Smoking Deconstructed Ted Talk

James Monsees is the CEO and co founder of the tobacco company, Ploom. He stated in the beginning of the speech that he loves smoking. His company works to redesign the smoking stigma. He has developed many consumer products for the past twelve years. He is an entrepreneur who graduated from Stanford University.

Overall, this speech was boring, and he was very monotone the entire time. He had no emotion or power behind the facts that he was just spitting out of his mouth. I have to give him credit because he seemed to know a lot of information on smoking and how people have a certain stigma about it. He was very professional and made great eye contact with the audience. He did not have images and facts on the screen behind him which did not help the presentation because the audience was probably falling asleep during it. He definitely needed to incorporate images or powerful facts on the screen to capture the audience's attention. He also did not really use any nonverbal communication to fully engage the audience. He just stood there and spoke the entire time, about how "smoking tobacco is a prestigious social behavior." During the Ted Talk, James could have improved with his tone by changing the pitch of his voice to emphasize the importance of certain facts or points during his speech. I also felt that he needed to be more loose and relaxed. It seemed like everything he stated was very rehearsed/memorized and just stated a bunch of facts (some were basic common knowledge that everyone already knows about smoking).
The name of this Ted Talk was "Smoking Deconstructed". This is basically what he was talking about the entire time. He was breaking down the act of smoking and its effects on people. Everyone already knows that smoking is bad for you, and people should not smoke. James stated facts that reached people; he stated that over a billion people smoke everyday, and that smoking is responsible for 5 million deaths per year. However, he states positive facts that focuses on the consumer and not smoking itself. He states that on one side of the spectrum it connects us to the past and on the other it is very dangerous.Tobacco companies and pharmaceutical companies are trying to innovate smoking (patch, nicotine gum). These focus more on the consumer staying abstinent from it, instead of what smoking does.This Ted Talk was directly related to my service learning organization because Kentucky Smoke Free is all about preventing people from starting to smoke and helping those who are already smoking, to quit.