Friday, October 3, 2008

Encounter

My encounter was a few months ago when some kids from the boys and girls club knocked on our door and tried to sell us a subscription to the Daily Herald for some fund raiser.
Audience (presumed): There were a lot of assumptions made in this encounter, as it was a kid about 10, it's hardly surprising that he wasn't exactly on the mark, at any rate, the most critical assumption made was that I had cash to spare to support his cause, a surprising amount of people seem to assume that college students have cash to spare...obviously they've not reached that phase in life or they don't remember it. It was assumed that I read the news paper but did not have a subscription already.
WATCO : WATCO of buying a subscription to the paper on the kid's college education?
There are very positive effects of buying the subscription on the kid's college education because buying the subscription will lead to money being donated to the kid's college education.
Enthymeme: Whatever leads to buying the subscription will lead to money being donated to the kid's college education.
E/P/L: Pathos was the main appeal of this argument, here someone sent out a roughly 10 year old kid, apparently unsupervised to try and sell subscriptions and get money donated to his college education. There is a high guilt factor, the kid was there because of the Boys and Girls club, implying that he probably didn't have the greatest financial background. Another appeal to guilt is in approaching college students who know how expensive college is and how hard it can be.
STAR: Sufficient: The information provided was that if I bought a subscription to the paper, even if I canceled it after a month, the kid would get a certain amount, I don't remember how much, donated to his college education. For me I didn't find this sufficient, there were a lot of loose ends left, like why someone trying to raise money would send their representative to college students, why this seemingly gracious sponsor would send kids out to beg unsupervised. It was insufficient for me but perhaps to the audience they thought they were getting it would have been sufficient.
Effective: It was not effective, it annoyed me more than anything and I didn't buy the subscription.

Please let me know if I need to include more E/L/P or STAR.

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