Month: April 2011

When I was reading my friend Jorline Ou’s Blog post on “Sex” I realized that a lot of companies rely on sexual content to attract their customers to buy their products. Its not just any companies that rely on sexual media to attract their current market segment and new ones, its mostly clothing companies like Calvin Klein or Guess and perfume companies like Channel and Gucci that rely heavily on these types of advertisements. Brands like Gucci and Channel partner up with extremely attractive stars and grab the attention of their consumers by advertising their premium products through sexual content. In all their advertisements, they portray the glamorous life of the rich and famous and convey a certain “upscale” image and their superiority among other brands. When consumers see this commercial, they automatically want the fragrance because it makes them believe that if they do buy J’adore they will become sexier. It gives consumers the incentive to pay that much for a bottle of perfume because when they do, it is almost guaranteed that they will become more physically appealing to the opposite sex. Most of the commercials always have an underlying story of a mystery lover or a mystery woman and it evokes that sense of excitement in consumers about the possibilities in their own lies  if they buy the product. Mostly these brands advertise their products in such a way that it fulfills a consumers psychological needs and gives them a confidence boost and awakes the sexiness within all.

In my friend Jennifer Chen’s post ” Its all about Teamwork” she made an interesting point about non sporting companies such as coke and Pepsi who spend millions of dollars on advertising during World sporting events. There are many events all over the world, and it is during these world sporting events in which companies, no matter what they make, try their hardest to reach out to new consumers. An event as large as the Olympics or the Fifa world cup is the perfect venue for any companies to get the attention of millions if not billions of consumers. Although Nike and the traditional sporting brands like Adidas and Reebok are seen, companies such as coke, Pepsi and Mcdonalds who have nothing to do with he sporting world are almost always sponsoring these huge events because they are aware of the mass amount of publicity they receive in return. Coke was one of the main sponsors of the Fifa World Cup 2010 and they found a very unique way to reach out to new consumers. They used African Legend Roger Milla to send a message to all those who loved football and all those who were die hard football fans: Coke was the the drink that Roger Miller consumes, and when he revolutionized the game by his famous dance, he drank coke. In essence, coke was conveying that coke is not just a drink, it is a way of celebration and when you open a bottle of coke you are “opening happiness”

Coke also did a remarkable job of uniting and instilling a feeling of patriotism and pride among the South African people through advertisements such as this. They made the African people aware that one of their very own beloved people had changed the game of football for every and they made sure that everyone noted that coke was their throughout the years cheering their team on.

Humans by nature are curious beings, what we know is never enough. We always strive for ways to figure out the unknown and are almost never satisfied with an “I don’t know, its just the way it is”. As humans, we have this insatiable desire to know everything, whether it be gossip about someone else’s personal life or whether there is life on another planet. Google is a master of this and have tapped into every humans desire to know everything by creating amazing programs like google earth and google street to enable users to travel back to the familiar, or to places they could only dream of visiting. Apparently for Billionaire adventurer Richard Branson the knowledge the human beings posses about the world, space and the moon is not enough to satisfy his hunger of exploration. In Richard Branson’s latest blogs ” Launching Virgin Oceanic” he states that humans have explored 0% its deepest points and have only mapped 3% of its oceans through an unmanned craft. Richard Branson has created the Virgin Oceanic which is a submarine that will travel to the deepest trenches of the ocean, and will enable the user to pilot the submarine and explore the depths of the ocean from home. He has partnered up with Google who will stream the dives on Google maps and images and videos will be uploaded to Google Earth’s interactive map of the world. He has teamed up with explorers and scientists to collect data about living forms not seen by the human eye. By launching Virgin Oceanic, Richard Branson has truely understood what consumers as human beings really want, KNOWLEDGE! Google on the other hand has done the smart choice of partnering up with him as they have the technology to execute the project and they can reach another market segment they previously could not satisfy: Ocean lovers