Recent Entries

Demographic

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRQFJF6OV4g

The commercial here is for vitamin water. Vitamin water is already very popular and can be found in pretty much any food store. Already very popular like any good product it is always seeking to expand its demographic of customers. For the most part it is a drink that appeals to the everyday working person on the go looking for an alternate for soda and sugary drinks. For many years this was the basis of it ad campaign. In this commercial however we can see a much more comical approach and a chance to expand their demographic. The commercial is full of internet “memes”, online videos, jokes, characters that for the most part are only internet humor. To focus on the demographic of the internet community shows how well this business knows its product targeting a group so specifically. Funny enough however much of the internet community actually hates the commercial. They feel their “memes” which as of 3 to 4 years ago were just something internet geeks, like myself, found funny. To us or them I should say was not watered down by mainstream media. I guess it goes to show nothing is not for sale.

Entry tags:

children,
smoking

No smoking

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfAxUpeVhCg

Many advertisements rely on triggering an emotional response to get a point across. Usually they try inciting happiness and positive feelings with their product or massage. However another angle is to incite fear or sadness to portray a message. In this old anti-smoking ad we can clearly see why they would use such an angle. Everyone knows smoking is bad for you so any add promoting it pretty much has no choice but to try to trigger a negative emotional response. Trying to use negative emotions however can backfire and make people completely dislike you’re ad. This particular ad is a good example of this. Many felt using a crying child to convey a message of abandonment was way too harsh. The ad people felt would only scare children not just of smoking but losing their parents in general. Also many people who were already stricken with illness that already have children do not deserve to feel guilty about not being there for their children. Despite the message getting across many people felt the commercial itself was much more out of line than the act of smoking itself. One other thing to end this post is many believe the child was not acting when he cried, but was actually being filmed while he believed his mother had actually left him in an airport.

Consumer involvement

Being a gamer myself and a fan of mountain dew this commercial greatly appealed to me. This commercial however is an example of a pretty much perfect advertisement for a few reasons. For one it is an ad for two products in one. Both call of duty and mountain dew are helping each other by becoming synonymous with one another. People now will associate playing call of duty with going out to the deli and getting a mountain dew and vice versa when people buy the drink they will think of the game. Besides having one commercial that advertises two products the commercial is a great example of consumer involvement. The mountain dew caps in the commercial give you double “XP” or also known as experience points. These points are used to unlock weapons and gadgets in the game. The game being very competitive with some players noting to play 5-8 hours a day will lead gamers to go buy mountain dew to get that extra edge. Also the gaming demographic likes things that are interactive just like video games. Some may see the ad as exploitation and a product that is very bad for you being promoted for an activity that is very inactive. Either way both companies have had great success with the ad.

Marketing Myopia

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzNUeBEZI2c

This ad is from the 90’s for a game called Virtual boy. It was suppose to revolutionize the gaming world by introducing 3D game play. The console is considered one of the biggest flops in the history of video games for various reasons. The technical reasons ranged from the fact that game play was only in red and black and it seemed to give everyone a headache after playing it for any extended amount of time. Despite all the draw backs Nintendo, the company who made the system, felt it had cornered the 3D gaming market it charged $180 dollars for the system. However because of their hope to completely corner this market a big part of their failure became a case of “Marketing Myopia”. This came on for various reasons. The first was it did not interface with a TV like every other console out at the time. This fact alone completely limited there demographic to people who already where gamers while the demographic for people looking to add on to their high tech TV’S was and is much larger. Another thing that limited its market was its lack of games it had. In the modern market of amazing technology you can notice now everything interfaces with each other constantly enlarging demographics every day and avoiding the dreaded “Marketing Myopia”.

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Campaign ad

With elections right around the corner i wanted to post this video that i am sure many have already seen. The video is pro Obama and is using comedy to promote his campaign. I found it hilarious and despite your political affiliation i believe you will enjoy it too. I think this ad will swing any voters, however though it appeals to people who may not be involved politically at all, because of this however i believe this is an affective at getting people involved with the campaign.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBnnmIx1sSA

Current Mood: calm

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NYC Racist add?

This Poster has went up in various subway stations around the NYC area. It is easy to tell why it has sparked up so much controversy bringing up the question are there boundaries to freedom of speech? The story however goes deeper. Some People who are outraged are actually not only vandalizing the ads but actually putting up posters over it simply saying "racist". Some people here are even ok with the graffiti because they are so against the poster. I think it is amazing all the different issues one poster has brought up. What do you think? Is it "ok" for adds like this to be displayed? Is it ok for people to vandalize posters they find these offensive?