Post #32: Directive: Responsibility- Bella, The Super Soaker

I’ve really been missing my family dogs, Roo and Daisy, recently. I’ve been missing them so much that I’ve actually thought about getting a puppy down here at school to fill the void that they have left. This past weekend, I realized that this would be a horrible idea.

My roommate was tasked with taking care of his girlfriend’s dog, Bella, while she was out of town for the weekend. Bella is an adorable brown Dachshund/Weiner-Dog and I was really excited to spend the weekend with her. Upon first impression, she comes off as a friendly and funny little pup, but as the weekend progressed, I realized that she is simply a peeing machine with a bit of a temper.

I had to bribe her with bacon to pull off this picture

My roommate ended up being away from the apartment doing fraternity stuff for most of the weekend so I ended up being the little devil’s primary caretaker. As I mentioned earlier, Bella has an incredibly weak bladder. She would secretly squat down and relieve herself all over our house. She’d pee in the kitchen, the bathroom, the living room, Fortunately for me, she didn’t pee in my room. That was reserved exclusively for her feces. But, that’s beside the point. To make this matter worse, we had been out of paper towels for the past couple of weeks. So, I had to find any type of cloth available to me to soak up her messes. Towards the end of the weekend, I ran out of bath towels and old shirts and I was down to pants.

At about noon on Sunday, Bella had one of her bigger spills in the main hallway. I had just done laundry and I only had two pairs of dirty pants available to wipe it up: the black dress pants that I had worn to a sorority formal the night before and my Levi’s. It was like Sophie’s choice. If I used the dress pants to soak up the mess than I would have to get them professionally dry cleaned and that would cost a good amount of money. If I used my Levi’s, than there was the possibility that my favorite pair of pants would smell of dog urine. Decision time. I grabbed the dress pants and went to town on that pee.

 

Post # 31: Directive: Responsibility- Learning to Dress Yourself

A couple of weeks ago, I went back home to Fairfax for fall break and had the opportunity to catch up with some friends from high school. I spent a good deal of the break at my good friend Adam’s house. I always love going over to his house because his mother tells me and my other friends really embarrassing stories about Adam’s childhood. For example, Adam’s mom picked out his outfits for him everyday, all throughout elementary school. By the time middle school rolled around, his mom decided that it was time for him to learn the responsibilities of an adult, or at least a mini-adult, and one of those responsibilities is dressing yourself. On the first day of 7th grade, Adam had no idea how to dress himself so he ended up going to school in sweatpants, sandals, and a button-up shirt. He was made fun of by every single one of his new teachers and it has haunted him for the rest of his life.

Is there any way that Adam could have been saved from this embarrassment? Could his mother have eased him into dressing himself?

I think she could have given him some kind of all-purpose garment that he could have built an outfit around. But what kind of garment has the ability to be worn with everything?

Jeans tend to go with everything. You can wear them with t-shirts, collared shirts, cowboy boots, sneakers, basketball shoes, etc.

But, Adam’s mom could actually go a step further and give him jeans that came with a built in sense of community. It is a widely known fact that middle school can be hell, it would have helped him to have some sort of connection with those around him. To help give him this sense of community, she could have bought him a couple of pairs of Levi’s. The brand is well known and it can be assumed that he would have a good amount of classmates who wear the jeans themselves.

Maybe if his mom had done this he wouldn’t have ended up so weird (see picture below).

Adam is the one in the white. I am the other weird one in the striped shirt.

Post #26: Directive: Responsibility- Can responsible advertising exist?

The idea of responsible journalism can be defined as presenting news accurately and without bias. This modus operandi first began to be popularly adopted by journalists during the end of the 19th century. Before this time many news articles were a blend of actual news and the journalist’s opinion. Responsible journalism was threatened during the turn of the century when yellow journalism and sensationalism became popular. American citizens were no longer able to rely on news outlets to give them honest news. However, responsible journalism prevailed and was not threatened again until the Watergate scandal in the 70s. This is when intense criticism of world leaders began to infiltrate news outlets. Unfortunately, this trend continues today and, according to the Pew Research Center for the People and Press, as of 2011, 66% of Americans believe that news stories are often inaccurate.

Should this idea carry over into the world of advertising? Should there be such a thing as responsible advertising?

I believe that there may be a form of responsible advertising around today, but it is different from responsible journalism because people tend to view ads and news in very different ways. It seems that most people know that they shouldn’t believe everything they hear from ads. There are a lot of whimsical ads that present products in an untrue way, but audiences know that these ads aren’t made to be true. However, there are ads for things like cars that say exactly what the car is supposed to do and how it is supposed to work. It seems that most audiences expect this type of information to be true, if it isn’t then it can be deemed “false advertising”.

The idea of “false advertising” should stop most ad agencies from creating ads that present information assumed to be true from presenting false information. The idea of “false advertising” is what keeps advertising responsible.

So, does Levi’s take present their ad’s responsibly? After searching “Levi’s advertising” on Google Images and seeing what came, it would seem so. Levi’s does not make promises about their jeans in their ads. Yes, most of the ads show good looking and physically fit people wearing the jeans, but that does not mean Levi’s is saying “wear our jeans and you’ll become skinny and ridiculously good looking”. I would say Levi’s advertises their jeans in a perfectly responsible way.