FOA Reflection - Ads and Mind Control

My Further Oral Activity was about how anti-advertisements reveal to us the fact that macro-companies are constantly attempting to control our subconscious mind in order to keep us spending. The whole idea was that through the analysis of anti-advertisements that are intended to turn people against the macro-companies and keeping them from buying their products people would be able to realize the fact I already stated: that big companies are controlling our minds and making us spend more money.

Overall, I feel that even though my presentation didn’t go too badly, it was not the best it could have been. I felt that, even though my speech flowed logically I didn’t stick to the plan that I had in mind. I forgot to use the statistics that I had planned to use properly and ended up reducing them to just a simple “fun fact” at the end of an analysis instead of being a part of my arguments and analysis. I also got some feedback from my classmates and they told me that I was speaking way too fast in the beginning, which I was actually planning on doing since while I was rehearsing it seemed that I was going to go over the time limit. If I had rehearsed it with an audience I think I might have been able to control that better since when I’m on my own I can’t really articulate what I’m saying too well. If I had known what it would feel to perform live in the first place maybe I would have been able to balance it out, because as a matter of fact I think that in the end I actually finished about two or three minutes below the time limit, so I could have used some better organization of time throughout my speech. All of this might actually have an impact in my use of language and organization criteria. Next time it might be a good idea to rehearse my speech much more and maybe even stick to a pre-written script, just to make sure that my organization is flawless and that my natural speech organization “imperfections” do not haunt me while I’m presenting.

The advertisement that I feel I did the best on was the first one about Christmas. I felt that my argument came out quite strongly for it while I was still able to analyze the language in the ad. My only issue with it is that I think I forgot to explicitly say that they used the second person in the ad to bring the audience into the “plot” of the ad and thus make it more personal for them. Asides from that, I’m quite satisfied with what I said regarding that ad.

The second advertisement I felt brought me down a bit. The advertisement did not really perfectly fit in with the entire concept of my presentation and I had to go to the point where I extrapolated the meaning of the ad to relate it to how that aims to keep you away from the myriad of advertisements there are in all those apps. However, nothing regarding advertisements in iOS applications was actually mentioned in this ad, so I might have gone to the point where I said something that was not truly meant to be said at all. I also spoke about how the word “addictive” was a weasel word in that ad, which actually felt contradictory to say, because since it is an anti-ad it should break the conventions of a normal ad and stray away from using such tactics, but that was not the case and I felt that that might have caused the ad to come across as weak and thus it took away impact from my presentation. I think at this point I also used the slang word “legit” when talking about all the Apple products that are mentioned in the ad, which might end u lowering my marks in the Use of Language criterion.

The final ad was perhaps the weakest of them all. In the end one of my classmates questioned me to the point where he asked whether my thoughts on it were accurate or not, so I’m guessing the things that I said might have not been as convincing. Most of the points I said regarding the ad had a good foundation, but I failed to deliver them in a clear and concise manner, which must have caused some confusion for my classmates. Asides from that, I don’t really feel that I missed much when analyzing that ad, now that I think about it. Maybe the fact that I never related the message of the ad to the title of the article it was in.

Overall, I would not say that my FOA went really bad; but I will say that it was not the best that it could be. Next time I will have to practice more and be sure to structure my language in a more effective way so that my Organization and Language criteria can be as high as possible. For this case, I feel that my criteria A and B were quite strong, but could also use some improvement; especially from the fact that these criteria could have suffered from my poor Language and Organization. As an overall improvement for my next FOA, I should spend more time practicing what I will say so that I make sure the message is conveyed in a clear and concise manner.