From Color to Consumer: Plastic Cutlery Marketing

Consumer demands of disposability, style and cleanliness have contributed to the widespread use of single-use plastic ware. The advertisements for plastic cutlery focus on these consumer values in order to perpetuate mass consumption.  The marketing of the product as disposable contributes to the identity of customers as mass consumers.  In order to continually keep the consumer enthralled with the product, advertisements constantly appeal to the consumer’s sense of style. This supposed style is ever-changing; giving the advertisement perpetual validity. As Susan Strasser argues, “The extension of fashion concepts to many goods beyond clothing encourage[s] people to replace things before they [are] used up, even as diversified models and colors encourage consumers to buy more of what they already had” (200).  This “fashion extension” expands to trivial silverware and encourages disposable use and constant replacement.  It is the transcendence of “fashion” to other products that contributes to the creation of a disposable society and helps persuade consumers to buy and dispose of products quickly.

The combination of images and text in each ad appeals to both logic and aesthetics. In the advertisement for “silver” utensils, there is a focus on disposability and ease to persuade consumers to purchase the product. The silver look of the spoons is a departure from the less stylish white plastic cutlery, which encourages use in more formal situations or even in the silverware drawer. The features that are highlighted on the left side of the packaging aim to persuade consumers to continually purchase one-use spoons. “Disposable” and “great for Everyday Use” are catchphrases that encourage high use to create a constant demand. The spoons are sold in a homogeneous package, without knives or forks, which forces consumers to purchase three packages for most uses. The high number of pieces per package helps give the impression of affordability, which re-enforces the idea of using a new spoon each time.

The Pandora plastic silverware has less of a focus on disposability but a focus on versatility and style. The image places the product and all the color options at the forefront, persuading consumers to buy multiple sets. The phrase “from dull to delicious” coupled with the word “transform” connotes a lifestyle shift and rising level of happiness with fun colors of cutlery. The ad highlights the price for a four-piece set, which is affordable. But instead of using a high volume of pieces per package to enforce affordability and high use, the Pandora ad uses the affordable price and a less disposable product to persuade customers to buy four piece sets in more colors. This ad markets the silverware with stylistic obsolescence rather than as a completely disposable product.

Bombarded with constant advertisements encouraging stylistic obsolescence, the consumer is forced to compete with the always updating trends. This compulsion to listen to these advertisements and their messages perpetuates the cycle so clearly represented with plastic silverware: the more you buy, the more up to date you appear.  The convenience of disposable products makes it easier for consumers to follow stylistic trends.

Posted by Mariah Foley, Emma Naatz, Meghan Brasiel 

Dasani Water Bottle Ad Analysis

Ryan Rogers, Allie Scheu & Catherine Traut

Dasani is a popular and well-known brand of water bottles and you can pretty much guarantee that you will see at least one person carrying around the glacier blue bottle each day.  Their advertising campaign is focused around their portability and the benefits their water will bring to the consumer over all other brands. In our first advertisement, there is a woman and a man dancing with iPod headphones in, then a large Dasani water bottle in the center. The bottom of the advertisement reads, “The Simple Moments are the most refreshing”. That statement is ironic because in reality, it is not really that simple to use plastic water bottles. Plastic water bottles are in fact a huge problem to dispose of unfortunately an advertisement will never say that though it is the truth. This advertisement states the opposite; it conveys the message that using Dasani water bottles are effortless to use, simple and above all, fun.

The second, more recent advertisement is all about the environment and the design of the new Dasani “plantbottle”. The add attempts to make people think the bottle is better for the environment, but when you think about it, one could ask about the other 70% that is still made of plastic which inevitably that take forever to decompose. As time goes on people become more environmentally aware and companies will continue to make their products seem increasingly environmentally friendly. The best answer to this problem is to get a reusable water bottle, but of course Dasani is never going to admit that.

Dasani began their water campaign targeting a consumer whose main goal is to buy clean and fresh water, as shown in the first advertisement. Their identity is centered on the fact that humans are looking to be refreshed and therefore in the ad they are experiencing a “simple” moment that refreshes them. Humans are portrayed somewhat vulnerably here because the water bottle is the same size as the humans, making a water bottle seem larger than life and above humankind. Our identity seems to be under the power of the water bottle and clearly the water bottle makes the consumer extremely happy as you can tell from the ad. Little do these innocent humans know that the process to dispose of the water bottle and recycle it is anything but “simple” even though that is what they are lead to believe by the ad.

            In the more recent Dasani ad, the identity of the consumer has changed greatly. The goal of this advertisement is to convey the message about how buying this certain water bottle is eco-friendly and that the consumer of the bottle will be saving a little bit of the environment. This is very appealing to the consumer, because they want to feel good about what they buy and the industry today is very concerned about making it easier for consumers to be eco-friendly. We are more aware of the complicated process this water bottle must go through to be hopefully recycled. With this ad it is assumed that the identity of the consumer is someone who is looking to help save the environment. The consumer in past years definitely did not focus on the environment as much as the consumer in the modern era.

           

To persuade this consumer-based audience, Dasani uses the image of happy people dancing. People want to be happy and they want to have fun and that is why Dasani is leading them to believe that they will look like this if they simply just drink Dasani water. There is a large Dasani water bottle in addition to the two people, and underneath the bottle it says, “The simple moments that are most refreshing”. Dasani wants people to think that if they buy their water, you will have many enjoyable yet simple moments that you can cherish. The main tactic of persuasion in this ad is that of “sappiness” and is somewhat ridiculous because everyone knows happiness cannot be found in a water bottle.

The second ad, as stated before, is clearly using the draw of being environmentally friendly. It is subconsciously trying to make the consumer feel guilty if they don’t buy a product that is good for the environment. The advertisement itself is very clean and simple, making you feel like that’s how the water is going to taste. It uses bright colors and mostly green to enhance the theme of environmentally friendly products. The green cap of the Dasani water bottle is also a symbol of Dasani’s effort to be more ecofriendly. Culture today is greatly centered around greenness because it is now becoming widely recognized that it is indeed possible to make a difference in saving our environment. Dasani knows this, so they put that leafy green feel and quality into their product to draw in the people of today.

“And no, those new biodegradable plastic bottles and bags intended to save the day so far haven’t saved much of anything. Turns out manufacturers failed to check whether their lab-tested degradability is compatible with the real-world network of local composters and recyclers across the nation. Mostly, they’re not” (Humes, Garbology 4-5).  This quote almost, but not quite, puts the second Dasani advertisement to shame because essentially it is saying that even though they are being marketed as environmentally friendly, they really are not. It is difficult to know for sure whether or not these products are in fact good for the environment. Nowhere in the ad does it state that these bottles are 100% biodegradable or if the fact that they are 30% plant substance is going to increase their ability to decompose in a landfill. So a question remains Dasani, are you really environmentally friendly or not? 

Change in Kodak Ads

                     As people and their desires change, so does the advertising persuading them to buy products. The first ad was printed in the 1960s while the second ad was made in 2000. The product itself has been altered; back in the ‘60s only the film was being sold and thrown away, whereas now the entire camera can be disposed of after use. The Strasser reading displayed how over the course of time our society has turned away from the “habits of reuse” and towards our throw away mentality (Strasser, 173). As Strasser pointed out with tissue and paper towels, the film and the camera follow the “planned obsolescence” model, meaning that this product is designed to stop working after a brief period of time resulting in much more waste. The company acquires a generous profit because the consumer must rebuy every time the product is thrown away. Companies started to claim that “throwaway packaging was promoted for its convenience and cleanliness” but in reality only encouraged and led to our instinct to dispose of instead of conserve (Strasser, 171). Back in the 60’s one would own their own camera and only replace the film, but now Kodak has made the camera itself into a onetime use item as well not only increasing their profits, but amount of waste as well. The pair of Kodak ads illustrates the same concept she had, that we are becoming a disposable society. Although they are similar products sold by the same company, the marketing techniques are much different. The older advertisements use more text with facts about the product to intrigue customers and persuade them to buy the film. The second ad only has a picture of the camera and the slogan “Naughty or Nice?” which follows the “sex sells” technique that has become common in our day and age in an attempt to draw in buyers. The images themselves also differ greatly. The older advertisement shows a group of people using the product, while the second advertisement simply presents the product and attempts to make it look as modern and hip as possible. This shows that as a society we now tend to not focus on the facts of the product but rather whether the product will be “cool” or not. The change in advertising proves that we have become more concerned with convenience rather than the quality of our products leading us to create an impossible amount of waste.

Advertisments: Then and Now

The relationship between the text and the image of this ad is atypical regarding its time period, as most early 20^th century ads make prevalent use of large blocks of text, almost in the manner of a newspaper column. This technique, using a large image and large, simple text makes this ad stand out amongst its contemporary counterparts. The prominent display of the sealed packaging and the emphasis on the text give the viewer a good sense of the time period of this ad. This ad was introduced near the beginning of the era of convenience, roughly the early 20^th  when the transition was being made from a localized economy to a global, interconnected economy. This is the main reason the advertisers explicitly state the disposable characteristics of the product, because many of the consumers in their target audience were unaccustomed to the new idea of single-serving, disposable confections. Also, the use of the word “purity” as a buzzword to induce image of cleanliness, which was a topic that was present in the consumer populace’s mind, due to the advancement of germ theory.

             In the twentieth century, Wrigley created a new brand of gum known as Orbit.  The new brand focuses its advertisements to a younger crowd creating a sensual appeal to the brand.  The advertisement doesn’t use text but strictly a picture of a couple with appearances that juxtapose each other. Orbit promotes their product by insinuating that it will make men and women more desirable to the opposite sex. For a younger crowd they are convinced that if they are going on a date that they must bring gum for the outcome that they desire.

              In the pictures it is clear that the packaging of the gum is very wasteful.  First the gum is packaged in a “purity package,” secondly it is all in a larger package, it is all packaged in a plastic cover and lastly gum itself doesn’t decompose so virtually every aspect of gum goes to the dumpster.  Now that companies have convinced young people that gum is a necessity for intimate situations, younger people produce massive amounts of trash because of the convenience of the single packaged gum pieces.  Nobody questions the production of a product from brand name companies such as Wrigley, because they have convinced American people that their product is needed through advertisements.  As David Orr states in his book Earth In Mind, ““we are becoming more ignorant of the things we must know to live well and sustainably on the Earth” (Orr, p. 11).  This ignorance is growing just as the power of large companies is growing; this is because they are directly connected.  Companies convince people that they always need more, better or bigger products and as a result people forget how to live and consume in a way that is healthy for the Earth.

By Hammy Wallace, Ryan McLean, Bennet Smith

Bounty Paper Towels: "The One-Sheet Clean Picker Upper"

      We are college students, stay at home moms, and travelers.  What is one thing that we all have in common? We all use paper towels on a daily basis. Below we have three ads showcasing Bounty’s promotion of only using “one sheet” for every job, no matter how messy it is. Not only does the “one sheet” slogan portray their product as more efficient; it also makes Bounty towels seem better for the environment.

           
       Although this first image does not contain any text, it is a screenshot from a 1970’s Bounty commercial advertising their towels as superior and being able to absorb a lot of liquid. The commercial was filmed within a restaurant, shaping the identity of the consumer to be housewives and waitresses trying to keep their areas as clean as they can. Through suspending a coffee mug on a damp towel, they showed how strong one sheet was and that you only need to use one for multiple spills. The commercial also relies on constant mentioning of how strong and durable their product is; whether it is being used in a restaurant or at home.

           
       The text of both of these modern Bounty ads stress that you only need to use one sheet when cleaning up messes and that their product is “green”, but the reality is much different. As Strasser states in her work Waste and Want, ”the selling points of modern products [are] styling, technological superiority, convenience, and cleanliness – all amounted to arguments for disposing of things rather than seeking ways to reuse them” (9). The advertisement on the right is taken directly from the Bounty website and is aimed towards people who are lazy and rely on such convenience. This deliver service is very hypocritical and ironic because Bounty keeps saying that you will use less material with their product. But if you get it shipped to you, even more of your waste will end up in a landfill! You’re using the box, the Styrofoam, the paper towel packaging, and then finally the paper towel itself! This delivering method may persuade consumers to buy Bounty because they don’t have to leave their house but at the same time it is downright ridiculous due to all the instant trash created. It is a merely an illusion that Bounty is “greener”. Here’s a real “green” solution to these paper towels: instead of Bounty, just use a real towel for 10 years rather than for only 10 seconds.

-Cooper Leith, Jake Ruttenberg, Greta Zableckas

Throughout every day life, I don’t think most of us place enough importance on what is thrown away.  We go through our day without the realizing that most of what we do creates trash; which has to go somewhere. American culture focuses on new beginnings, when we should be looking to our past to fix the future.  I believe we should realize our roots in the fact that Earth and humans have had an intense, spiritual connection.  We use the Earth for all of its wonders, and therefore we are a part of the Earth.

The emotions that I had throughout our visit to the landfill were those of shock and regret mixed with a drive for a cleaner world. Initially driving up to the Denver Arapahoe Disposal Site I thought the surroundings seemed clean and natural with big hills covered in a little grass.  At first, I saw almost no trash.  That soon changed when I saw the picture above.  The picture shows that the hills consist of trash. The mere thought of those hills being completely made up of trash seemed impossible in my mind.  Before our trip to DADS, I realized all trash had to go somewhere; I had never actually visualized this problem.  Although you may have a good understanding of something, sometimes it just is not real until you see it in person for yourself. We learned that there is eighty-five thousand to ten thousand tons of trash per day at DADS; within this enormity seventy-five percent could have been recycled.  I think this picture embodies the emotions that go with realizing something is not what it seems.  The hill with dirt on it looks normal and natural, but when you see what is really underneath it (trash) you get a better understanding of how the world really is. Seeing all of that trash in person, and up close makes the problem of pollution real and live. 

While reading Capra, the quote that stood out to me the most had to do with ecological awareness, and coming to the realization that we are a part of this earth too (we don’t just run it).  “Ultimately, deep ecological awareness is spiritual or religious awareness.  When the concept of the human spirit is understood as the mode of consciousness in which the individual feels a sense of belonging, of connectedness, to the cosmos as a whole, it becomes clear that ecological awareness is spiritual in its deepest essence.”  I love how Capra relates ecological awareness to spirituality; it makes the issues of pollution so much more human and real.  I think this quote hits home for every human being.  My hopes for the Earth are of health for its many wonders; for if we all disrespect it, it may all disappear. 

Mountains of Waste

Visiting a landfill for the first time was certainly an eye-opening experience, widening my perspective on humanity’s most easily forgotten and arguably most destructive interaction with the environment; the disposal of waste. Almost every person living in a developed country contributes to the production of trash, yet few take this into consideration. As Fritjof Capra notes is his book The Web of Life, “most of us ... subscribe to the concepts of an outdated worldview, a perception of reality inadequate for dealing with our overpopulated, interconnected world. (Capra 4)” The idea that trash just goes “away” when it’s disposed of is one of these outdated concepts that Capra mentions, and the creation of a landfill fits nicely with this idea of perception. Thousands of active landfills dot our nation from coast to coast, but the tens of thousands that have been completed filled are then covered by a thin layer of soil and grass over the years. This obscures them from the view of the general public, and once the problem of trash is out of sight, it’s out of mind as well.

      The thought that an increasing population and trash production will eventually leave us surrounded by mountains made of trash is disturbing in its own right, but more alarming is the potential harm of hazardous waste and chemicals. After a landfill is covered, to the untrained eye it appears to be a natural hill. New efforts are being made to build more secure foundations for new landfills, but the many local dumps and smaller landfills that existed in the times before modern waste management (roughly the 1980s) have makeshift liners and significantly less regulation than the current systems in use. Many of these older completed landfills have been developed on, and the transfer of harmful chemicals has been documented in past years. The transfer of chemicals to the environment is becoming an issue of more importance as population density increases, but as more and more people become aware of their ecological footprint in this “green revolution”, the move toward a more organized and less harmful waste disposal system quickens and hope remains to stop and eventually reverse the damage humans have caused to the planet. Overall, the practice of creating landfills had changed little until the turn of the century, when the green movement began to pick up pace. Attempts to move toward sustainability have been made in recent years, such as harvesting gas from the decomposition process, but there is still a long way to go. Discovering this, and then witnessing the act of a landfill being created made me realize the true importance of the production of waste, and the lack of awareness in the general community.

Denver Arapahoe Disposal Site Trip

As we entered the site of the landfill I wondered, where is all the trash? All I could see were a few rolling hills and some trucks with trailers. The landfill I imagined was dirty, smelly and a terrible place to live anywhere near. DADS had none of those characteristics. When the tour began, our guide began explaining that all of the hills I saw were actually massive piles of trash. I was floored. How could one camouflage so much trash so well and make it appealing to the eye with no smell? The fact that they could take something so ugly and make it look as if Earth itself had placed it there was amazing. I took this picture from the bus, hence the glare, because I thought it demonstrated how natural the landfill appears to be. No one would ever guess or question that the hill in this picture was in fact trash. The hill stands one hundred and fifty feet tall. Instantly my entire vision of a landfill changed.  It wasn't disgusting or gross, but instead well kept and almost even pleasant. But maybe that was part of our problem. Since the trash is hidden so well, nobody cares to make a change. It is out of sight and out of mind. As David Orr has stated in Earth in Mind, our educational system is failing us in this area of study.  Education needs to include the teaching of morals and our ecological impact because “education [does] not serve as an adequate barrier to barbarity” (Orr, 7). Orr explains that “what is desperately needed are faculty and administrators who provide role models of integrity, care, and thoughtfulness” because if the people we look up to make the right choices then we will tend to also (14). They alone cannot fix the problem though, Orr says, “institutions capable of embodying ideals wholly and completely in all of their operations” to further reach into people’s minds and hearts to teach them the right thing to do (14). The day our businesses became sustainable will be the day we can start to fix our planet. We began driving through the hills, which were all actually trash in disguise. When we reached the top we found the landfill that I had been expecting. The smell finally reached me, trash was flying everywhere, and somehow from the shins down I was covered in dirt just from walking around. There must have been ten trucks full of trash dumping the loads into the mountain in making. I thought that if everyone had at least some ecoliteracy of the insane amount of trash that we as a society are pouring into the Earth, we would see the change that Orr has demanded. The trash would no longer be out of sight and out of mind but in the forefront of our discussions and concerns. It is one thing for everyone to hear about what goes on at a landfill, but for everyone to actually see and become educated about the subject could change the world.

FSEM visits the landfill

                              Trash Class Goes to the Landfill

Before visiting the Denver Arapahoe Disposal Site I never imagined that there could be so much trash. When we were at DADS there was an overwhelming amount of waste that filled multiple “mountains”. All that trash comes from about 800 trucks a day that continuously bring in more and more trash to dump. The picture I chose was at the top of one of the landfills and it was of a truck having its trailer detached and hoisted in the air so that all of its trash could be spilled on top of a larger pile. The trucks come in and drop off all the garbage they have and then they go to collect more just to come drop it off again. This whole process is making me nervous about what we are going to do in the future. The tour guide said that DADS is one of the few landfills with a lot of space left and that if we continue at this rate, we have about 130 years left until it’s full. 130 years is not as much time as it seems and what does that mean for the landfills that are a lot more full than DADS? Something that bothers me is that if we are trying to become more “green” then why is it that if one thing is in the recycling bin that shouldn’t be then everything in there gets thrown out? With the landfill filling up like it is, it seems like we should be finding more ways to reuse our things in order to reduce the amount of waste. Waste Management is finding ways to help the environment by collecting the methane gas from the landfill and making it renewable energy that can support people. For the sake of the future, we need to find other ways to be eco-friendly and decrease the amount of waste we produce as a country. In Capra’s book, The Web of Life, he talked about how the world is interconnected with the people living on it. The problems that humans cause are affecting the environment, Capra wrote, “As the century draws to a close, environmental concerns have become of paramount importance. We are faced with a whole series of global problems that are harming the biosphere and human life in alarming ways that may soon become irreversible” (3). The irreversible effects were evident when we visited the landfill. The multiple “mountains” are permanent and are a result of an overpopulated world that is creating more trash than we know what to do with.