crust are all really amazing components of her argument.

The culmination of signs that occurred in my mother’s life is the reason I am alive today, and therefore I have always payed a lot of attention to the spiritual aspect of life and signs from the universe. When my mom got out of college, she moved to New York City and had a really great job working for MTV on a TV show called “The Backyardigans.” All of her best friends were in the city and she loved her life there. Until 9/11. She began to feel an unsettling sense of being living in the city, and seeing as she had traveled to Spain in the past, she considered moving there again, but she wasn’t sure. Ultimately, she asked God or the universe or whatever higher power is out there for a sign and the higher power delivered. This resembles when Lisa Miller speaks about a “presence” in her TedTalk, because that is exactly the way my mom described it. So she moved to Spain, and on this specific trip she met my father, they got engaged, and a few years later they got married and then had me. If it weren’t for my mother paying attention to the signs the universe was giving her, I wouldn’t be here, my sister wouldn’t be here, and there is a high probability that my parents never would have met.

Similarly, I had a bit of a breakdown a few months before my high school graduation. I had spent the majority of high school struggling with my mental health, and my family is a huge support system for me. I freaked out that if I actually went to Penn State and lived five hours away from them I would be miserable. That very day I made the impulsive decision to apply to the community college in my county (surprise, surprise, I got in) and told my parents I wanted to go there instead. They had seen my struggle with my mental health throughout high school, and they also noticed it had recently started to improve a bit, so they did not fight me when I said that a big change like moving alone to a different state at 17 could potentially set back all the progress I had made. They told me they would support whatever decision I made, but they did urge me to go with Penn State since they had seen how excited I had been about it for the past few years.

The next morning, I was driving to school and passed, no joke, six cars with Penn State bumper stickers during my five minute drive to school. My ride home was no different. Although I am sure that plenty of adults in my town graduated from Penn State, this was never something I had seen nor paid attention to before. My mom got home from work and came up to me and said “I saw a few signs today. You need to go to Penn State.” The same thing had happened to her on her drive to and from work. Then my dad got home, and believe it or not, said the exact same thing as my mom. It was a sign. So I gave in and now here I am.

Needless to say, spirituality and signs and intuition have always been a HUGE part of my life. They are the reason I was born, they are the reason I got out of some really dark times, and they are a huge part of my evolved mindset now. For my Unit 2 project, I am also going to do a TEDTalk on spirituality, for the very reasons these stories provide. I feel as though it is not something that is paid attention to enough, and tuning into a higher consciousness is often the best thing an individual can do for themself. I will use my personal experience to begin my argument, but will use research on spirituality I have done in the past and new research I will be doing in the future to further my argument on the importance of spirituality on daily life. Overall, I think that given my experience with the subject, I will be able to craft a pretty heavy argument on the topic.

In rewatching my civic artifact speech video, I feel as though there were many things I did well, and many things I can improve on.

To start with the things I feel like I did well, I believe I made a lot of progress in regards to incorporating a thorough rhetorical analysis into my speech and choosing a lens. At first, this was a task I was struggling with. During my meeting with Professor O’Hara, I brought this up and she gave me some helpful clarifications, however, I was still experiencing some writers block. I incorporated a deeper analysis on the rhetoric of my artifact, but when I went to record my speech, I still felt like I could have written something better than what I had, so I took my last chance to revise super seriously and made my speech the best I could.

If you have read my previous blog post about trying the Halal food truck on Saturday, you will know that I got a drink with my meal, and therefore, I had a can of Pepsi sitting in my fridge. I recorded my first draft of my speech and realized that something was missing. I grabbed the Pepsi can out of my fridge and decided to incorporate it into my speech. I felt like this added dimension to my speech and made it more fun to watch, because it allowed me to not just read my speech but to interact with it as well.

I also like that I incorporated data and evidence into my speech, which I feel as though not many others did so it makes my work stand out a bit. The data does not reflect the rhetoric in the artifact at all, but it allowed me to expand on my writing and make further connections between the artifact and the stance I took on greenwashing in my speech.

Onto things I think I could improve on, in listening to the speech now, I feel as though my speaking was a little rushed and that my dictation could have been a bit clearer. I also feel as though I could have embellished my powerpoint a bit more with more photographs or visuals other than just the title screen, artifact, statistics incorporated in my speech, and works cited.

Overall, I am proud of my work based on where my rough draft started and where my final draft ended, as I feel I really took the constructive criticism I was given by fellow classmates and Professor O’Hara and made my work the best it could be.

Humanity has become more than used to the commonplace of large corporations profiting off of environmentally conscious advertising, marketing, and media, but is this a morally acceptable way to gain consumers? Many well-known companies, such as McDonalds, Coca-Cola, Wendy’s, Pepsi, and Adidas are known to use this form of advertising, profiting off of holidays such as Earth Day to present the brand in a way that will help them gain consumers. Society sees these advertisements on a daily basis, but this form of advertising has become such a commonplace in modern marketing that nobody bats an eye at it anymore. From the cartoon plants to the cute flower designs and animated recycling symbol, consumers, often times without realizing it, are drawn into these marketing ploys subconsciously. However, there is a lot more than meets the eye when it comes to this topic, and there are a lot of parts behind how the audience perceives these advertisements.

An example of these commonplaces can be seen in the advertisements above and in the way they use rhetoric in attempts to gain consumers. In the Coca-Cola billboard advertisement, plants are surrounding a bottle-shaped cutout that onlookers can infer is a Coca-Cola bottle. Above this design is a statement saying that the billboard absorbs air pollutants. We can see a commonplace here in the use of the bottle-shaped cutout on the billboard, due to the fact that one can assume that the bottle is a Coca-Cola bottle without even seeing the logo at the top of the billboard. Coca-Cola is such a prominent soft drink company in the world nowadays that many consumers (and non-consumers) often associate bottles, cans, and red script writing with the company.

This revelation adds on to the fact that commonplaces in marketing can often influence the perceptions of consumers. For example, simply due to the way Coca-Cola advertises their products and how common it is to see the brand anywhere and everywhere, the general public is very familiar with the brand and what can be associated with it. Henceforth, when seeing an advertisement like the billboard one above, onlookers can easily make the connection between the bottle and the Coca-Cola brand without needing any sort of label to make the inference.

Now, to pay attention to the environmental aspect of the billboard, it is important to note the drawing surrounding the bottle cutout. The use of plants surrounding the billboard and the rhetoric over the design is powerful in its persuasion to the consumer. By making the initial connection between the bottle cutout and the Coca-Cola brand, the consumer is unknowingly furthering the connection by associating the environmental message with the Coca-Cola brand. The whole advertisement serves as one big chain reaction to allow onlookers to make the eventual association between the brand and the positive message, regardless of whether or not the brand itself is environmentally conscious.

Moving on to the McDonalds advertisement, we can see a similar theme with the arches used in the photo. Since the beginning of the McDonalds chain becoming popularized, the golden arches have become a staple for the company. The arches, along with the vibrant red and yellow colors in the logo, have become a commonplace in the media due to the fact that McDonalds is the most popular chain brand in America, and in other countries as well.

Although this advertisement is a lot more telltale in its brand affiliation, it conveys the same message that correlates the brand to rhetoric involving being environmentally conscious. Considering how iconic the golden arches in the McDonalds logo are, having a plant sapling growing off of the top of one of the arches, along with the hand holding the watering can above it, paints a picture of a healthy, green earth, and associates the McDonalds company with it in the meantime. By using the illustrations of plants, birds, and dirt in the photo, the advertisement truly gives off the impression of a happy Earth, something which is written on the advertisement in the first place. This use of illustration rhetoric and commonplaces in the advertisement, similarly to the Coca-Cola one, creates a chain reaction in which the consumer will subconsciously associate the brand with the Earth and being environmentally friendly.

Growing off of this, something to seriously consider and think about when analyzing media of this type is why environmentally conscious marketing is so commonly used. The reason for this is because of how aesthetically pleasing and morally correct being ecological is, especially when used in the media by large companies and corporations. When a consumer can make the connection between a brand and taking care of the Earth through their rhetoric in advertisements, it not only makes a consumer proud to be using that brand’s products and supporting the company, but it familiarizes a consumer with the idea of being ecological and helps them feel as if they are playing a role in that. The rhetoric that brands use in their media to convey this sense of importance plays a big role in making this association.

It is important to note that, although many companies use this form of rhetoric in their advertisements, it is not always true that the company is actively being environmentally conscious. McDonalds, despite releasing this advertisement about creating a happy Earth, contributes to deforestation by using paper cups and bags. Similarly, Coca-Cola still uses plastic bottles and aluminum cans. Although these are commonplaces within large companies and the food/drink industry, it is definitely misleading to release advertisements like the ones above while actively damaging the Earth. At the end of the day, rhetoric regarding environmental consciousness is not enough to take away from the damage a company has done to the Earth.

Using ecological rhetoric and commonplaces in marketing can definitely be an effective way of gaining consumers. Whether it be true of the company or not, allowing onlookers to associate the brand with the Earth and environmental consciousness can be super effective since the Earth is all around us. Subconscious connections like this are used in the media more common than not, and are the very reason why marketing is so important for companies in gaining consumers.

Like most people, I assume you all have cracked open a Coca-Cola at some point in your life and taken a refreshing swig. However, I will also make the safe assumption that most of you, like myself, have not given much thought to the fact that the Coca-Cola company is partaking in something called greenwashing. What is greenwashing, you might be asking? Greenwashing is a form of marketing where companies use environmentally friendly advertising deceptively in order to persuade their audience that the company’s morals, products, or intentions are aligned with a more environmentally conscious agenda.

In an advertisement created by the Coca-Cola company, a billboard covered with what looks to be plants with a Coca-Cola bottle sized cutout in the middle claims to “absorb air pollutants.” In the advertisement presented, the fact that the Coca-Cola company claims to absorb air pollutants through its billboard advertisement could be true, however, it does not take away from the fact that in 2022 alone, the Coca-Cola company emitted 5.17 tons of air pollution into the atmosphere. In another study done in 2022, food retail and manufacturing are listed as 2 of the top 5 polluter industries for the year based off of greenhouse gas emissions. Although the Coca-Cola company cannot even begin to compare to the amount of pollutants oil and energy industries produce, it is still one of the top contributors to world pollution, and advertisements like this one should not be enough to simply excuse that damage done.

This, however, is not the only problem with the advertisement. The Coca-Cola company uses this environmentally conscious advertising, such as talking about air pollution sustainability, as a ploy to gain consumers and make the brand look more ecological. To the naked eye of an individual passing that billboard who does not care or think to do the research I just did, they might see the billboard and think, “Wow, this company is doing their part to help the environment.” It is not often that you see a billboard advertisement like that, after all. However, the billboard also serves the purpose of subconsciously associating air pollution sustainability with the Coca-Cola brand, giving onlookers without the time to further their perception on the advertisement a false impression of the company and its morals. When an individual looks at the advertisement, their eyes are automatically drawn to the Coca-Cola bottle cutout in the center of the plants. Although this bottle has no defining Coca-Cola qualities, onlookers can still easily infer what this is an advertisement for, seeing as Coca-Cola releases discreet ads like this all the time. This alone is an example of the subconscious work the Coca-Cola advertising team does, by simply being such a popular brand that we associate that specific bottle shape with the brand and give it no second thought. If simply the shape of a bottle has this effect on onlookers familiar with the brand, it garners the question of how powerful this advertisement will be when subconsciously associating the company with sustainability.

The way that the Coca-Cola company is choosing to advertise their products and gain consumers is a serious problem. According to the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals, affordable and clean energy, along with climate action, are two of what the UN considers to be the seventeen most important sustainability goals that humanity needs to act on. For the Coca-Cola company to use these sustainable development goals as a means to gain consumers is morally inappropriate for the media and general public, considering how pressing of an issue air pollution is to the environment, along with the fact that the ad is subconsciously allowing consumers to falsely associate the brand with air pollution sustainability. This small billboard advertisement that Coca-Cola produced as a form of company marketing and greenwashing is not enough to simply erase the damages the company has put forth into the atmosphere. For a company like Coca-Cola to genuinely better the environment, the multi-million dollar company will have to embark on many more environmentally conscious projects, preferably with a more noticeable outcome than a simple billboard will provide. Actions speak louder than words on a billboard, after all. After learning all of this information about Coca-Cola’s deceitful means of advertising, I have never been prouder that I attend a Pepsi-affiliated school. Thank you.