TOW #10: Drop Stop

Shark Tank: Drop Stop

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VroUci_e-c

Mark and Jeffrey present their product Drop stop with humor to try and attract the shark to invest in their product. They begin their pitch with rhetorical questions in an attempt to get their audience thinking about the problems they are having so Mark and Jeffrey can present a way to fix them to make their product more appealing. By beginning with rhetorical questions, they already start by attracting the audience making their product seem better in the moment to help them get an investment in the end.

After utilizing rhetorical question, Mark and Jeffrey use humor to make the sharks and them seem almost equal. They make their presentation not only entertaining, but they make the sharks relate to them with humor. By relating themselves in this way, the sharks feel that they can relate more to Mark and Jeffrey and more of a friendly atmosphere. The friendly atmosphere enables the audience and the speaker to have a better interaction and a healthy, happy type interaction.

Along with humor, the speakers emphasize how a lot of people have the problem so their audience isn’t alone. Not only that, but they make sure to point out that they, too, have this problem. Showing the vulnerability and weakness, makes the audience feel as if they too can admit their problem and make them more willing to buy the product and see its benefits.

Mark and Jeffrey also use tone to effectively present their product with confidence. Being confident, they seem like they know what they’re talking about and they have a product worth listening to.

IRB Intro 2

Author: Barbara Greenspan Shaiman

Title: Live Your Legacy Now!

Brief summary/description: Barbara Shaiman is the daughter of Holocaust survivors and is the founder of Champions of Caring. Her foundation was an effort to inspire people to become social activists. She later created Embrace Your Legacy to inspire people to live their legacy by performing services to a community. In her effort to make a social change, she writes her book Live Your Legacy Now to guide her readers of how to make a change in their life and the lives of other people.

TOW #9: Thingloss

Shark tank: Thingloss

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zV1hYfuwl-E

April Morris invented a lip gloss that is meant to help women lose weight. In a press for time, she uses an anecdote to explain how the product has helped her personally lose about 30 pounds. Her anecdote provided the sharks with a personal example of how the product has benefitted her to better persuade them to help her spread her company and bring in more money. The sharks could see first hand from an expert of the product of the lip gloss’ benefit. Morris also gave the sharks each a lip gloss to try and smell to show them the product for themselves so they can see the product rather than play mind games with themselves.

In an attempt to target women who want to lose weight, Morris provides posters of how body weight has decreased using before and after visuals of different women. Using the visual helps her show evidence appealing to logos as well as making her woman audience feel as though they can lose weight with this easy step.

Morris also does something really important when giving a persuasive speech: portrays confidence. During her small lecture, she is standing tall, speaking loudly, and shows no fear when interrogated about her product. She came prepared with all the answers to the questions which made the sharks trust she knew what she was talking about, as well as really had motivation to push for her product to succeed more than it was already.

The purpose of her product is to help women lose weight in an easy practical way. She addresses how she herself uses the product and raised children on her own and it became hard to worry about her own body and not her children’s. Using the lip gloss, she is able to provide for her kids health and help herself with her own without trying as hard.

TOW #8: Street Kid by Judy Westwater

Judy Westwater’s Street Kid is a story about a little girl who grew up with an abusive father, his cruel girlfriend, and a mother who did not want her. She had to learn to grow on her own and learn things for herself. By the age of 8, Judy Westwater got abandoned by her mother, almost died from her father’s girlfriend’s abuse, and almost escaped from home multiple times. Even at a young age, she learned to have the will to survive even though bad days. She was able to find strength as a child that most adults don’t have on their own. Through her story, Westwater shows us that even though there are obstacles there are also ways to move past them.

Through her narrative, she switches tone to exaggerate her purpose. She makes her audience feel badly for her as she gets beaten and scolded at then switches to an inspirational tone and says, “You can beat the outside of me all you like but you’re not going to get the inside of me. You’re not going to see me cry” (84). Her inspirational tone enables herself to appeal to the audience’s emotions by making them feel sympathy for the author and/or relate to her situation.

She wrote this book not only as a means to inspire people but to remind people that the world isn’t perfect. People blind themselves with rainbow glasses making the world seem better than it is because they don’t to admit it to themselves that the world is not as good as we make it seem 24/7. We are human. Judy Westwater was just trying to tell the audience that it’s okay you just have to pull through the hard times and motivate yourself to move forward in life.

TOW #7: Henry David Thoreau's “Civil Disobedience"

Henry David Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” was written at a time of slavery- something Thoreau had many problems with. He not only did not like the idea of slavery but he attempted to inspire people to make it come to an end. Thoreau speaks to people who want to rebel against the government and are too scared too, and people who are sitting back waiting for people to make a change so they don’t have to.

Thoreau believes the government should stop being immoral and wants to open the eyes of his audience. Wanting to improve the government, he discusses how they use logic over morals and argues that American citizens (at least in his current era) should prioritize the beliefs of their conscience when dealing with legal or political matters. Prioritizing their conscience, he may motivate his audience to make a change and stand up to be able to change how the government rules us.

In his essay, he includes an anecdote of when he went to jail because he pay the tax. Using the anecdote he is able to give credibility showing his audience how he personally has rebelled and went against the government to not only prove a point but become one step closer to making a difference.He also uses metaphors and describes generals as ‘wooden men’ and explains that, “Such command no more respect than men of straw, or a lump of dirt.” This comparison between soldiers and straw men/dirt is meant to outline how Thoreau views morality, as well as the lack thereof within the United States. He views soldiers as beings who have had their individuality and free will stripped from them, making them seem dull and morally lifeless just like dirt or straw. He argues this is because these soldiers have too much respect for the law and not enough obligation or thought to do what is right.