TOW #10 British Airways #lookup Billboard

            People often look into the sky at planes passing overhead and wonder where those planes might be heading to: a beautiful beach, a tropical rain forest or maybe even just to visit some family. With British Airways new Look Up campaign the day dreaming as to where planes are going is over. In this new

marketing campaign billboards have been strategically been placed where planes fly overhead and feature a little boy actually following the plane with a little description as to what kind of plane it is and where it is heading to. Through the use of effective social media reference the purpose can be achieved. On the bottom of the screen of the billboard there is a hash tag that reads #lookup when people see this cute billboard they might feel the need to tweet about it. One audience that British Airways is probably targeting is the younger generation who more often use social media as a way to express themselves. The billboard draws the audience in, but by tweeting about the billboard the purpose is achieved by getting the company British Airways in media and ultimately getting people to fly on their planes. A campaign like this has never been undertaken before showing the innovation of the marketing team at British Airways and they obviously have enough social awareness to know that anything with a hash tag is a good way to get the message across. I believe that the purpose was achieved, because it is just an incredibly eye catching billboard that will most likely spark a lot of conversation about British Airways. It is pretty much that British Airways has to pay to have this billboard up, but because people are tweeting about it they get free advertisement without paying for it. It is incredibly innovative way to involve new technology in the old school world of billboard advertisements. 

Link to gif of billboard 
http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/52910feb6bb3f738682c6b06/fast%20company.gif

TOW #9 One Conspiracy That Could Be True by Thom Patterson

            On November 22, 1963 the States of America was rocked with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The events of the shooting that took place by that grassy knoll have never been clear to the American public and has led way to many conspiracy theories ranging from realistic to all out crazy. Thom

Patterson from CNN wrote the article One Conspiracy Theory That Could Be True to review several conspiracy theories that have turned up over time with opinions from Dave Perry; 70-year-old retired man who has dedicated a large portion of his life to looking into the events surrounding the assassination. The purpose of the article is to revisit and debunk some of the most popular conspiracy theories while speculating that the CIA conspiracy theory may hold ground. Patterson wrote this article to appeal to the people who have an interest in the assassination, but have no firm belief in any theories themselves. The organization that Patterson uses assists in achieving the purpose. It has been nearly fifty years since the assassination, so it has been a while since the story has made headlines so Patterson first writes a brief explanation of what theories have come up since the shooting. Patterson introduces his main source, Dave Perry, who makes the whole article more credible since Patterson himself does not have much of a background in the assassination. The article ends with enumerating top conspiracy theories and having Perry way in on each. The last point being the CIA may have had something to do with the killing, Perry states that during his research he has not found anything to show that this conspiracy is false while supplying evidence that all the others do not have much truth to them, The whole article is easy to follow and for this reason I believe that the purpose was achieved. I fall into the intended audience for this article. I came in with background information, but have not spent much time theorizing what may have happened. After the article I was left with some new information about the assassination, but despite all the realistic points we, as an American public, still have no one answer as to what happened nearly fifty years ago. 

IRB Intro:2

     For my second Independent reading book this year I have chosen to read Tina Fey’s autobiography entitled Bossypants. Tina Fey is extremely successful with her time writing/being a cast member on SNL, and also with her creation with the popular show 30 Rock, which was one of my favorite shows. The previous book I read was a more historical genre of non-fiction so I decided to shift gears and read an autobiography. I have always been a fan of Tina Fey so reading about her life is something I look forward to. 

Post #8 IRB Post 2: Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond

            I finished the book Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. A main part of the book was attempting to answer Yali’s essential question “Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own” (15). After finishing

the book I can definitely say that Diamond answered this question and achieved his purpose of purpose to prove that history is the way it is because of differences of peoples’ environments, not because of biological differences. I think that the intended audience is people who really have a large interest in all forms of history. I learned so many interesting facts about history that I would have probably never learned without this book. While reading, it was clear a highly intelligent individual wrote it because the context demonstrated a deep understanding of many different areas of history. It makes sense that Diamond is currently a professor of geography at the University of California, but has spent his entire life as an author, physiologist and geologist. One of my favorite aspects of this book was Diamond’s use of real life examples to get a better understanding of the points he was making. In one on the most interesting chapters about how livestock was the reason for such an evolution of deadly disease the topic of how microbes evolve to live and propagate. The example of syphilis is used when it was first recorded in Europe in 1495 its victims only lived for a few months and experienced serious symptoms such as flesh falling off the face. By 1546 syphilis evolved into pretty much what it is today, which allows the victims to live longer and thus able to transmit the disease to other people. The use of the real life example makes the topic so much easier to understand. I believe that Diamond was able to achieve his purpose, because I know that for me I left this book with a whole new understanding as why history turned out the way it did. In terms of racism I now see that the people who believe this just have zero understanding of how the world works.