Sweet Persuasion: a Tad of Propaganda in Ben & Jerry’s Recipe for Success

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In these days many consumers feel good about buying a product that strives to “give back” to our planet and contribute for a better future for everyone. After all, wouldn't you feel better buying a product you knew was not only delicious and beneficial to you, but also knowing that you are helping the world by buying it? You probably would. The truth is in days where most people are always busy, buying products that claim to be environmental-friendly may seem like a quite practical offer to contribute the world around them, almost like a shortcut. What most consumers probably don’t realize is what is behind all the self-advertising that most brands use. From a small ice cream shop to multimillion-dollar business, Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Inc. is a good example of the smart use of propaganda and fallacies techniques to persuade consumers with the “green company” image. Analyzing two of these techniques, Glittering Generalities and Card Staking, will help us understand better how propaganda and fallacies influence peoples’ perceptions and, in this case, helps supporting the empire behind Ben & Jerry’s ice creams. The term “spinning” stands for the fallacies and propaganda techniques used to persuade people. In the article “Get Spinning” by author Warren Kinsella, he defends that the use of propaganda and fallacies by media and politicians is a bad representation of spinning, which he claim is a good method which is now tagged as a negative brain-washing technique. On the other side, author of “The Age of Spin”, Mark Sommer affirms that using spinning is like underestimating peoples’ capacities to think and have their own opinions. The author affirms that each person who resists spinning is contributing for a society with independent judgment and more democracy. Even though Kinsella and Sommer have distinct opinions about the spinning usage, my personal opinion is

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