Wacky Advertising

Is advertising getting out of control in this day and age?

According to an article entitled, “Wacky new airline stunts”, at CNN.com—this seems to be the case.


This last October, Air New Zealand started a new marketing campaign at LAX. In this marketing campaign they had bald headed men with the words “Need a change? Head down to New Zealand.” Temporary inked on the back of their shaved heads as human billboards.

According to the vice president of the company- he says If people are going to travel a long distance they want to have a trip of a life time. They think by doing something extreme to market the flights they will illustrate the dramatic transformation they will have by traveling to New Zealand.

The main purpose of the cranial billboards is to spark interests in the flights. This is because there sales have been at all time low lately-- close to how sales did right after 9/11.

The article also states -Not just this company, but the global airline industry overall is suffering and many are turning to over the top publicity stunts to generate sales.

The article also talked about some other airline companies over the top promotions.

The company JetBlue put 300 domestic round-trip tickets up for auction on ebay.—the bidding started at cents, and those who won got 40% off of what a regular fare would be.

Virgin Atlantic was another company. They decorated the outside of a plane in the TV show Entourage signage, and offered an Entourage first class package that included extras like cashmere blankets, and Godiva Chocolates.

The Irish carrier Ryanair offered the first 100 English high school students who showed up at a bar in Liverpool free airline tickets. To get the tickets they had to show them that they failed their exams in a high level class.—there promotion was “Forget about going to Oxford or Cambridge and take a trip abroad instead”

Advertisers are turning to crazy marketing schemes to get through to the consumer during this current economic crisis.

Will this method be here to stay or will things go back to normal once the economy becomes stable again?

The Palm Pre

Will it give the i phone a run for its money?

Palm Pre just launched this Sat. June 9th. It was created by the Palm, the same company that made the Palm Pilot. The service provider is Sprint, and it costs $200 with a two year contract. The style is a slider smart phone and has 3.1 to 5 megapixels.

According to Wired author Steven Levy, of the article entitled, Multitasking Palm Pre Brims With Power, Potential, he describes the phone saying,

“Pre" is an odd name for a device that drops late into a corporate drama already loaded with twists, turns and setbacks. But if Palm is indicating that its new phone kicks off a new phase, maybe the Pre is aptly named after all."

One of the main attractions to this phone is the option to multitask. The pre calls this dubbed "cards" which functions like open tabs on a computer. Just like a computer, you can stay constantly connected to Face book, e-mail, and any other sites. This process of “cards” makes things a lot easier when jumping back and forth between functions on your phone.


However, the down side is all of this multi-tasking can wear your battery very quickly. They give tips on how to preserve it, but it still seams to be a problem.

Another attraction to the phone is it can have the touch screen like the iphone, along with the keyboard from a blackberry, giving you the option to choose what works best for you. I think that this is a great idea because sometimes I prefer a keyboard and other times I would like to just touch the screen, depending on what I am doing on the phone.

An additional cool feature about the phone is you can also load your songs from i tunes on your phone by using the program Media Sync and plugging in the mini USB of your phone into the computer.

I wonder if i tunes will eventually prohibit this function to work?

Overall the phone seems pretty cool. The question remains if people will turn to the Palm Pre or the i phone for their next phone. The battle will be between an established product vs. a new product to the field.

Marketing and Search Engines

The web is a very effective tool for advertising. We live in an age where most of our time is spent on the internet compared to any other form of technology. Knowing this information means that marketers need to advertise on the internet effectively and provide the most relevant information to the consumer.

As we know, the world of marketing is now changing dramatically. This is especially true for marketers who are targeting Generation Y. No longer are the days when advertising was done only through T.V., newspapers, and radio. In today’s world marketers have to use non-traditional methods to get the attention from Generation Y. Generation Y is active, doesn’t watch much T.V., and is on the internet constantly. So what do we do about marketing to this generation? How does a marketer stand out from all the noise that distorts or disrupts a message?

One of the ways to get consumers to pay attention is through effective search engine optimization-SEO ( the process of increasing the probability of a particular company’s web site emerging from the search). This is a way marketers can increase brand recognition with consumers. A marketing excerpt entitled A Web of Interactivity, states that 80% of all web traffic begins at a search engine. This means your company’s web page better appear close to the top of the search results if you want people to visit your site. This also means knowing what key words to include on your site so that it definitely will come up in the search results list.

Overall, a company’s website needs to have salience at its core, come up close to the top of a search engine, and take part in viral marketing (preparing a marketing message that in some way is passed from one consumer to another online)to have the best web interactivity with consumers. People visiting the website and learning relevant information from the site will be more likely to foster brand recognition and brand equity with the company and in turn be able to recall the product at the point -of -purchase.

Social Networking Sites and Your Employer

After reading an article in BusinessWeek entitled, Companies Want to Monitor Workers on Social Networks, I found the topic to be quite debatable. The article states,

“A new survey from Deloitte underscores the growing role of social networks and the dilemma they present for corporations that spend huge amounts to burnish their image. The professional services firm found that 60 percent of the executives interviewed believe they have a right to know how employees portray themselves and their organizations.”

On one hand, your employer shouldn’t be able to tell you what you can and can not do on an online social network; but on the other hand, I can see why companies would want to make sure their employees are representing themselves and the company in a professional manor to the public. However, how would you even be able to monitor something like this?

I think the issue is a tough situation for the employer and the company. I definitely do not think it is fair for a company to have control over your online behavior. The only thing I think a company should be allowed to do is make it known in the company policy book to leave the company name out of content online that is not professional looking to the public. This way the company makes the situation clear to employees, but they are not monitoring your content.

This issue reminds me of a rule at the park district I used to work at. The supervisors would tell all of the camp counselors to not wear our staff shirts out at bars because they did not want that image of the company portrayed to the public. They were not saying we couldn’t go to bars they were saying just don’t associate the organizations names with your actions at a bar. I think that same concept needs to pertain to the online activity issues. If you’re going to have unprofessional content online, just leave the company name off of the site.

However, even with saying to employees, leave the company name off of web content that is unprofessional, how do we deem what is and what is not unprofessional?
It will be hard to define a clear definition of what is and what is not unprofessional to all people. What one person thinks is ok, someone else may not.

The bottom line is the situation is hard to control any way you look at it.

Twitter

I have to admit I am not a fan of Twitter, and actually agree with Kanye West’s thoughts on Twitter. In the article Kanye West lashes out against Twitter, Imposters, he states
“he's "too busy actually being creative most of the time" and that "everything that Twitter offers I need less of."

I would rather have my favorite artist working on their career than Twittering all the time.

The concept of constantly telling people where you are and what you are doing is just not something I want to be apart of. People don’t need to know where I am at all times, and I don’t need to know where my friends are at all times.

When talking back in fourth with a future employer about setting up a time to interview, he actually asked me to send him my Twitter account, Facebook page, and a photo of my self. He told me not to worry about social content in anything and that he just wanted to get a feel for who I was. I was really taken back by the request to say the least. The job was in public relations for a promotional company, so I guess he wanted to see how I would fit into the social scene by seeing what I was like. I didn’t even have a Twitter account to send him, and at that point I felt like the job wasn’t for me. I did not think it was appropriate to ask someone for such personal information prior to an interview and I could tell the job was not in fit with my career goals.

I guess I am finding out as I get older that I am valuing real face to face interactions/relationships more than the social networking interactions with people. I would rather talk to some over the phone or visit with them than connect on online. I do however think that it’s nice to be able to talk online when someone is living far away and you can’t see them in person. There is good and bad to all of the social networking sites. Although I do not like the concept of Twitter, I do like Facebook. I like that Facebook allows you to share pictures with friends and re-connect with people you have not seen in along time.

Shop It To Me.com

For those of you who love fashion, I found a great site!
It’s called Shop It To Me.com
The cool thing about this site is it will send you e-mails when your favorite brands are having online sales.

How it works is you pick form lists of brands the ones you like and then it will constantly be searching the web for you for when there is an online sale for that brand in your size. You pick from every category, shoes, accessories, dresses, etc. so it’s tailored to the specific brand and category of your likeliness.

It always nice to get something you love for less money! My friend uses it all the time and often times will find cool designer stuff for cheap.

I just joined the site, so I am hoping to get some great deals!

Searching for Jobs Online

I will be graduating this June, and I am currently looking for jobs. I am an organizational communications major with a minor in marketing. I am hoping to get a job in marketing either in an educational setting or corporate setting doing something on the creative side.

I know there are some seniors in our class, I was just wondering if anyone is having luck in the job search process? I am becoming extremely discouraged with a lot of the job search engines like, monster, indeed, and career builder.

A lot of times with a marketing key word search I am coming across a lot of companies that I have never heard of before. I know some are legit and others seem to be on the sketchy side. Sometimes I will type the company into Google and the word scam will appear in the search results with the company’s name.

Basically, I don't know where to apply to a lot of the times because I have never heard of most of the companies. It seems like most of the open jobs at the moment are not coming from large corporations or well known companies. Also, a lot of the stuff out there seems to be sales positions, which I do not want to do at all! :(

Does anyone know of a good site to search that they have had luck with?