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.

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