September 2021 – Tyler's RCL Blog

10: Essay Draft

Juul was introduced to the public in 2015, when there wasn’t a lot of knowledge about the effects of vaping on the human body. Because vaping was not yet confirmed to have harmful effects on the body, the e-cigarette company was able to release advertisements in mainstream media. These ads, dubbed the Vaporized campaign, took advantage of this situation and used a variety of rhetorical techniques to encourage viewers to purchase their product, including commonplaces and visual rhetoric. This is incredibly similar to cigarette advertisements put out before the ban on cigarette advertising in regular media, which employ similar visual rhetoric alongside the use of ethos and pathos in order to encourage their audience to buy their product.

Juul’s vibrant and color-packed advertisements in their “Vaporized” launch campaign work to stand out to their audience and grab attention. The ads are fun and colorful, and the model is attractive and posing with her juul. The bright and energetic colors help boost the idea that juuling is enjoyable, and the model has a smile on her face. The visual rhetoric employed here furthers the idea that people like juuling, and can make the audience feel like they could see themselves doing it.

Similarly, the Winston ad has another attractive woman posing with her cigarette. In contrast to the attractive man in the back, seemingly on a date with this girl, the lettering on the ad says “It’s what’s up front that counts”- implying that the cigarette she has on offer is even better than spending time with this man. She has her back turned to him in favor of showing the cigarette off to the viewer. If someone would choose the cigarette over the man, that’s a heavy indicator of the supposed quality of the cigarette.

Juul takes advantage of the situation where, unlike cigarette ads in the present day, the company was allowed to advertise in regular media. Similarly to the cigarette ad shown here, there wasn’t a lot of buzz about possible effects of the product on the human body. Because the specific Juul product was relatively new and unknown, there weren’t really restrictions on their advertising, so they were allowed to buy ad space wherever they liked. This included children’s shows sites Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network, where the typical viewership age was much different than their supposed targets of cigarette smokers looking to quit. Because their e-cigarette was supposed to be a helpful alternative to quitting smoking,

Cigarette smoking ads back in the day also did not yet face the restrictions they do today, with some advertisements, like those for Camel, even employing ethos by way of doctors supposedly recommending cigarettes and even smoking them themselves. They took advantage of this situation with massive marketing campaigns, with the Winston company even competing in NASCAR and having a dedicated cup. There had been some talk about cigarettes being unhealthy, but until 1970, when US President Reagan signed the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act, banning cigarette advertising on TV and radio, into law, there were still advertising opportunities.

Juul employed the implied commonplace of “everyone’s doing it” to appeal to the viewer’s sense of community. At heart, almost everyone wants to fit in with the world around them. If you see people like you or in your age group using Juul e-cigarettes, you might want to buy them to fit in with the people around you and be seen as “cool”. Peer pressure is also definitely something that can be applied here by impressionable teenagers.

The cigarette ad by Winston does something similar by having an attractive man in the background of the woman showing off her cigarette- while it’s not the main message, it gives the audience the idea that if they smoke the same cigarettes as the woman, maybe they will attract a partner as attractive as the man in the ad.

Overall, the commonplaces, visual rhetoric, and taking advantage of the situation by both of the ads make the two artifacts scarily similar. Both advertisements show off products that contain nicotine and later were stopped from advertising in different places (for now, Juul just has regulations against it on platforms like Instagram). While these artifacts were later cut off, they were extremely effective at targeting generations of young people and trapping them in nicotine addiction.

09: Refined Speech Outline

Introduction- should I keep the same introduction as in my elevator pitch? It was definitely good, and a lot of people said they liked it, but it’s not going to appeal to every audience.
- Teen interest in Juul pod flavors- mango and mint reported to taste the best by National Institutes for Health study of teenagers juuling. Addiction tastes good.
Show Juul Vaporized ad to audience. Possibly bring up Ariana Grande photo and cigarette photo(s?) after, but keep it to after the main ad is shown to avoid confusion. Show Ariana Grande photo and cigarette photo after.
- Vibrant colors in Juul ad, mirroring kids’ advertisements (find a photo to use here, or leave it be? Not everything needs a photo example, and people mostly know what I’m talking about here). Visual rhetoric makes juuling look fun, like something you want to do
  - Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network ad placement- places where kids and teens are far more likely to browse than adults who can legally purchase this product
  - Attractive, smiling young person- looks very similar to that Ariana Grande photo in pose and ponytail. Don’t you want to be like (a lookalike of) Ariana Grande? Don’t you want to be popular like her? You can if you juul.
Commonplace of “everyone’s doing it”- you want to fit in with the group, sense of group unity. Peer pressure is absolutely a thing that can come into play here.
Situation where vaping ads not yet banned like cigarette ads created the opportunity for Juul to post advertisements where vulnerable teens and children were browsing
- Cigarette ads also posted ads featuring young people before they were banned for their health risks- photo featured shows young girl choosing the cigarette over her boyfriend(?), but also implies that the man is there because she smokes cigarettes so that makes her more desirable- am I reading into this too much?
- Lack of transparency about targeting younger audiences instead of supposed target of adult smokers trying to find an alternative- deliberate exclusion of slogan
Closing remarks- “Is this targeting me, or others like me?” is a decent opening to provide thought among the audience, but it’s not really enough right now- but I’m not sure what to put in there instead. Remember to thank the audience.

08: Speech Outline and Essay Introduction

Speech Outline:

Introduction with hook, talk about how Juul appeals to younger audience
- National Institutes of Health statistic (here or somewhere else?)
Show artifact- Juul Vaporized ad
Visual rhetoric with bright colors
- Specific ad placement choice
- Model similarity to Ariana Grande photo
Commonplace of “everyone’s doing it”- want to fit in
Situation where people aren’t yet aware of dangers of vaping- ads not yet banned like cigarette ads
- Similarity to cigarette ads’ use of visual rhetoric- show comparison photo?
- Deliberate exclusion of “for adult smokers who want a cigarette alternative” slogan
Closing remarks- find way to have smooth transition

Essay Introduction:

Juul was introduced to the public in 2015, when there wasn’t a lot of knowledge about the effects of vaping on the human body. Because vaping was not yet confirmed to have harmful effects on the body, the e-cigarette company was able to release advertisements in mainstream media. These ads, dubbed the Vaporized campaign, took advantage of this situation and used a variety of rhetorical techniques to encourage viewers to purchase their product, including commonplaces and visual rhetoric. This is incredibly similar to cigarette advertisements put out before the ban on cigarette advertising, which employ similar visual rhetoric alongside the use of ethos and pathos in order to encourage their audience to buy their product.

07: Come On Bethesda, Give Us a New Elder Scrolls

For my third passion blog post, I’m going to be covering a well-loved (and well-modded) game: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, or just simply Skyrim. With an open world, custom-made player characters, and a multitude of quests to go on, it feels like you can play Skyrim forever. Indeed, it has been around since 2011, and still has a strong community.

FUN RATING: 5/5. First 5/5! Wow! There’s so much you can do in this game, in terms of quests and enemies to kill. However, what I think is most fun is the glitches that pop up in Skyrim. The game will be a decade old in November, so it would make sense that it’d have problems. The remastered versions still have glitches and bugs, too- but it’s all part of the experience. It’s super enjoyable to spot something that shouldn’t be there and then play around with it. If you find yourself getting bored, you can always load in some mods for extra content to play through.

EASE RATING: 3/5. In the beginning, you’re gonna die a lot. It gets easier as you level up and put points in your skill trees for armor/weapons (or just fall into the trap of stealth archer like so many of us have). Everybody gets ragdolled by giants, even in the higher levels. There’s just something about ’em (thanks, Bethesda). There’s useful information for lore, and occasional game progression, in books. Some of them get a little repetitive, but most of them are actually interesting to read. It’s not as “git gud” in nature as the Souls series, but you are probably going to die every so often at the beginning. There’s a difficulty scale in settings, but I don’t use it often, except to increase the difficulty as things get somewhat easier the further you go.

REPLAYABILITY RATING: 4/5. With the open world and numerous quests you can get, both main story and misc. quests, it’s a long and arduous task to 100% the game. There’s pretty much always things that keep popping up, so it’s hard to not have something to do unless you’ve put time and effort into getting all the quests.

OVERALL: Skyrim is a fun game with a lot of history, and I recommend it and other Elder Scrolls games to anyone who might be interested. The combat is versatile and so is your choice of armor- you’ve got a lot of options and enchantments you can put on them. There’s many options for messing around with the game, especially if you’re on PC and can use console commands and modding. The open world concept is well done, although the game has some glitches and weird physics that can kill you on occasion. Character creation is immersive and fun, and you can have multiple save files. There’s so much lore and care put into this game. Skyrim is genuinely a game that I love.

06: Elevator Pitch Review

I really enjoyed the elevator pitch given by Emma Foley in my “group” on the Red Scare following WWII. I thought it was genuinely interesting that she looked at how the government took advantage of the Red Scare to dissolve workers’ unions under the guise of combatting communism. I’d really like to see a more in-depth version of that. I appreciate that she also put a lot of work into contextualizing the culture that spawned the Red Scare and the commonplaces of that society, and that she took the time to mention that the effects of this ideology are still lingering today.

05: Past Phenomenon- Still Popular?

For the second passion blog post on here, I’m going to be covering a game that used to be a favorite and has since dropped off and started to be considered a “dead” game due to lack of updates- Animal Crossing: New Horizons. In this game, you arrive on a deserted island and work to build it up and develop your friendships with the other island inhabitants. You water flowers, place items for decoration, and even build cliffs and rivers.

FUN RATING: 4/5. The real gem in this game is the multiplayer features. While you have to have bought online play, it’s fantastic when you do have it. Gameplay is definitely a lot more interesting when you have other people to play with (and hit with your net). There’s always new bugs and fish to catch, and your design options are typically only limited by your inspiration.

EASE RATING: 4/5. Typically you can just log on for, say, 15 minutes a day and be fine. In this Animal Crossing iteration, there’s no negative repercussions to you not playing other than weeds/other debris growing- your villagers will stay put, whereas they could and would move away in previous games in the series. I took off a point, though, because some fish and sea creatures are super difficult to get. The gigas giant clam will forever be my mortal enemy with its constant speeding away from me.

REPLAYABILITY RATING: 3/5. Easy to come back to, as long as you have something to do. Without it, things can get kind of stale. Luckily, there’s a whole host of things to complete. Animal dialogue is also a little more repetitive than in previous games.

OVERALL: I replay this for a solid chunk of every summer, so it’s a little difficult for me to give this a bad rating. I genuinely enjoy this game, and it’s easy to get sucked in, but I still have some stuff to finish. It gets a little stale at parts, and I definitely feel like I play myself out by the time fall rolls around, and then I lose out on materials and events. There were supposed to be more updates, but dataminers DID find evidence of previously appearing NPC Brewster and his café, so maybe that’ll appear soon. A lot of people started getting into this game when it came out, with over 30 million copies being sold in the first ten months of its release. When the updates dried up, people started to get back into the real world, as opposed to this perfect virtual world you could create for yourself. Animal Crossing definitely served as some form of escapism for us in Covid-19 times. I’ve been using Animal Crossing as a way to keep in touch with my mom, who’s on the other side of the country, and we don’t really get to talk much because she’s busy with work. It’s something we both enjoy.

If you want to check out my island, my dream address is DA-2509-6776-4910. Enjoy! I’m not super sure how up to date it is.

Have some more photos!

04: Elevator Pitch Draft

Picture this: you’re in high school, and it’s lunchtime- or maybe just after. You stop by the bathroom, and by the time you’re out, you’ve been overwhelmed with the smell of mango. While this flavor of juul pod is now discontinued, it was wildly popular among teens and young adults- who doesn’t want their nicotine addiction to come in delicious flavors? In their ad campaigns, Juul takes full advantage of this audience base.

Juul’s vibrant and color-packed advertisements in their “Vaporized” launch campaign work to stand out to their audience and grab attention. Fun and colorful ads tend to mimic the same qualities on products marketed towards teens and children. Juul even placed these eye-catching ads on websites for children’s TV companies, Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network, deliberately choosing to show these ads in places where children and teenagers were more likely to be browsing than those who would legally be allowed to purchase vaping and tobacco products.

Juul ads in this campaign also show attractive, often smiling young people posing with juuls. The ads also make using a juul or toting it around look fun and enjoyable. The visual rhetoric employed here works to further the “fun and exciting” image in this campaign. If you can see someone like you sporting a product, you may be more likely to see yourself actually purchasing it. In addition to this, seeing other people similar to you or in your social circle participating in a trend makes you more likely to join in because “everyone’s doing it”.

It’s also important to note here the choice that Juul has made to exclude any information that might point to their product being used as an alternative to smoking cigarettes or other tobacco-related items, which is in direct opposite to their tagline on their website homepage: “Designed for adult smokers. JUUL products deliver an exceptional nicotine experience designed for adult smokers looking for an alternative to traditional cigarettes.” Unless you go looking for this information, you’re not very likely to find it- you have to scroll down past the images.

Next time you see an advertisement like this, ask yourself: is this ad targeting me or others like me? There’s a reason cigarette ads are no longer able to be published in mainstream media. Think about it. Thank you.

03: Those Magikarp Sure Are Jumping

This is the first official post for my passion blog! Currently my drawing tablet is refusing to connect, so the visuals will have to temporarily take a backseat while I troubleshoot the issue.

I’ve decided to go with the video game reviews, as that’s what I’m most interested in right now. This, as stated previously, will sort of operate as a “before you buy” situation. I’ve decided I will be rating out of 5 stars in three categories: fun, ease of play, and replayability (how long until you get bored, if you can go through the game again, etc).

Today I’ll be covering Magikarp Jump, a spinoff of the iconic Pokémon series. Magikarp, in the main series, is a pretty useless pokémon that typically only uses one move in battle- splash, a move that has no effect. Many people stick it out for Magikarp’s extremely powerful evolution, Gyarados. However, Magikarp Jump takes this pokémon and gives it its own game. You, as the player, level up your Magikarp by feeding it and training it up. Then, when it reaches max level, you take on the League by battling your Magikarp’s JP, or Jump Power, against the trainers in the League- then you continue with another. Every time you fish up a new Magikarp, you can get a new color or pattern.

FUN RATING: 3/5. It can get a little bit monotonous feeding your Magikarp and training it up and then waiting for more food and trainings to appear with time. However, the actual activities are enjoyable, and it’s a great feeling when you finally beat a League.

EASE RATING: 5/5. Even if you lose, you just get right back up again. The tasks are simple and you get rewarded with experience even when you lose a battle, or lose your karp altogether (like choosing to jump up to a berry and getting your karp taken by a waiting bird). There are options to pay your way, but you can win without spending.

REPLAYABILITY RATING: 2/5. The whole game is essentially replaying the levels. It takes a long time to get up there, and you can keep going after you beat the final League, but even that caps out after awhile. It’s a little frustrating to me having to go all the way back to the start after having beaten the game- especially if you want to transfer your game over from another phone. If you don’t have the backup code or can’t get into your phone for some reason, your save file is toast. I don’t think I’ll be replaying for a couple of months at least after I beat this again.

OVERALL: A pretty fun game to play to pass the time. Not fantastic, but it doesn’t have to be. The best part to me is fishing up a new colored Magikarp and naming it something interesting, as opposed to the story progression. If you’re looking for something you can do when you’re bored, this might be the game for you.

02: Nationwide Nicotine Dependency

In 1971, the Winston cigarette brand became part of NASCAR’s racing car sponsorships. To commemorate the race, the companydecided to make merchandise like this hat and this shirt– most notably, they even had a quilt (which my grandfather had, and this quilt has traveled around my family since. It is now in my possession!). These all bear the same pattern in one ironic slogan: “How Good It Is”.

Although a link was established between lung cancer and smoking in the mid-1960s, people were still smoking. Smoking had become heavily built into American culture as a norm, and there were many allowances made for smokers (such as there being smoking areas in restaurants and planes). The population was regularly exposed to cigarette and tobacco ads, making smoking (and subsequently nicotine dependency, which leads to making more purchases) more attractive to the average consumer. Winston cigarettes fed off of this popularity to become a large brand, and their motto? Having better-tasting cigarettes than any other company out there.

“How Good It Is” is definitely a memorable slogan, and falls under the typical “short and sweet” of most commonplaces. Although cigarettes and tobacco were becoming something to be wary of, Winston chose not to address this constraint in their advertisements, and instead focus on marketing their products as tasting better than anyone else’s. Indeed, that’s the first think you would typically think of aside from the irony of cigarettes being “good”. It works as both something memorable to keep consumers thinking of it, and as encouragement to purchase. If something tastes so much better than typical cigarettes, then why not try it? Typical cigarettes definitely don’t taste great, nor do they smell good. If they suddenly become more palatable, these cigarette products absolutely become more tantalizing to the audience.

01: Possible Passion Blog Themes

For the passion blog for the fall semester, I brainstormed some during Tuesday’s lecture and came up with an idea, and branched out a little bit later. Here’s them.

Option 1) Video game blog. Instead of focusing on a specific video game, I thought I could play a little bit through of different video games for every passion blog, and give it a rating out of 5 stars. I could talk a little bit about the gameplay, the kind of game, and what I liked and didn’t like about it. I very much enjoy playing video games in my spare time, so it would be a fun way to integrate my personal life with this class. If I do go with this, I’d like to make little graphics with my drawing tablet, for example one of the star rating. This would sort of work as a “before you buy” experience.

Option 2) History blog! Focusing on bits of ancient history that I find interesting as a Classics major and talking about them. However, this would be a little less accessible/understandable because it would probably be a little jargon-y. That said, I always love talking about stuff that I’ve learned that I find wild or intriguing.

Option 3) Maybe a little weird or niche, but a blog focusing on apartment living/living off campus as a college student, or living away from home? Apartment life has definitely been interesting so far. In the first 3 weeks or so of moving in, we’ve had some serious issues, and tackling them has definitely been an experience. Other parts could cover working with your roommates, grocery shopping on a budget/cooking, etc. This would be somewhat interesting, but I think it doesn’t really work as a “passion” of mine.

It’ll probably be video game reviews, as that’s what I’m the most excited about and have the most ideas for content on.