What target markets do you belong to and how do advertisers reach each of your aspects?

A target market is a group of customers that the business has decided to aim its marketing efforts and merchandise. There are many ways in which advertisers can do this and like the book discusses some of these persuasion forms are: mining pop culture, direct marketing and relationship marketing. Mining pop culture is when advertisers align themselves with the consumer through the art and entertainment of popular culture. They borrow familiar symbols from the culture to promote consumer identification with the product; an example of this is the commercial for iPod in which they feature a silhouetted hip-hop dancing and music. When I first saw this ad, it immediately grabbed my attention and I knew I wanted to be that silhouette because of the liberty and freedom it projected. Apple is not the only company that manages to grab my attention every time one of their ads comes up, Converse does it too. Being a female college student, it easy to believe that I belong to that particular target market and so Converse has managed to capture the essence of college life in different ways. They have various commercials and ads, each dedicated to the different age groups, but in general their target market is young adults.

Besides from age and gender, another target market I consider myself a part of is diversity. As an international student here in the US, I find myself feeling more in connection with commercials or ads that target this. By promoting unity or showing how no matter where you are from, we are still a part of one world, these commercials tend to make me feel valuable and that I am one of the many whose culture is being represented in those ads. Interest is also another by which I get targeted. Advertisements for movies like Harry Potter, Inception or Hangover, attract my attention and play a role in my decision making when watching a movie. Same works for music, books and clothing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3n1hFLF_pc

What are the good things that advertising does for you and for society?

Advertising is a form of communication that is intended to persuade an audience into doing something, purchasing a specific product or taking some action towards an ideal or service. This form of communication can be good because it facilitates the way in which information is distributed to people and also allows this information to be taken into different levels. It also creates a whole new world of challenges and job opportunities in which people can work hard to be a part of. In today’s world advertising has gone from a simper form of communication to a sophisticated way in which technology plays a huge role. Living in a society in which technology has a major part, advertising allows professionals to explore new ways of thinking and new ways of targeting the audiences in order to actually get them to like whatever it is they are promoting. Aside from creating job opportunities and giving professionals a new field to explore, advertising can also be used as a support system of good causes, an example of this is how Converse, Apple and Gap have joined the battle against AIDS by adopting the RED brand and advertising for it.

On my part, advertising is good for me because it allows me to see what is the next big thing. By advertisements I find out about movie trailers, release dates, concerts and new books. It makes information come to me, rather than searching it myself, so it basically facilitates my life. It also makes information that I would normally not pay attention to, more accessible and actually interesting. 

Cannes Lions

Cannes Lions is dedicated to the Cannes festival that occurs once a year. Unlike Ad week and Mediabistro, Cannes Lions website discusses the future festival, as well as past festivals and winners. The Cannes Lions International Festival is the world’s biggest celebration of creativity in communications and is also considered ‘the world’s only truly global meeting place for professionals in the communications industry’.  This festival is the door for many entrepreneurs in the advertisement world to meet important people and be honored in the highest way possible. More than 24,000 entries from all over the world are showcased and judged in the festival and the winners are presented with a highly coveted lion trophy. More than 8,000 delegates form 90 countries attend seven days of workshops, exhibitions, screenings, master classes and high-profile seminars given by industry leaders such as Yoko Ono, Kofi Annan, Mark Zuckerberg, Ben Stiller, Bob Greenberg and Sir Martin Scorrell.

This is the biggest global award show in brand communication and annual gathering of advertising professionals. The website gives users all the possible information on the background of this festival and coverage of past and future festivals. With stories on winners and links to free screenings, this site helps promote the Cannes Lions festival. 

Mediabistro.com

Mediabistro is another ad site that has been designed to bring professionals together and allow them to explore possibilities by meeting informally and work with each other. Their greater goal is to ‘revolutionize the way creative/content industry professionals relate’. They want people to have a place where these professionals can work on projects together, mentor each other and allow them to see how much in common they have from their past experiences. Their mission is to offer opportunities to share resources, improve career skills, become informed of job opportunities and showcase your work. The site is open to anyone who creates or works with content such as: editors, writers, producers and book publishers. They also want industries to participate and so they are also open to magazines, radio, newspapers, advertising, design, online media and PR.

Like Ad week, Mediabistro also is very user-friendly and gives users a chance to use the site a medium of information to research jobs and post different things. Articles on this site relate to different topics and also provide new insight and information on how to do things better. Amongst the articles or posts found on this site are: “Get creative with a nonfiction proposal for Lit agent” and “Cheezburger network CEO Ben Huh’s career advise for entrepreneurs”.

Ad Week

Ad week is an online site that has been created to provide inside stories on creativity, client/agency relationships and successful global advertising strategies. They also provide news of accounts in review, the best creative work and new campaigns. The website is considered by several users to be very media rich, which can sometimes cause a few problems depending on the computer being used. Many employees in the advertising industry or any other industries are limited to using a standard, networked computer with Internet Explorer during their daily work and are unable to add plug-ins or upgrades, making it impossible for them to actually view the articles on the site.

Their mission or as they put it in their –about us section- is that Ad week ‘is the home for creative thought leaders and top agency influencers looking for the latest strategies, innovations and ideas”. They manage to keep their promise by keeping their site up-to-date with stories like “Fox’s Jon Nesvig to Retire” and “ASME issues new ad guidelines”. They also provide users with different forms of newsletters such as: Ad week creative, Ad week breaking news, Ad week IQ daily and Ad week daily update.

DVR’s Bring Some Shows a Boost in Ratings

According to the article by Bill Carter, DVR’s will boost the ratings of various TV shows. Amongst the TV shows he claims DVR’s will help are: Glee, House and Modern Family. All these shows have strong ratings amongst the population of 18-49, but with the help of DVR’s they all will show a better rating.

As Mr. Carter explains in his article: “the official numbers for the first week will be released Tuesday but those numbers will not reflect the reality of what viewers actually watched in Week One” this is because they will take into account the ratings once people with DVR’s have actually watched their favorite shows. As he tells us in the article, the results are not taken into consideration until two or more weeks. With this new number, ratings tend to usually look much more positive for both returning and new shows.

Although some shows still remained with a low rating, most of the shows that were DVR had a better rating. This also raises an important question about TV and its shows, why do people DVR shows? A simple answer to this is because of the lack of time, but there is much more than just that. People love to use DVR’s because it gives them more control over the shows. They can choose when to watch them and make sure they do not miss a thing of their favorite shows. Also, an important answer is that people dislike commercial breaks in between shows, therefore by DVR-ing their shows they can easily skip them and just watch the show.


http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/dvrs-bring-some-shows-a-boost-in-ratings/

If Conventional TV model is dying, what should replace it?

 I think computers and the Internet will replace conventional TV. With technology changing and becoming better each day, computers have a better shot at succeeding and staying in place of TV’s. The Internet too, has gone from being used only to deliver certain information, to be a place where we search our favorite shows and movies. So, basically this shows us that computers and the Internet are revolutionizing our world and the way in which we receive information.

If we ask ourselves: What function does TV play in our lives? We realize that it really only serves as a mode of relaxation and to deliver information. These two things can be done by using your computers and the Internet. Every TV show can now be found ‘online’ and watched in sites like: YouTube, Hulu and Netflix. These sites bring even more benefits that conventional TV, because you get the choice to watch them whenever and wherever you want. Even though, there are DVR’s and TIVO to provide a service similar to this one, people still choose to use their computers, because these are portable.

Another reason why computers and the Internet will replace TV is because the service is much cheaper than cable TV and there is much more variety than TV’s. Monitors can be as big as big TV sets, but the difference is that you can do much more in a monitor than the TV. People will always look to multitask or have hardware in which you can do more than just one thing; therefore computers fulfill this role much better than TV’s. For these reasons mentioned above, I believe computers and the Internet will replace conventional TV’s in the years to come.