first foa reflection

In my first Further Oral Activity (FOA), I intended to show how language is used in Apple’s “Think Different” brand recognition campaign in 1997 to persuade, to inform people and to spread their ideology — people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do — and why Apple wanted to promote its belief. Specifically, I focused on the use of historical figures and Apple’s core values in the famous one minute television commercial “Here’s to the crazy ones”.

Through the analysis of 17 iconic personalities appeared and language techniques used, I revealed how the target audience might be touched by this ad to believe that people who think differently will change the world, including themselves and Apple. For instance, by using the way to decipher texts learned in class to explore the use of parallelism in the script, I suggested the reason why the ad stated

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You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them

before it declared that

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About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them

is that it wished to emphasize the only action which we can’t do — ignore them. This parallelism, together with other language skills, guided the audience to ponder upon their views on those crazy ones. Therefore, the ad successfully achieved its goal: communicate Apple’s core value to the audience.

In order to dig deeper into the rationale Apple used its belief in this commercial campaign, I also introduced a theory called golden circle, Jobs’ own words on his definition of marketing in the confidential meeting, and the social context behind the ad.

After finishing this activity, considering the feedback from my teacher and classmates, I do think that my FOA clearly achieved its purpose.