COM333 - Artifact Analysis

It is common to see persuasion used not only in day-to-day social experiences, but also in the media and film we watch. The purpose of this artifact analysis is to analyze a film and how it relates to course topics by identifying when and how persuasion occurs. The artifact I’ve chosen is the 2016 film War Dogs, which loosely follows the rags-to-riches true story of childhood best friends who become international arms dealers. I will also be discussing how this film displays credibility, brand loyalty, and the power of words.

War Dogs is an interesting movie about the business side of international war. As all business goes, most would hope that they buy from a credible source. What makes a source credible is a main topic in War Dogs. According to the course notes, credibility is subject to be “affected by time and affected by experience” (Wilson, 2023). David and Efraim, the two main characters of the film, work for several years to build a reputation for their company – known as AEY -- as a legitimate business partner and a credible one at that. Given that credibility changes with time and experience, David and Efraim often discuss how they should pitch themselves to ever-growing clients as a small arms company with little experience in the field. At first, AEY saw very little success due to low credibility, as “credibility is a crucial element in persuasion” (Wilson, 2023). However, as the film progresses, AEY completes increasingly difficult business deals with increasingly large clients. Through experience and time, AEY establishes a sense of credibility within the industry, eventually landing a high-paying order from the United States Pentagon. The rise (and fall) of AEY supports the argument that credibility is crucial for persuasion and is heavily influenced by time and experience.

Credibility, I believe, also goes hand in hand with brand loyalty, as a brand builds loyalty through “trust in product and results” (Wilson, 2023). While the film doesn’t show clients with notable brand loyalty towards AEY, there is a handful of instances where companies show loyalty towards other brands. In the film, AEY makes large, recurring purchases of certain brands that they know will attract potential clients, such as Beretta and Glock. This is somewhat of a manipulation of brand loyalty, as AEY stocks up on the brands that they know bigger clients are loyal to. In this instance, AEY is loyal to what they know will sell, but that should not discount that the reason they maintain these methods is because the people they want to sell to are loyal to the brands. The way that War Dogs displays brand loyalty isn’t through AEY’s bandwagon mentality, but more through how AEY identifies what to add to their stock. The film displays brand loyalty by showing AEY’s clients maintaining loyalty to specific brands.

The final topic I’ll discuss is how War Dogs utilizes the power of words to shape our perspective of David and Efraim. The power of words can be better described as “what messages are being sent based on the choice of language” (Wilson, 2023). Throughout the film, David and Efraim are referred to by many things semi-synonymous with ‘arms dealer’, but in a different connotation. For example, while completing a large deal in Albania, one of AEY’s workers calls David and Efraim ‘merchants of war’, which bears much more negative connotation than ‘arms dealer’. In some ways, credibility can affect the choice of language we use and thus the connotation of our words. An early portion of the movie depicts AEY completing a deal for 7,000 Beretta pistols in Baghdad, with David and Efraim being very unexperienced in moving the shipments from point ‘A’ to point ‘B’ themselves. After several delays in shipment schedule, AEY finally delivers the shipment of pistols to Iraqi Police. Upon delivering them, one of the officers questions their identity, calling them “gun runners”. However, during a later portion of the film when AEY has established themselves in the industry, Pentagon officials refer to AEY as ‘arms dealers’. Between ‘gun runner’ and ‘arms dealer’, one holds connotation that David and Efraim are inexperienced, while the other implies they are intelligent in their industry and legitimate business partners. Despite showing us the events that AEY experiences, the connotation of language used by their clients when regarding them throughout the movie helps the viewer build a perception of how credible AEY is over time, which also helps add depth to the rags-to-riches story.

War Dogs has a similar nature to the (banned) artifact, Wolf of Wall Street. While I still wouldn’t be able to sell you a pen, War Dogs has taught me a lot about how persuasion interacts with business in various ways. Credibility was the most important thing that I learned about during this assignment, as it further built upon the notion that credibility is a crucial part of persuasion. What’s intriguing to me is that the entire film also seemed like a way for specific brands to display or build their own credibility through product placement, such as the aforementioned Glock and Beretta. Nothing would build credibility more than placing your firearms company’s name in a blockbuster true story about international arms dealers. In hindsight, I may just be speculating too much, but that kind of thinking will make me interact with other artifacts differently, since I know some of them do exercise this method of marketing to build credibility. In conclusion, War Dogs is an excellent artifact that displays persuasion in communication, especially business communication.

SOURCES

Wilson, S. L. (2023). Credibility is Dynamic [Lecture Notes]. https://canvas.odu.edu/courses/140323/pages/credibility-is-dynamic?module_item_id=4888953

Wilson, S. L. (2023). Contextualizing Credibility [Lecture Notes]. https://canvas.odu.edu/courses/140323/pages/contextualizing-credibility?module_item_id=4888952

Wilson, S. L. (2023). The Power of Words [Lecture Notes]. https://canvas.odu.edu/courses/140323/pages/the-power-of-words?module_item_id=4889012

War Dogs (2016)