Zoe Maggio's Blogs

4/30/19 In The Persuaders, Starbucks was given as an example as a company that uses lovemarks to advertise and build their business. As I watched the movie, I realized that as odd as it sounds Starbucks is probably one of the closest businesses I have connected with that has created a sense of loyalty like no other brand or company. Ironically, I don’t even drink coffee, and I don’t think it’s their drinks or food that has brought me so close, but the environment of Starbucks that makes me feel so comfortable. Throughout my life, I have lived in three different houses, and in all three, I have lived within  five minute walk to a Starbucks. It became tradition that every Saturday morning my dad, sisters, and I would walk to Starbucks and we have been doing it for as long as I can remember. The employees at Starbucks have become so close with us that they know our names and orders, which makes us feel even more welcome as customers. Starbucks has strategically loc...

 4/29/19 Justin Bieber, a 25 year old singer and influencer is by far my favorite artist and always has been. He has been successful and hardworking in his career from the start when he was just 13 years old. I have been following his life through social media, news articles, radio stations, and anything his name was in for almost the past ten years. It seems crazy that I can know so much about a person I have never met, feel so close to him, and yet he could be a person nothing like the figure I have carved out for him to be. I have watched him through his peak, his ups and downs, and more recently I have noticed him becoming more and more open about his life through social media. About three years ago Justin was on tour for his album, Purpose, and I had the chance to see him live in Los Angeles. About a week before his concert, he announced he was depressed because of the tour and the pressure he felt to make others happy. He decided to end his tour about a month...

4/22/19 4/22/19 Last night I was watching a movie, mid90s, that was recently written and directed by Jonah Hill. The movie takes place in East Oakland, California during the mid 90s, and focuses on a group of four skaters and a little boy that looks up to them and eventually becomes a part of their close-knit group. Every member of the group goes through struggles that many go through today: abusive family, drug addiction, poverty, and loss of family members. Yet, all the boys come together to skate and use it as an escape from whatever they are going through. The main character, nicknamed “sunburn,” is the youngest character, looking for a getaway from his violent brother and immature mother. While on a bike ride through his neighborhood, he sees a group of boys skating a store and smiles while he watches them. Later that night, he spends hours teaching himself to skate, falling, and getting back up every time. He clearly is determined and it later pays off. S...

4/22/19 As many of us are aware, on April 15th, the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris caught on fire. This was a tragic event that I heard about on many platforms of media: radio stations, instagram, snapchat, the news, and pretty much all over the internet. I saw posts of people saying how sad it was, people trying to raise money to rebuild it, but most interesting to me people criticizing those trying to spend millions of dollars to rebuild it. The point is valid, that there are many other problems in the world like starving children, shortage of water, and climate change that could definitely put the millions of dollars to a more valuable cause. This event has caused a lot of controversy and drew attention to some of the issues our planet is suffering. I looked into two news sources that had articles on the Notre Dame fire: Infowars and AP. Infowars , according to the infographic, is nonsense and damaging to public discourse. Their headliner for the article on the fire is ...

As many other teenagers my age would say, I think my relationship with media is overwhelming and unhealthy. I find that in any free time I have,  between classes, at home, or in the car, I resort to my phone to connect with others and see what my friends are doing. Since I was a toddler, the media has shaped my life in ways stronger than I prefer through television shows, news, the radio, and most importantly for me, my phone. For example, one of my favorite shows growing up, Hannah Montana , which I watched at least five out of seven days of the week had a big influence on me as a child. It made me want to have blonde hair, live in a big beach house, and have a closet full of new clothes and shoes that spins and is bigger than the size of my room now. Not to discredit Hannah Montana and the good morals she had taught me like loyalty to my friends and family and how “nobody’s perfect,” but I think I’d be ignorant to believe that her lifestyle didn’t have any infl...