Personification in Advertising: A Rhetorical Analysis of Digital Video Ads in the Insurance Industry

Major companies in the insurance industry—notably Allstate, Progressive, and Farmers—often employ personification as a creative rhetorical tool in digital video advertisements. By leveraging brand characters in various ways, these companies seek to establish trust and engender emotional impact in customers. Allstate ascribes destructive characteristics that are associated with house cats to its Mayhem character; in doing so they evoke the desired emotional responses of humor and fear. Progressive creates and deploys the Motaur character, a visual personification and play on the Centaur; in this case, the company’s rhetorical strategy is to evoke humor and nostalgia that resonate with motorcycle owners. Farmers’ strategy is to win customers by demonstrating experience and empathy; they do so with the Professor Burke character, whose professorial ethos functions to evoke feelings of trust. I employ the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) in my analysis to explore the relationships between personification, emotional appeals, and persuasion

Me Upper Sixth Dorm to Mr. Meredith (5 October 1962)

https://egrove.olemiss.edu/mercorr_pro/1985/thumbnail.jp

Application of Contingent Valuation Method (CVM) in Determining Demand for Improved Rainwater in Coastal Savanna Region of Ghana, West Africa

Coastal regions of Ghana are characterized by low annual rainfall ranging from 800mm to 900mm. This has contributed to water scarcity for domestic and agricultural use. In order for Ghana to meet the Millennium Development Goal of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, alternative water sources must be exploited for domestic uses. This study uses the CV method as a valuation technique for non-marketed goods to estimate demand for clean rainwater for domestic use. In addition, the ordered probit model was used to determine the various factors that can influence respondents’ willingness-to-pay for clean rainwater. The study found that about 93.2% of respondents are willing to pay GH¢0.025 daily for a 34cm container of clean rainwater and this amount was observed to be influenced by some socioeconomic factors. Government involvement is therefore recommended in the provision of the modern rainwater harvesting facilities because of the incidence of poverty within the coastal savanna areas of Ghana. It is also recommended that more education on the modern method of harvesting rainwater should precede the application of any rainwater harvesting strategy in Ghana. Key words: Willingness-to-Pay, Rainwater Harvesting Technology, Ordered Probit, Marginal Effects

Hydroxyapatite grafting with alanine amino acid - efficiency of different methods

Hydroxyapatite (HAp) attracts great attention due to application in reconstructive medicine for hard tissues, mostly bones and teeth, where it is declared to be highly biocompatible material. Its grafting with amino acids further increases biocompatibility and has crucial importance for acceptance of body implants. In this work different methods of grafting were investigated: simple mixing, thermal treatment induction and in situ synthesis/grafting reactions. Two amino acid precursors were separately tested in grafting procedures: pure alanine and alanine methyl ester hydrochloride. The efficiency of grafting was determined based on X-ray powder diffraction (XRPD), Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and thermal analyses (DSC, TG/DTA) of obtained powders, while complementary UV-VIS spectroscopy of supernatants was additionally performed for quantitative determination of non-grafted nitrogen using ninhydrin standardized procedure