Month: October 2010

Marketing is HUGE, and the reason is it influences many people in many different ways. However successful marketing is even bigger, because it influences peoples thoughts in one particular way. I’ve recently watched Direct-TV commercial about their new TV plan. Basically it showed the Russian guy, who is terribly rich, can’t speak proper English, and spends most of his time on buying OPULENCE. I laughed about it at first, but then I realized that this commercial sends out the sub-message about Russians in general, which is not pleasant at all. I know a lot of us are educated people who can tell the difference between a joke and the reality. However, you would be surprised how many people I’ve met in Canada and all across the world who judge Russia solely by stereotypes (you know: drive bears to school, drink vodka every day and buy English Premier League soccer clubs on the weekends….yeah that’s what we usually do). My point here is that marketers should be aware that they influence more than just a “target area”. Since Canada is country of many different backgrounds, marketers should be aware that commercials influence people beyond the product that they promoting, they also shape their vision in some cases…

P.S. My Brazilian friend was seriously asked by the girl in UBC if he uses canoe to get to school. 🙂 Food for thought.

While doing my marketing group assignment on AXE shower gel, we researched Old Spice vs. AXE commercial battle which was a big astonishment for me. I never really paid attention to neither Old Spice nor AXE commercials before, but i quickly realized that the biggest part of success for both of them were well designed and made video commercials. By well designed I mean they created an image designed psychologically, socially so that a lot of people would relate to it. By well made I mean the structure of actual video content, is perfectly serves it psychological and social purpose . However, what I wanted to talk about is how advertisement can have an unbelievable impact on product sales. If I were rich back in the day, and someone form AXE came up to me, showed me their business plan, which is to make a shower gel for MEN, 18-24 years old, ohh and yeah, the target area are SHY 18-24 year olds. I would’ve laughed at them. First of all why do you need a shower gel, when you have a shampoo especially when you are 18-24? I’ve never seen someone going into the shower with two different bottles.. Secondly, by creating a “gigolo” shower gel image, people who would purchase it would associate themselves with it. I’m not one of them. Even if I do like the new AXE smell I would never buy it just because of the image they put on it. Old Spice has exactly the same issues to me. Do you really need a constant reminder that you are a man? When did we loose the sense of being a man? or maybe media took it away from a lot of people? I personally just dont understand what was marketers thoughts about an average Old Spice customer. He walks around the house and then suddenly stops and realizes that he forgot that he is a man…he should definitely go and buy some old spice to boost that confidence up. On the serious note, I think there is a bigger issue behind all of this commercial success, the issue that now men (generally speaking) really need a constant reminder that they are men. When Confidence-questioned commercial for man are beating any other ones….thats a serious issue I believe…something is wrong here….