Hello Mr. Stevenson...

I sent an email to Seth Stevenson, but at the moment, he has not responded.

My email said...

Hi Mr. Stevenson,

This is Jacob Pollard, and I have a few questions to ask you if you don't mind.  My English teacher has told us to look at examples of Op-Ed writers and choose a specific one to look at their posts.  I picked you because I liked the topics you discussed in your posts.

For one of our assignments, we must analyze how you used concession in one of your posts.  I was wondering if you had a specific article that you thought had a great example of it.  I was thinking the one about the Clio Awards would be good, but I didn't know.  Also, do you have any related issues to the Clio Awards that might be good?  Do you have an article that you feel has been your best work?

Thanks for all your help!

Sincerely,
Jacob Pollard

If he responds, I will gladly update this... =)

The Awards Ceremony - Bogus or Not?

In Seth Stevenson's article about the Clio Awards, he clearly is upset about the awards ceremony.

http://www.slate.com/id/2254394/pagenum/all/#p2

CLAIM - He basically said the the Clio Awards ceremony was complete bogus and that they were definitely wrong.  His third paragraph starts out with the sentence, "The bar was similarly lowered at the Clio Awards ceremony last night."

CONCESSION - Although he doesn't believe the first place winner should have been what it was, he sort of agrees that it was good.  But right away, he completely changes his mind again.  "The visual effects here are impressively seamless, and I enjoyed the sly Aussie wit—most evident in the moment when a man dunks his wife, hoping someone better might pop out of the water. But it's hard for me to understand why the judges felt this commercial stood head and shoulders above the rest of this year's entrants."

Support Points -
1. He explains that the commercial that won it all is nothing special.  "It's not like this spot presents an innovative new model—something we've never seen before."
2. He also tells us that the Levi's commercial, Old Spice's "The Man Your Man Could Smell Like", Dos Equis' "Most Interesting Man in the World", and Apple's Mac vs. PC campaign all got bronzes, but he thought they were all better than that.

•  He explained the Old Spice commercial by saying it dominated "with its laugh-inducing surprises and charismatic lead performance." 
• Also the "choreographed set-switching—first he's in a shower, then he's on a sailboat, then he's on a horse—was masterfully executed" in the Old Spice commercial.

3. Gold went to Luvs diapers viral video, which he thought didn't deserve it.  He said, "it pretty clearly failed to go viral, since I'd never heard of it before."

I agree with his logic on the award choices.  I believe the awards that won are totally pointless, and some don't relate at all to the product they are selling.  I did find it interesting that he picked an awards show that I have never heard of before.  I'm not really a fanatic about awards shows, but I know some of them, just not this one.

Ads, ads, ads...

Although most advertisements are boring and useless it seems, some commercials spark much entertainment.  The new Nike Soccer commercial for the World Cup keeps your attention like no other advertisement has done before.  Action-packed and energizing, it keeps your heart racing, and your mind wondering what will happen next.  Stevenson even goes as far as to call it the "Greatest Ad I've Ever Seen."

Here is the ad (I tried to upload the video straight to here, but it didn't work!) :    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcWwTLMGttE

In his earlier articles, he mentioned the Clio Awards (an awards ceremony that decides the best commercials for the year).  He thought that the decisions made at the ceremony were a total joke.  So, in recent weeks following, he wrote this article to show which commercial he thought should have won.  In the article, Stevenson uses the compare and contrast method to show that this ad towers above all other ads, and Nike exceeds other companies by creating this.  He also personified the Nike company by saying that they ate Adidas' home-cooked lunch.

Seth Stevenson swayed our thinking to believe that this is the greatest ad ever by:

• Giving specific details about what happens in the commercial
• Telling us that Nike has surely surpassed Adidas in the soccer world as well as many other sports
• Giving the fact that says that the ad has received over twelve million view on YouTube and seventeen million on other Web platforms
• Giving the fact that it has been shown on televisions in more than thirty countries

I do have to agree with Stevenson though, this is one of the best, if not the best, advertisements I have ever seen.

FYI:   Here's a link to the article if you want to see it:  http://www.slate.com/id/2256074/

All About Him

Seth Stevenson is a writer for Slate online magazine.  He has also written some articles for Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Newsweek, New York, and Washington Post.  Seth recently wrote a book called Grounded: A Down to Earth Journey Around the World about his adventure to travel around the world without using any sort of aircraft.  I haven't read it, but I'm sure it is a great book.


Seth won the 2005 Online Journal Award for commentary and received multiple Lowell Thomas awards from the Society of American Travel Writers.  He also has been excerpted three times in the Best American Travel Writing series.

Stevenson graduated from Brown University and currently lives in New York.