Marwell & Schmitt's Taxonomy Influence Tactics Post- The sad life of Snow

For this final post I wanted to find a video that was different than the others that I had used. I thoroughly love the passion of this lady and her courage to stand up for her cause. She also gets extra points in my book for creativity and courage.

In this video a lady walks into a restaurant and tells everyone her little girl was abused and would have been murdered if she had not been rescued. How horrible! Or, just watch the video and you can judge for yourself while you either laugh or cry along with her.

There are many of the Marwell & Schmitt's Taxonomy Influence Tactics that are used throughout this video. The main message was that meat is not food, it is violence. The nature of the topic death and abuse tends to be more negative than positive. Therefore most of the negative influence tactics were used in this speech.

We begin with Negative Expertise tactic. This lady uses this by portraying herself as the mother and protector of her daughter who assures us that life will be bad for us if we continue in our same behaviors. This tactic also leads into her Moral Appeal tactic. She makes a claim to the moral decency of the restaurant patrons to stop killing her babies and putting them on plates.

She really hits hard with the Negative Self-feeling tactic as she goes on and on about how bad everyone would feel about themselves if it was their little girl that was being abused and they did nothing about it. This tactic was pretty much a theme throughout the speech from chicken to egg and everything between. In the end she even challenged the patrons to think of her daughter's name every time they saw someone eating an egg or the body of one of these precious individuals.

Some of the other influence tactics like Negative Altercasting and Negative Esteem of Others are not directly highlighted but more implied in her speech. The implication of Negative Altercasting is felt when she claims that businesses like this restaurant are evil and bad and the patrons don't want to be bad like them, so they should stop abusing the poor and innocent children by putting their bodies on plates.

We also see the Negative Esteem of Others inferred as she urges the patrons to stop smiling and laughing about this situation, because it is not funny to her precious daughter. Her daughter and sisters wanted nothing more than to just live and who are these people to smirk and joke about this serious problem.

As we look at process premises, we see that emotional needs ran high on the chart for this speech. The lady wanted more than anything to have her audience feel what she was feeling about her child. She wanted them to feel what it would be like to be left behind, sharing the need that these precious beings have to just live. These emotional needs where being met as she furthered her argument with plenty of fear and guilt. I feel that she was not very effective in making this happen though.

This lady also looked to persuade her audience's attitudes through their emotions. Her metaphor of her chicken being an abused child that was rescued was used as motivation to push for change in peoples attitudes toward the issue. Equating the eating of chicken to violence towards children was a creative and potentially powerful way to do this.  

Even though this is by far not one of the most motivational speeches ever given, it does a great job highlighting many of the negative Marwell & Schmitt's Taxonomy Influence Tactics.

(If anyone knows how she got milk from a chicken, please let me know.)