Visiting the woodland mall after reading the John Pahl reading and watching the Persuaders was interesting. The first few things I concentrated on as I walked through the mall were the spiritual elements, water, light, trees, and music, which Pahl mentioned in the reading. The lighting in Macy’s were similar to the lighting described by Pahl; representing energy by shedding bright light. What was interesting was that products directly off the side of the passageways were beamed with much brighter light which drew the attention of even a “just passing by” customers. Similar light were used in the Apple store as well. The lighting made the atmosphere which was bright and energetic.

One interesting thing I noticed in the Apple store though was that the workers in the Apple store were all wearing the same cloths, each possessing some kind of a communication device attached to their ears. This reminded me of the agents in the movie Matrix. The three agents communicated with each other through the same communication device in their ears which they used to keep control of the matrix and to keep/trap people in the matrix. The Apple workers also used the ear pieces to communicate to each other to occupy each and every customer’s mind in the store and to advertise their products, which could also explain why there are so many people in the Apple store all the time.

I also noticed that there were trees grown in the Starbucks café area and in some resting spots in the mall. Pahl suggests that growing things represent the human desire to experience growth and new life. Although I do agree with this statement, I felt like the trees made me more comfortable isolated from all the marketing that is going around me. Like mentioned in class before, the more plugged in we are, the more unplugged we want to be. Because there are so many advertisements and the mall had materialized environment, I felt more unplugged and distant from it when I was surrounded by trees and plants. I felt like people find rest in nature since we did come from the nature.

The things I noticed in the mall after watching the Persuaders was the use of languages on some of the exterior of many stores which drew me into the store. The sign “SALE! UP TO %50 OFF!” or “BUY ONE GET ONE FREE” always seems to get people’s attention. As one of the experts who studied language in advertisement said, the careful choices of language in the advertisement of products and news articles can drastically affect the people who are confronted with it. Signs that stores put out was one of the main things that always gets my attention. I visited at least five stores because if the signs put out by the stores.

Another element I noticed in the mall from the Persuaders is the human desire to belong and be accepted in a group. I visited a hat store because of the sign sale sign put out by the store. However, I saw people purchasing the hats because they liked the sports team which was on the hat. As mentioned in the movie the Persuaders about people wanting to be a part of the “Saturn Family,” people in the hat store wanted to only buy hats with certain team’s logo on it. The want to belong in a team and become a part of the team affected largely on which hat product a customer purchased. The design of other team’s hats didn’t matter. For many, it only has to be a Lakers hat or the Michigan State hat.

The sense of belonging also exists in other stores was well. Personally, I realized that I have only bought Adidas or Nike shoes. I don’t buy from GAP and all my V-necks are from American Eagle. Like myself, I was able to notice that although there are many stores selling similar products, people choose to go to certain stores for the sake of the brand.

The hands on experience of visiting the woodland mall made me realize many faults in how people shop for products and how people are getting manipulated by the advertisement and the spiritual surrounding that the mall portrays.