Drunk. Occurrences. Never. Testify.

Rochester Institute of Technology Persuasion Section 02 Winter Quarter 2012-2013 D.O.N.T. Campaign Madison Leskinen Alexandra Peters Kelsey Rowley Hayley Stauss

Table of Contents

Determining the Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . D.O.N.T. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Solution & Products . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 07 Advertisements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Campus Tours . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Profession Opinion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 35 37

Determining the Problem

We decided on addressing the dilemma of drunken postings on social media websites and outlets by discussing issues that we found irritating, inappropriate, and simply saw reoccurring too often. At the beginning we tossed around different topics, hoping to find one that we mutually agreed on, and had some depth to it. Some potential contenders were poor drivers, road rage, girls who dumbed down to gain attention, and people with obnoxious personalities. Then we came to our final choice of drunken social media postings. Since social media websites have been around, people have witnessed or personally experienced the day after the infamous high school prom. Whether they were a bystander anticipating their peers shameless photos being posted, or the fallen victims of the after parties anticipating the regretful photos from surfacing. The photos of make-out sessions, beer pong competitions, embarrassing dance moves, and of course holding the red solo cups. Although these are found to be expected and harmless photos of memories, at the time, those pictures could come back years later, taunting.

D.O.N.T. Overview
Since these memorable nights can damage future opportunities, we created D.O.N.T. - Drunk. Occurrences. Never. Testify. An organization of people dedicated to advocating teenagers and young adults to refrain from posting drunk pictures on social media websites and outlets, because it has been occurring more and more, along with the rise of employers who have been seeking, and scoping out potential employees through their personal social webpages. Our objective as an organization is to create preventative action against drunken postings and make young people aware of the detrimental effects of posting drunk pictures of themselves on the internet. These postings could have a negative influence on obtaining a job in the future, and how once something is provided on the internet, it is hard to remove. We hope that through our campaigns and campus tours, we will be able to decrease the number of high school and college students who post these pictures, without considering the consequences.

D.O.N.T Outline
The concern:
Young adults often overlook the serious issue of posting inappropriate pictures on social media websites. Images of themselves drinking and intoxicated can have immediate effects on their lives and careers when posted anywhere on the Internet.

Our goal:
To address this issue in a way that young adults will relate and pay attention to. We are taking an alternative route to connect with our target audience that will slash the droning repetition tactic often used. Our main goal is to make young adults realize the impact posting drunken pictures of themselves on websites like Facebook can have on possible future careers and internships.

Target audience:
We are reaching out to a younger demographic of males and females with an age range from approximately 16 to 24. An important subgroup within this demographic are high school and college students. This is because as young adults who are beginning to receive a new personal freedom they are meeting new friends and going to parties where everyone has some kind of camera on them. Also, as social media websites on the Internet are more popular than ever, most of these young adults are participants on at least one of these sites.

D.O.N.T. Outline
Methods:
Using the most relevant and popular technology among our target audience to relate and communicate our message to them. We have also researched advertising and persuasion techniques we believe to be most effective in connecting to our specific target demographic. We have also selected speakers to tour different colleges to speak with the students about this issue.

Solutions & Products

Solution #1: Drunk Mode
Drunk Mode is our patented mobile Application that a user downloads onto their iPhone, Andriod Smart Phone, or iPod from the App Store for free. When downloaded Drunk Mode implants itself in the Settings section of your mobile device. It is the same concept at the Airplane Mode and Do Not Disturb settings, where they are turned on and off when necessary.

Functions of Drunk Mode:

The main function of Drunk Mode app is to block the uploading of pictures onto the Internet while it is enabled. However, the user will be able to take pictures that will stay stored on your own personal devices library only for later review. For a fun twist, we have created a setting in our app that allows the user to enable our Cat Replacement technology. When a photo is taken, our Drunk Mode app scans them and detects any drinks, such as Solo cups, beer cans, or glasses, and replaces them for you with a cat photo instead. We have a library of many cats that will fit into any picture to cover those embarrassing alcoholic drinks. We have decided to include this sill and fun feature in our product because our research about humorous appeals. The use of humor in persuasion is pervasive, (pg. 277, Persuasion; Social Influence and Compliance Gaining). In our readings we found that jokes do not persuade. The most effective way of using humor is to get the audience to take a more peripheral route to persuasion. Humor assists persuasion by capturing attention. A recent meta-analysis of humor in advertising revealed that humor consistently increased attention and positive affect toward a brand, (Eisend, 2009. Pg. 278, Persuasion; Social Influence and Compliance Gaining.).

Solutions & Products

We also found that humor may indirectly facilitate persuasion by increasing liking for the persuader, which in turn indirectly increases chances for successful persuasion. This is because it tends to make a persuader seem friendlier and helps to reduce psychological reactance to a message. Another function of our Drunk Mode app is to block outgoing messages to specifically selected contacts the user flags in Contact Options. Some contacts we would suggest blocking when Drunk Mode is enabled would be Exes, Co-workers/boss, or a friend you are having a fight with. This way, when you know you will be going out and drinking your history of regretting your drunken text messages will be under control. Any texts or calls that have been attempted to these flagged contacts will be saved inside a special folder in the Drunk Mode app, organized by contact, for later review when the user is sober. Our alerts let the user know this message will be saved for later review. For those who are especially persistent and insist on turning their Drunk Mode OFF during drinking to send regrettable texts, calls and photos can purchase the portable LCD Digital Alcohol Tester Breathalyzer for iPhone, iPod and iPad. There is also another version available for Andriod Smart Phones. We have joined with ipega in the creation of this revolutionary new technology and have paired it with our Drunk Mode app. When this is plugged in to the charging port, it serves as an extra reinforcement to blocking inappropriate photos, calls and messages. When the users BAC has reached .05% blood alcohol content, alerts are enabled but the user is able to choose if they want to send or not. Once the user reaches the legal limit of intoxication beyond appropriate judgment at .08% blood alcohol content, all message and call sendings for flagged contacts will be completely cut off, along with the posting and sending of any photos whatsoever. It is very simple to use and can also help decide if the user is safe to drive or not. We decided that using this would help enforce our Drunk Mode app and make it even more fun to use. At only $12.99 it is very affordable.

Solutions & Products

Our ideology on Drunk Mode:
We have chosen to create this application by a simple yet effective method of identifying the core of the problem we are addressing. The source of drunken Facebook and other social media website photos are usually camera phones. Now that most people use phones with WiFi, sharing photos is faster than ever. We identified this as a main source and problem of young adults uploading these inappropriate photos to the web, often while they are still intoxicated and not thinking clearly. Our theory is that if something or some idea is going to work, it needs to be easily and highly accessible to as many people within our target audience as possible. Then comes our next step of identifying our target audience group and thinking of ways to identify with them. We made the connection between their phones and the popular app store where Drunk Mode can easily become accessible and widespread among our audience easily. We also observed that downloading trendy new apps that are fun and functional is highly popular among our target demographic. Since we are also focusing on college students, who are usually scraping by with little money, our Drunk Mode app is free for everyone to download.

Solutions & Products

The Drunk Mode App Icon:

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Solutions & Products

The Drunk Mode App in a phones settings:

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Solutions & Products

The Drunk Mode App swapping a red solo cup for cats:

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Solutions & Products

The Drunk Mode App alert and notications when intoxicated:

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Solutions & Products

The Drunk Mode App Breathalyzer:

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Advertisements

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Advertisements

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Advertisements
Image Ads
We created these ads to include images as the focal point and text as the sub focal point according to the picture superiority effect (Gass, Seiter 293) which states that pictures, rather than words are easier for humans to recall. Scientists conducted a study in which words-only ads and ads with both images and text were shown to a group of people. The results were that the people recalled the ads with both words and images more readily. The reason the use of images is so effective is because when we view images they are processed through two different modes as opposed to words that are only processed through one mode. So with images we have twice the chance of remembering them because our memory has two modes to recall from.

Solo Cup
We used a red solo cup for one of the ads because of its iconicity. Im sure everyone in this room knows what it is, what its used for, and what its generally associated with. Alcohol. A red solo cup is a highly identifiable object due to its common use for a variety of things-but most commonly social gatherings. The most common social gathering being one where alcohol is being consumed and theres a lot of people so you need a large quantity of cups at cheap, so we used the red solo cup to represent drinking in general. We felt the use of iconicity was especially important because according to the book, If there is one property that most clearly distinguishes pictures from language and other modes of communication, that property is iconicity.

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Advertisements
Camera
We used a camera filled with beer to utilize indexicality. The picture is obviously of a camera with a picture of beer on its screen, but people can put the two together themselves and infer the ad is about taking pictures while drunk--similar to a drunk driving ad in which adults were driving around in a car filled up to the windows with alcohol. Using indexicality generally makes people think a little more about the message because you have two different things that are obviously associated with each other in some way since theyre in the ad together, but you have to figure out what they mean. Some people may infer the camera is literally full of beer, and some may infer that the photographer took a picture of a glass of beer, either way its associating drinking alcohol and taking pictures.

Word Hook
Also we found that one of the top ways to make an advertising campaign catch on is to have a word hook. We wanted something like verizons can you hear me now? or Got Milks got milk? Our repetition of the word dont acts as a word hook weve repeated it throughout he ads at the beginning of each sentence such as: Dont wanna have to explain? Dont post the pics. The repetition of the word dont in both the ads and the logo makes people remember the the word dont as its processed multiple times through their heads, so it gets our message across as well as our organization.

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Advertisements
Type Ads
Even though we found that picture ads were more effective than text-only ads, we took a chance with three text-only ads. The enlarged number almost acts as an image, even though its not a typical illustration or photograph. Because its the largest thing on the page, your eye is drawn to it. You read 50% and go wow thats a decently large percent, 50% of what? And you keep reading because you want to know. Similar to ads that have large type that says something like, Lose weight in only 10 days, or Get rich quick.

Stand Out
The idea of the typographic ads is to get people to read them, learn something from them, and then pass on information. This design is simple and different from most other ads and in a sea of ads with pictures, we wanted them to stand out in a simple and loud way, similar to the very successful nike ads that are mostly just bold sans-serif left-aligned text. Very popular with our target age group. We kept the text short because people dont want to read more than a few words generally because they dont usually want to focus their attention for a long period of time if they dont have to. Its large enough to read from afar so you dont have to work as hard to read it.

Cool Fact
The typographic posters also leave people with a cool fact they may not have known that they can share with their friends. They may talk to their friends about this interesting statistic they didnt know on a poster they saw and then the ad is talked about through word of mouth.

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Consistent Theme
Another important way to make ads stick is to create a series with a consistent theme. We kept the same format and general color scheme for the three typographic posters. That way, when people see the posters even from afar, theyll remember what theyre associated with. Also with the image-based posters we kept a white background with an image in the center and the same point size font beneath it.

Typography
We used futura in the series of typographic ads. Futura is a sans-serif font apart of the Geometric family which gives it a modern, clean, simple, and youthful look. Since we wanted to gear the ads towards younger, high-school and college age people we went with a typeface that reflects their age group. Futura is also a humanist typeface, meaning it reflects human handwriting so it has a warmer tone to it. Its not entirely mechanical, but its geometric-ness has a sternness to it that gets the message across as well as a warmth to soften the blow a little.

Colors
We chose bright colors against a dark background so the information would stand out. A black background is very striking against most surfaces (since the posters would be placed mainly on walls which are usually lightly colored). Brighter neon colors colors are a fad in modern day fashion among our target group and it also mimics bright party or dance lights.

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Campus Tours
Summary:
In order to spread the word of our organization, D.O.N.T. and the effects of inappropriate images being posted on social media websites, we have created a school campus tour. Two presenters have been carefully chosen to represent our message and organization to high school and college students across America. Our app, Drunk Mode, has been created to attempt a more humorous approach to gain our audiences attention but we do need to address the real issues and real circumstances concerning posting drunken photos on the internet.

The Presenters:
Through our research we have conducted, the most appropriate presenters have been chosen to represent our organization at school campuses throughout America. One male and one female will present to the audience. The male will be 35 years old and the female will be 29 years old. They will both be physically and socially attractive. This is because the halo effect can strongly contribute to first impressions. Due to the fact that attractive people create a positive halo effect, our presenters will make a better first impression on our audience if they are physically attractive. By socially attractive we mean that our presenters will have strong public speaking ability and know how to use body language, hand gestures and eye contact the appropriate ways to enhance the effectiveness of their persuasion. They will have a tendency to speak faster than they do slow because studies have shown students perceive instructors as less credible when they are slow speeded speakers. Also, messages that are delivered at faster rates impede the listener to scrutinize every small detail that may trip them up otherwise.

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Campus Tours

Our male speaker will have a mesomorph (athletic, strong) body shape while our female speaker will have more of an endomorph (rounded, heavier) body type. We want our audience to perceive our male speaker as strong and adventurous and our female speaker as warm, sympathetic, agreeable and dependent. It is important that our female speaker seem this way because there is only a thin line between a female persuader and her audience that separates her from seeming too harsh or threatening. Research shows that women who are more understanding and warm towards their audience are more persuasive than those who are intense and powerful. Research has also shown that more mature-faced men exude more credibility to an audience he is trying to persuade. We found that wide-jawed, mature-faced men with eyes generally close together, a medium-sized nose and a taller stature are perceived by others as most credible and persuasive. We also found that men with facial hair are often perceived as more trustworthy. Our female speaker will dress in ways similar to our target audience to help them identify with her more and our male speaker will be wearing a nice suit to display more credibility.

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Campus Tours
Our ideology on the Campus Tour:
We have decided to incorporation this part of our campaign to help gain credibility among our audiences and potential supporters. Due to our audience members being that of a younger demographic whom we can relate to, because we ourselves are included in that demographic, we have executed some humorous approaches to gaining their attention. When we were researching humor and credibility, humor proved to be overall beneficiary to the persuader but the expertise the persuaded exhibits can sometimes be diminished by this approach. This leads us to execute a combination of appeals, this way if our humorous appeal does not translate as well to certain audience members, the credibility of our Campus Tour will be able to back us up and likely help us to gain more compliance. We feel that even though there can be danger areas in combining appeals, such as contradicting combinations like humor and pity, we have discovered a way to make our persuasion more influential to our target audience by combing humor with credibility.

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Campus Tours
Male Speaker:

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Campus Tours
Female Speaker:

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Campus Tours
Reversal Method
Something that we plan to use in our presentation is the reversal approach of advertising. The reversal approach is used to grab attention and get the audience to think. The reversal approach goes in the opposite way of the consumers expectations, causing them to think about the opposite of what they already know about a product. Here, we will disprove stereotypes and have two presenters. The first presenter will be a female, as described earlier, who is a company executive; someone with power in the professional world. This person will be appealing to our young adult audience because he or she will be dressed casually and depict a relatable story. By having this woman dress casually, she will become more relatable for the audience. According to the textbook, women are less persuasive than men, so by increasing the chances the audience will relate to her, it will increase the chances she be persuasive for our audience. The presenter will be someone the audience will not expect. A person dressed casually with a casual personality is not one people would put into a position of power as they listen to them speak. That is how the reversal method will work. At the end of her presentation, the woman will reveal her title and credentials, in hopes of sealing the envelope on her statements. The second presenter will be a male college student dressed as a business professional. This presenter will begin with personally connecting with the subjects, maybe telling a story they all could relate to and identify with. Here, the subjects will be surprised that this professionallooking individual will be someone just like them. Because it is said that men are more persuasive than women, the presenter will have the audiences attention based on his stature and physical appearance, creating the audience to believe he is a person in power.

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Campus Tours
Reversal Method
When it is revealed he is a young adult just like them, the reversal method is in effect as the audience is forced to cognitively decipher what they just experienced. The attempt is something to grab the attention of the audience and will cause them to pay attention just in hopes of disproving what theyve been told. The reversal approach is effective in many ways in that it causes the subject to think harder about the message they are being given. It not only forces the subject to interpret the message in a deeper cognitive manner, it will reinforce the message itself. The reasons our presenters will be effective lies in visual persuasion. According to the text; dressing like your audience may make them identify with you more. As we all know, as young people we look for people to identify with and those that are relatable will ultimately be more persuasive. We look at meta-analysis when talking about positions of power; fancy suits, uniforms, and high status clothing are related to higher roles of compliance.

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Language
Throughout our campaign and presentations we need to be cautious of how we verbally present our central message and the types of words we utilize. There is an underlying message within the humorous products and content of our campaign, and due to that we still need to be sensitive to offensive words, meanings and perceptions of phrases. It would be beneficial if we persuade our audience by using euphemisms, non-intense language, supporting profanity and vividness.

Euphemisms
These are considered inoffensive terms that are substituted for offensive words. We want to avoid using the stereotypical and offensive words that are usually associated with the actions being partaken in when under the influence. So we will replace the offensive words or phrases with euphemisms so the people who would be impacted in a negative way by the harmful terms, will more likely be positively persuaded into the campaign.

Non-Intense Language
This is apart of the Communication Accommodation Theory, when we communicate with others we adjust our style of speaking to their style, in order to gain approval and increase communication efficiency. Our target audience for our campaign is teens and young adults in high school or college. This age group uses a non-intense style of speaking and communicating, so in order to be effective in persuasion we should use the same form of communication. If the speaker matches the intended audiences speaking style, then the speaker will be viewed as more credible and the receivers of the message will be more accepting of persuasion.

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Language
Profanity
In our type of campaign it wouldnt be effective for the speakers and presenters of the message to verbally use profanity, but if it is still incorporated it could be effective. In a study used in our textbook it claims that 8.1% of words used in conversations between college students are swear words, so if they are sitll acknowledged in our campaign we could be found more credible, since we are avoiding the fact people who are drunk swear more often. This supports why profanity can be effective, but we want to clarify that sexual profanity words are found to be the most offensive, which is the type of profanity that is likely to be used in our campaign. Instead of saying profanity, we will use euphemisms and then only demonstrate profanity in a visual manner. For instance, when people are intoxicated they tend to be more emotional, so when they communicate via text messages they express their feelings by using profanity. We could show examples of messages sent that may be later regretted when the sender is no longer under the influence, which uses profanity.

Vividness
Our take on the usage of profanity also contains vividness within language, we dont verbally communicate everything, we visually communicate as well. According to Nisbett and Ross, mentioned in our textbook, vivid information captures and holds our attention and excites our imagination because its emotionally interesting, concrete and imagery-provoking. Information that can be seen as uninteresting, or is no unclear to communicate verbally then we can show examples visually, such as our advertisements and campaign flyers.

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Language
Nonverbal Influence
When a campaign that obtains a serious underlying message, but has a humorous twist to how it is presented, then body language and other forms of nonverbal influences need to be understood, on when its appropriate timing to use this type of persuasion. Forms of nonverbal influence are eye contact, facial expressions, body language, physical features, and physical appearance.

Eye Contact and Facial Expressions

Making eye contact with the intended audience is necessary, it creates a sense of trust, able to relate, and keeps intact credibility of the presenters message and sources. Facial expressions such as smiling also have the same affects as eye contact. However, you need to know when it is appropriate to smile or not smile, if a serious part of the campaign is being presented, smiling would not be appropriate and would decrease the persuasiveness of that information. It has been claimed that is a presenter mimics what the audiences nonverbal influences are, they will be seen as behaving in the same manner, and be found more persuasive.

Body Language
Following the Direct Effects Model of Immediacy, the persuaders should try to mimic the body language, gestures, of their audience members as well as they do with facial expressions. This will create a comfortable atmosphere. The speaker should also try to use gestures that have been found to be more persuasive, for instance leaning forward and use open body language, where their arms and legs are positioned away from their body.

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Professional Opinion
Interview with Mike Johansson, Social Media expert and strategist:
Q: Is it important to monitor what you as a college student put on your Facebook and/or Twitter page? A: Yes. Within 30 seconds of looking over your resume, employers Google you. You are what Google says you are.

Q: How can posting pictures of a night out with friends damage chances for employment in the future? A: Just could be seen as unprofessional.

Q: How far back to employers look on Facebook? A: It depends how interested they are in you and what they find in the early stages of their search.

Q: What are things you should avoid putting on social media? A: You should avoid any complaining, bashing, or inappropriate photos.

Q: Do you have any examples of people that have encountered this problem? A: No specific examples, but I have given several presentations to various groups to make them aware of this problem. If I am given enough notice and permission from the organizer, I will search for pictures of some people that will be audience members and the message becomes more powerful when they see their own embarrassing photos posted for the room.

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Professional Opinion

Q: Have you ever looked at potential employees profiles? A: Yes

Q: How far is TOO far? A: You dont have to necessarily be professional in your younger years, but be respectful. I suggest the two minute rule; if you are anything but undeniably happy, type out what you are going to post, walk away for two minutes and then return to the screen. If you still want to post it, then do, if not, you saved yourself.

Q: If a job candidate is not on social media, does that raise suspicion? A: It is one of two things: 1. I dont want to deal with it. 2. I have something to hide.

Side comments:
Growing up there are two things your parents always said: Dont say anything in private you wouldnt say in public. Dont have anything nice to say, dont say anything at all. In this age, there should be another: Dont share anything with friends or through social media that you wouldnt want the world to see.

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Conclusion

Will you think twice next time?

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