so this is life and i love it. but they just love to kill any mojo that i might possibly have going. obviously i'm not good enough for any of the guys that i have crushes on and i openly admit to having them bc i think that its fun and entertaining NOT because i want to be completely embarrassed. i'm over it, completely.

The End of it?

Today is my last official blog.

Since this blog was part of a media writing class, I doubt that I will be publicly posting blogs following this entry. Although the experience was new and fun to write, knowing that other people can just search this and read what I am writing is a bit too "big brother" for me to handle.

I will continue to follow advertising and explore the industry as one that I would possibly like to enter following my college experience. So maybe my next blog will be on my future company Web site.

Until then...Ciao!

The Truth in Advertising

What I learned in class today....

The slogan for Garelick Farms is "Made Locally from our Farms to your Family"

Truth..
1. Garelick has never owned a farm.
2. The milk in the Garelick bottles and the Hood bottles come from the same bottling company.
3. We rarely question what is true when the media tells us that it is.

Pharmaceutical Advertising

This past weekend there was a pharmaceutical convention in Boston. The main topics were supposed to include new drugs that were coming to market and how to improve the current research and development departments at many major companies.

But instead....

The convention turned into a mutiny as many of the attendees got offended about the excessive budget predictions for advertising for the upcoming year.

Some things don't need to be advertising on national TV spots, spending $150,000 for 30 seconds to tell us about the next newest and best drug. The argument was that the advertising money should be spent developing the drugs and not promoting them.

I completely agree.
Science is intended to help people, not flood them with "remember the purple pill" taglines.

What is Marathon Monday

John Hancock hangs signs throughout the city promoting the race.
Adidas sends in news uniforms, water bottles and health packs for runners.
Health stations are set up by volunteers covering the 26.4 miles for safety.

And the college students in Boston....
Rushing to buy six packs and then getting held back by the Boston Police Force so that their stumbling drunkenness doesn't ruin the race that people travel around the world for.

What the race is promoted as and how a large portion of Boston residents treat the race are almost polar opposites. From Wellesley College through Boston College, Boston University, MIT, Northeastern and Berklee, Marathon Monday is more about drinking for no purpose whatsoever than it is focused on the runners.

But that can't be advertised, can it.

Could Consumer Created Advertising Crush the Industry

We witnessed at this year's superbowl that consumer-generated advertising is constantly rising. The commercials were funny and gave viewers a sense of pride that someone who was a regular person could come up with a funny storyline and end up with their ad on the superbowl.

But what about the industry?

There are millions of professionals who work on a daily basis to get one of the coveted superbowl advertisement spots and some twit from a North Carolina college came up with something funny and now they are out a project.

Are they going to be out of jobs next?

If consumer generated media keeps increasing and increasing, then what are we all doing paying tuition to get into an industry that is starting to favor the ideas 18 year-olds over the professionals.

Welcome to Facebook Candidates!

We all know about the Facebook phenomenon. Some smart Harvard kids came up with an online social network that has now basically turned almost all students into semi-stalkers. And our newest friends...Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

The site has transformed from a safe social network for only college students into an outlet for all companies (and individuals) to post their lives and pictures up and see what kind of wall posts they will receive.

Although it does reach a very high number of people in a convenient and low-cost manner, the personal aspect is gone.

Candidates are spending less time traveling the country that they want to run and more time surfing the world wide web.

Maybe sometimes we need to avoid certain aspects of technology.

Jet Blue gets it Right!

Want to force your product onto thousands of people a day? Talk to the guys at Jet Blue.

"Please buckle your seatbelt and start deciding whether you would like the DORITOS munchi mix or the KEEBLER cookies"

Airplane food is no longer a bag of no-name peanuts.

Jet Blue has organized contracts with several major players in the food and beverage industry to use their products on their flights.

The result...
-Happier customers who like the choices and often get the brand of their choice.
-Happy Jet Blue who is now paying less for the brand name goods than they were for the no-name.
-Happy companies who are getting great advertising without too much effort.

Job well done.

Street Entertainment

A recent Boston guerrilla advertising campaign put the horrid of the aqua teen bomb at rest showing that some campaigns can be quite fun and spread through the city just as fast.

A giant truck comes plowing up Newbury street with one entire side taken up by a TV screen. The truck stops on the corner and 4 20-something year old guys step out with guitars and start playing toward the screen.

It's the new campaign for Guitar Heroes, the video game.

Not only does the campaign catch peoples' attention, but it's interactive. Those bystanders who don't have anywhere to be fast can hang out and try out the gaming system for themselves.

I hate video games. And I don't really like guitars either, but something about this just makes you excited because you want to be part of the whole sha-nan-gans.

How Italians Do It

Spending spring break in Barcelona and Florence was a wonderful, relaxing and beautiful experience. So it wasn't surprising that leaving was the most tedious and difficult part of our trip.

Airports are always annoying and stressful and full of people who are in bad moods. But most are run in a very corporate and professional manner--I don't think that the Milan International Airport got that memo.

When you walk into the airport the first thing that you will notice has absolutely nothing to do with travel but rather a topless model sporting some new underwear from an Italian clothing line. The advertisement was probably 50 feet tall and hung in the middle of the terminal for flights to the US. Now when you are angered and stressed do you really think that we want to look at some 95 lb model telling us to leave the airport to get the knickers that she has on.

While we were stuck in the Milan airport for another 55 hours we found that she was not the only one. It seems that the airport officials will sell ad space just about anywhere they can argue. I'm kinda expecting the jetway to be a bra ad next time I'm over there.

Birthday Cards

Happy Birthday to Me!!!

The majority of my family lives far away (stretching from North Carolina into the northern noman's land in Canada) so birthday cards have become quite popular over the years.

The way that birthdays are perceived confuses me a little bit.

"Congratulations! Best wishes for your new year"

Translation...
"hey great job on staying alive for another year! hope you can keep it up this year to"

If the day is supposed to be just about you why aren't the cards just about how great (or horrible) of a person you are. They could talk about your interests, ask about your life, or tell you about their's, but instead my birthday cards all came from Hallmark's 1st store aisle where the implication of a birthday has become a litttle bit cloudy.

However, I do love cake, flowers, balloons and celebrations!

Unnecessary Salespeople

Sometimes when I'm on the subway I see these little kids holding up a piece of paper and some candy bars. They have this whole speech down pat that they are supposed to read to strangers in an attempt to get them to purchase a $5 snickers bar.

The reasons are always for their schools and communities but you have to wonder... aren't there other ways to raise money besides having these 9 year old kids begging for money on the street. What exactly does that teach them? They are ignored by 98% of the people who see them and the other 2% just feel bad and therefore give them the money and have them keep the candy bars.

It seems as though the practice is making them sell themselves rather than just work for what they deserve.

Also, it is not the responsibility of a 9 year old to raise money for his/her public school. Kids should be enjoying their childhood rather than spending it trying to raise money for "how to kill a mockingbird"

Selling Out in Suits

Last night I went to the Duke vs. Boston College basketball game (I am not a fan of either but had to attend in order to get tickets for this weekends dame). During one of the time-outs the jumbo-tron showed a commercial of no other than Boston College's head coach, Al Skinner. Skinner was standing in a local suit shop for those men who are "a little bigger than most." I guess with NCAA rules making sure that you can't make money off players you have to resort to making money off of the coaches.

The Silent Sit Smiling

Boston's Bomb Scare. Whether you view it as a guerilla marketing campaign gone horribly wrong or a hint that the police force needs to be more aware of media culture, it's been taglined as the Boston Bomb Scare. Turner issued a corporate apology that aired on their show and also paid the city of Boston 2 million dollars for damages caused because of the debacle. And this was all completely avoidable.

If someone had called up the police station and simply told them to look on the shows website to see that the "bomb" was a martin, most of the drama could have been avoided. So why didn't anyone who knew what was going on even try stop it?

The alleged bombs were also placed on the doors of at least two stores on Newbury Street of Boston two days before the giant scare. People working in the stores found the aliens and kept them but also kept silent and didn't say anything about the meaning behind them to the police.

It would have taken a few minutes out of somebody's day to simply call and notify the police of what was going on and yet they didn't. And when the police force reacted the way that they did these same city dwellers who didn't want to say anything before sneering at the officials for an unnecessary reaction to a marketing campaign.

The opinions of the marketing campaign are split in half between people who loved it and people who despised it, the same kind of feelings that almost every superbowl commercial had. So, in the end, maybe Turner did this in atttempt to save over two million dollars of advertising money that they could have put into the superbowl.

Hallmark and Cupid

Historical Fact: Valentine’s Day is celebrated in remembrance of Saint Valentine. He was beheaded on February 14th. Totally romantic isn’t it.

People either hate it or love it. But whether or not it’s a Hallmark holiday, Valentine’s Day is certainly one of their most important times of the year for Hallmark, Godiva, Jared’s and the endless other companies who target lovers.

The advertising is usually the same. Boy gives girl flowers. Boy gives girl chocolates. Boy gives girl diamond ring and a kiss. But why not consider having the girl give the boy something. Or, even better, how about having the girl being the one to “ignore” Valentine’s Day.

Turner Teaches Us How to Fail

Boston suffered a bomb scare today courtesy of the Turner Network. Their ad campaign for a series of adult cartoons called Adult Swim included packages that we placed in odd locations in 10 cities throughout the US. Horrible idea folks. Police shut down water travel and even had to pause public transportation while it was determined that the cartoon packages were not bombs. How in the world did that idea get approved? The cartoon is sticking up his middle finger and has weird switchboard lighting that made it look like it could be anything. And the smartest thing they did, oh lets put one on the subway. I hope they get in some sort of huge trouble for this and the account planner of the campaign takes another look at what is and is not funny.

TV Ratings

Neilsen Media Research has long been the go-to company when it comes to tv show ratings, and despite the numerous flaws in their system they have yet to face defeat by another company. Neilsen has now negotiated with the 250 families out of their sample 10,000 that have children away at college to put Neilsen ratings boxes in their dorm rooms or off campus living situations. So now 250 college students are determining what all college students in America are watching. Can sample sizing really be accurate enough that these ratings will be taken as true? These 250 kids are a very small percentage of our college population, and not a completely diversified sample either, but they are now the voices of us all.

My First Blog

It seemed appropriate to title this "my first blog", because it is.

I have never before read blogs, yes I am one of the college girls who has absolutely no interest in what Perez Hilton has to say about whatever Britany Spears or Paris Hilton is wearing today.

I am going to concentrate this blog on current advertising and how it affects our daily lives. It will incorporate both large affairs with big companies and also smaller things that happen around campus.

Enjoy!