Better Late Than Never

I learned a lot from blogging all semester.
I learned that there are people out there who really read blogs and care about what people have to say. The best feeling was to have someone that I didn’t know, out of the blue, write a comment on my blog, thanking me for posting about something that I felt was so arbitrary. I must admit that when we first began this project I was not so enthusiastic. The prospect of having to write in a blog twice a week seemed like torture. But I enjoyed writing about international advertising, and on some weeks, what I thought was international advertising. It made me more aware of the industry and it made me become an active member of the blogging world. Greatest moment number two: when greg verdino mentioned me and the class on his blog. Professor gregson hyped him up so much in class, it just was so exciting to see that he even noticed us. After a few weeks I started to become more interested in my colleges blogs. Checking up on them, even adding one to my google reader (he’s my good friend and knew I had done that =] ). And then I began to become more enthusiastic about promoting my blog. I added a counter and started to comment on other blogs, hoping that those writers would return the favor. But after a few weeks of seldom action I stopped looking forward to blogging, and being adventurous, hunting down other peoples blogs. I did find some that will be forever in my Google Reader, and I did learn some neat tricks on the way.

I'm not too sure if I'll keep blogging.

GREEN is the new Black

Consumers are going green for new organic products. When I walk into the Wegmans' produce section there is a huge crowd around the organic vegetable section. Granted we are in Ithaca, which means that these people have been eating organic since the 70s. But this kind of consumer behavior is being duplicated all over the world. About five years ago, there was a boom in interest over fair trade products, especially in Latin America, which just keeps growing. Starbucks has a few fair trade blends, and Ben and Jerry's has fair trade ice cream. However, most fair trade products come from smaller manufacturers and more private distributors.

Also, globally (and you can really see this in the US) there is growth in established natural good stores. Global marketers are going to have to start pitching to the consumers natural side. Mintel, a global supplier of consumer, media and market research located in Chicago, has done research on the rising market change and is predicting a list of consumer packaged goods categories that will see "a big shift in the spectrum toward green."

Mintel predicts that the bottled water is going to have to under go a major face-lift in order to get their sales back up. Consumers are instead buying filters for their faucets, like Brita and Pur, and using reusable Nalgene like bottles to bring when traveling. They also predict that product labeling will become more user-friendly and ingredient labels will be formatted more like a recipe.

[MediaPostPublications]

The right ad. The right audience. The right time.

The goal for every advertiser or marketer. Coming up with the perfect ad for the audience you're looking for, and placing it correctly results in tons of views and/or ratings. It takes teams of creatives and account managers to come up with the concept, based on thorough research of the audience and media. The perfect ad campaign does not develop over night. However, a new concept has arrived, Hyper Targeting by MySpace. Its regarded by MySpace as "The World's Largest Ad Targeting Platform," enabling marketers, on a massive scale, to communicate user groups based on shared interests in profiles. Hyper Targeting launched its first phase in July. In this phase marketers can buy advertising the specifically targets interest groups based on 10 categories, such as sports, travel, movies, etc.
Phase two is under way right now. Marketers can now target profiles more specifically, with over 100 categories to choose from. For example, phase one meant that marketers could target film fans. In Phase two marketers can now target myspace members who are into horror films

“Our mission with HyperTargeting by MySpace was to build an ad platform that translates our massive amounts of self expressed user data into highly-targeted, interest-based segments, enabling us to better serve the exact right ad to the right person at the right time,”

Michael Barrett, Chief Revenue Officer for Fox Interactive Media.

It's a Small World After All

With all the advancements in technology these days, advertisers try to stay on top of it all while attempting to stay ahead of the curve. Ever since the invention of the internet and the boom of cellular dievices and features has opened up so many media for advertisers to utilize in their campaigns.
An article in MediaWeek describes the way new developments in technology are happening all over the world, but that "advertising innovation isn't always keeping up with technology."
In Bangkok's Skytrain public transport system, similar to many public transit systems in the US, commuters are bombarded by flashy images on video billdoards, most much larger than typical US movie theater screens. In South Korea, their cellular phone and satellite technology is so advanced that mobile phone users can be underground in a shopping mall and still view about 30 TV channels on their mobile handsets. Verizon, in the United States, is beginnging to make similar advancements in their VCAST mobile television serivce. Technology is advancing so quickly that countries think they're more advanced but don't realize how fast a good idea radiates throughout the world.

The world IS becoming smaller.

In the article Javier Rodríguez Zapatero, Yahoo's vp of sales for Europe, predicts that in Europe mobile advertising will be huge in a few years. Advertisers need to take clues from the guys in Asia. One of Japan's main mobile carriers places wallpaper ads on the handset homepages, reaching 10 million subscribers each day. Solutions like these are picked up by people all over the world and used in different places. It won't be long before Europe picks up on the mobil advertising being done, creating the boost predicted.

When you think you know everything....

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

While browsing AdAge on my long thanksgiving break at home I found an article posted by Carol Philips, a marketing professor at the University of Notre Dame and founder for brand strategy consulting firm, Brrand Amplitude. The article was titled, "Millennials: Clued in or Clueless?", and I figured my professor, Kim Gregson, and the other student in my Audience Research class would find this very interesting.

Philips has a lot of insight into the minds of the Millennials, the term she uses to describe the college student of today, a very important market right now, and "will become even more improtant as they graduate, start jobs, marry and establish households." She says that many of the students in her classes did not realize, they might seem clued into the media-saturated environment they live in but are tuned out to the ingenious ways marketers influence them.

Check out Carol Philips "Top 10 Things College Students Don't Know About Marketing"

Some of Philips' top 10 I don't agree with. Number 4 is "Facebook is an advertising supported, commercial service". In our class we have discussed the commercialization of Facebook and the numerous ways of promotion that can be done through the network. Some of us college students are actually in on these things she mentions. Yea! The tone of the article I actually found a bit condisending. Yes we might say that we get our news from the Daily Show, but we're also browsing CNN.com while we kill time between classes.

Food for the "Info Hungry"

Have I tempted you to learn more about international advertising and marketing?
Here are some great sources:

International Advertising Association, IAA
The IAA is a global network of members from 76 countries, who all share information about issues, changes and practices in the industry.

American Advertising Federation, AAF
"Unifying Voice of Advertising"
The federation has national members from the industry as well as clubs open to students looking to join the advertising industry.

"The COLORS, Dude! The COLOURS!"

Sony's launch of their new brand of hi-def technology, BRAVIA, in the summer of 2005, needed to be hot and show the features of the LCD television. That's why they chose Fallon, a London based advertising industry, to launch their international campaign. Through the images and music in the commercials, Sony was able to target the variety of markets that were viewing the adverts. Here are a few from the campaign



This was the ad that launched the campaign. Shot in the streets of San Fracisco, 250,000 REAL bouncy-balls leaped down the sloping streets of the city. This colorful whirl-wind of color emphasized the slogan, "Colour, like no other". Sony uses the spelling "colour" to keep their brand internationally flexible. The music in the ad was Heartbeats, written by Swedish duo The Knife and performed by José González, a popular track on the UK charts.



"Paint", I saw for the first time at the Advertising Women of New York conference on October 27th. It was shot by English director, Jonathon Glazer, named MTV director of the year in 1997. The commercial was shot at a Glasgow, Scotland tower block, covered in 70,000 litres of paint with the help of over 1400 separate explosions, with a 10 day production period.



This commercial gives the viewer an even warmer feeling than watching 250,000 bouncy-balls launched down San Francisco. The same amount of fun is used in "Play Do", a claymation video of bunnies taking over a square in New York City. You can't help but smile when you watch the video. Music: She's A Rainbow - Rolling Stones

In my opinion, the latest commercial, "Pyramids", really rounds off Sony's international campaign. Unlike all the others, this video is rumored to have some computer generated images.

[Note: for a behind the scenes look at most of the adverts, go to youtube or the official BRAVIA web site.