So Where Does This Lead Me?

Well it’s finally the time of the year when all the college kids pull up their socks, put down their beers and start finally doing some work. With the end of the semester comes all the final projects to do, but also comes the end of the blogging assignment.

The blog has been an eye opening experience for me. I would not have as good of a concept of how the marketing world as I do now had it not been for having to write about it for this class. Using social media in order to advertise this blog also gives me an idea of how companies would use this to their advantage and why they do such a large portion of their advertising on social media.

I think that this assignment has really given me an idea of what direction I would like to go in with my career. Communicating through writing on the internet definitely seems like something I can see myself doing for a long time.

Maybe I’ll keep up this blog and see if it leads me anywhere in life. But now that it’s the end of the semester, maybe I can just pick my beer up.

See ya next week... maybe.

#OmgImAddicted

                Twitter is where everyone can read, write, and share what’s on their minds with people all over the world. With over 230,000,000,000 new tweets posted every day and over 100,000,000 active users, (http://business.twitter.com/basics/what-is-twitter/) the shear amount of information available to marketers to use is staggering. Incorporating Twitter, and other social media sites, has become an integral part of planning advertising campaigns.

In order to secure the loyalty of their customer base, companies use Twitter to enhance the relationship between the consumer and company. Which is good, especially when they screw up big time. They use Twitter to tell people about their deals or sales that they may be having, community events, sponsorships, and to clean up any of the messes that they might have cause in the past little while, and anything else that could concern their customers.

In the case of television, stations will use Twitter as a means of advertising new shows or getting opinions from their viewers about what they thought about the new shows. Companies using Twitter as a means of connecting with their consumers is very important because it allows for a company to shape their image in the eyes of the consumers. Since it is the company who is controlling what is posted on their Twitter account, they can censor what people see when they look at their news feed.

The ability to have instant contact with all of the people who care about what you have to offer is important because this gives you a direct link to be able to advertise directly to your customer base. It allows a company to inform the people who care the most about all their deals, promotions, events or whatever else the company is involved in.

The reach of anything that you put up on Titter is amazing and by using it you are ensuring that the people who care about what you are advertising are seeing them. Although, even though these companies go through a lot of grief to keep a squeaky clean image, there is still quite a bit of crap that gets through.

See ya next week.

The Twitocalypse!

Social Media has become one of the driving forces of my life. I can hardly pull myself away from it at times. it kind of terrifies me sometimes, but through this I see its potential as a direct source of exposure to advertisements for people exactly like me; addicts.

I find it interesting to be surrounded by people who are constantly encouraging the use of social media as opposed to most people outside of my program who tend to condemn its use. The expanse of things that are being shared every second are ridiculous. I get a stupid notification every 22 seconds about a new post on Twitter or Facebook or Tumblr or any other of my networking vices.

If there are other people on Facebook and Twitter as much, or even more than I do, then there is a very large number of people who can potentially be reached using this ever expanding and ever changing advertising medium; and even though some people, don’t believe that the internet or social media is an advertising medium need to wake and realize that it is not only an advertising medium, but the future of how advertising is approached.

                            Check out these stats on social media usage for a bigger image!

Don't Worry... I Know People

Yesterday, we had one of the most constructive and interesting classes that I have experienced so far. Our teacher brought in a bunch of the people from last year’s graduating class and got them to share their success stories and to give us tips and advice on making it on our own career paths.

Our teacher had the alumni seated beside each other, facing us in a line, in a panel style meeting. This wasn’t the part that I what enthusiastic about. Frank asked them the usual questions: hat mistakes they made, how they got where they are today, and what kind of work and volunteer experience they have. It kind of felt like they were repeating themselves a lot, but they still made some interesting points.

 At the halfway point of the class, we switched up the meeting style. Instead of the alumni being up front, they were now leading six intimate group sessions with the people in our class. My group was being led by a woman named Mellissa Kutz(http://www.linkedin.com/pub/melissa-kutz/25/973/943).  She has a very impressive resume and she was very informative with her advice. She really wanted to know what I was that each person in the group was aspiring towards. One of the main things that she said would help further your career is to expand my network and gain contacts.

Hopefully I can achieve this through my blog, and other social networking that I do, as well as advertising for different volunteer work that I hope to begin doing more of soon.

A Look Into the Future

This week has been very interesting. In my Integrated Marketing Communications class, my teacher, Kathy Patterson (http://ca.linkedin.com/in/kathypatterson)

 brought in a couple of older Advertising students to talk about the advertising conference in New York City. They went in order to meet with executives in the business and to discuss the potential application of social media on advertising.

One of the main things that the recommended everyone in our class should do in order to go to this conference (which I intend to) is to go and get our Klout score higher. To which most of the class said "what the hell is Klout?"

 Well after the class, and after a very vague description of what Klout is, I decided to go and find out for myself. Basically it is a scale of how much influence a person’s actions have over the actions of other people on social networking websites. According to Klout (http://klout.com/corp/kscore) it measures your reach (how many people you influence), Amplification (how much you influence them) and Network Impact (the influence of your network.

 As common sense would dictate, the Klout scale is measured from one to one hundred. When I went I signed in using my Facebook account and my Klout score popped up. Ten. That’s it? Yep.

 Even though that was a little depressing, I now understand its potential. I signed up for almost every social networking site out there (jamesbur12 is my username for all, add me) so that I could really grasp how many different ways that I can reach people. This is sobering in a way that I now know how hard I need to work in order to get a higher Klout score, get my name out there and who knows, maybe I’ll get to go to New York.

See you next week.

Smart People

Everything seems to be falling into place in my life. My grades are above average, despite advertising being a difficult course. Oddly enough, even though I’ve only been away from home for a couple months, I can already tell how being in this program is changing my life.

                                                  (none of you are as dumb as this girl)

Anytime I talk to someone in my class, we always get on the topic of our course, and advertising in general. That’s not the part that changed, however; it was the way that we talked about our classes. In high school, all you heard was “oh my God! This class is so stupid, why do we even have to take this”, but in college when we talk we actually reflect on the things that we lean in class.

We exchange ideas and we tell each other about ads we like. For the first time in my life I can have (or at least think I’m having) intelligent conversations with people. We are all striving to reach a goal and we all need each other to get there. To be honest, I’m just happy that it’s the smart people I get to talk to.

 See yeah next time

What About Us College Kids?!

As most of you know from reading my previous blogs, I am an advertising student. My brain is slowly being trained to pick apart media and to decipher meaning out of every advertisement I see. Being in residence, and also broke, I don’t get to watch television nearly as often as I normally would if I was at home.

Not being able to watch TV has definitely shown me how much more of an effect that it has as an advertising medium. I have spent far less money on anything that I would have bought after seeing it on TV than I have… probably my whole life. It might have something to do with me having no cash, but that’s not the point

Even now, as I sit in the TV lounge for probably the third time since I moved to residence, watching Country Music Television, to try and find inspiration on advertising that appears, and all it seems that country music has time for showing is sad songs, sung by pretty girls with sad boys sitting in the corner drinking out of a bottle of Jack Daniels.

When the commercials actually do come on, however, they show commercials about this wholesome lifestyle, filled with teaching children to do hard work by buying them Tonka construction toys, and cleaning detergent that takes out the dirtiest stains for people who do all this hard work.

I just want you to see how versatile television may really be. Though I think that there is a market that is not being advertised to though that people should really start planning for which is the college kid demographic. We don’t have the money for any damn TV, so why isn’t there more poster advertising or online advertising geared towards people in my age group? Just something to think about.

See ya next week.

Greater Being Bless PETA

PETA stands for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and they do just that. They focus on the wellbeing of all the animals that the rest of society does not respect. Not only are they a huge representation of the potential strength of the human race, they also have some of the most pointless, random and awesome advertisements which they have become synonymous for.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/people/annalise-strips-to-stop-cruelty/2006/03/08/1141701564148.html

I thought to myself upon… ahem… further research into these advertisements, why would they do that? It seems so irrelevant as to the message they are trying to convey. Then all my questions were answered; I came across this handy little page on the PETA website (www.peta.org). Here it tell of how they use it as purely a means of grabbing publicity so that they pay not a thing for advertising because the media does it all for them.

http://verybadfrog.com/24194/photo-stories/pirate-ship-bedroom/attachment/pirateship-bedroom-12

They are an organization unlike their competition because they do not have the high industry budget for their advertising ventures, therefore using these risqué is a sure fire way for PETA to gain media coverage, if not only internet on websites that people my age often happen to find ourselves on once in a while.

http://my.spill.com/photo/eva-mendes-fur-id-rather-go

In my opinion this is the smartest thing that an organization could have done with the means in which they had to do it. As per everyone else, I don’t care what you think, as long as someone thinks these girls are good looking.

See ya next week.

The Lazy Generation

I don’t think that there is any more loosely defined a generation than Generation X. This, as I understand it, is people who were born after the baby boomers of post WWII, at the end of the cold war, which would have made them between 1965 and 1980.

The reason, I believe (this is an opinion, should you have come here for solid facts, you know where the exit is) is because of the independence of these people in gen x. They are defined as the “latchkey kids”. This means that the kids would leave for school (or any other time consuming event) and when they come home the parents are at work still.

This leaves the kids unsupervised and alone. This causes for intense dependence on individuality so that they can take care of themselves, not just when it is they are at home, but because they develop those skills and put them into practise in their everyday lives.

This individuality is what came to develop the main cultural perspective on the whole world. Generation x has also been reflected on as the “lazy” generation; with no one to tell these kids that they needed to be active, they became lazy.

Though, being alone allowed for lots of these kids to come out of their shells and develop the music out of the 80’s. Music which has become an audible illustration for the time. Bands like Michael Jackson, Duran Duran, Prince and Madonna.

Not only pop culture greatly influenced generation x, it was also the rock and metal music. Iron Maiden, Metallica, Def Lepard… You get the idea.

Well hopefully this can give me some insight as to what I should write about for my research paper for media and culture. I picked it thinking I knew exactly what generation x was and that’s when I realized how loosely defined it was or how many layers there was to the whole thing.

See ya next week.

Well Looky Here: Week 1

Where do I begin? I guess you should know that I am a college student at St. Lawrence College, in Kingston, Ontario. But I guess that isn’t really me. I am a creative person with a particular interest in music and drawing. I also have worked in retail quite a bit, which is why I think I have what it takes to make it in the Marketing world- I know what it takes to bring the people in (as much as it seems like I don’t based on the mediocrity of this first entry).

I have also done some professional writing, but I have never written a blog before. The things that I could write about are endless! Oh wait, no they aren’t, we have to write about the course, about advertising, the media and all the things that make the world work.

Now that I think about it actually, there are still a lot of really important things I could write about. In fact, I think I might.