Blog on the Corner

As a child growing up in the 90’s, there were a few things that I remember instantly when I think about television:  Pokemon, Dragon Ball Z, Rugrats and the Sunny D commercials.  Recently in class we have been discussing about the family buying decision process.  This made me immediately think of the classic Sunny D commercial where the kids are roller blading and goofing around and they come bursting into the house.  Of course the kids have a variety of drinks to choose from but obviously they want the Sunny D.  The commercial then goes on to tell you that not only is Sunny D “cool” but it is healthy and contains essential vitamins.  Clearly the marketing team behind this advertisement understood that they needed to target the parents as well as the children.  The children will influence the parents who ultimately do the deciding.

Furthermore this was the start of a greater trend that we are seeing today.  Marketers are targeting more towards children then they ever have.  Years ago children had very small buying power, however in modern society almost every child has a cell phone and are consuming at a larger rate.  Marketers have taken advantage of this so instead of predominately targeting adults, kids have become a huge part of the mix.  Clearly we can observe the start of this trend in the Sunny D commercial.

Example of marketers targeting children

So I was searching online for some good ads to talk about when I stumbled upon this commercial from Nissan.  The commercial starts off by depicting a polar bear, which is forced to leave its natural habit due to global warming.  The bear then goes on a journey ultimately ending up in the driveway of what looks like a suburban neighborhood, with a man and his Nissan.  The bear then approaches the man and hugs him as a gesture of gratitude for purchasing a Nissan.

In class we talked about trends and of course one of the reoccurring themes that the class mentioned was the environment and the eco-friendly trend.  In the commercial Nissan does a great job in targeting the eco-friendly consumers by going straight for their emotional appeal.  I will admit the commercial starts off a bit slow but when the bear hugs the man in the driveway you can’t help but feel good.  In class we also talked about attitudes and what they comprise of.  This commercial targets all three aspects of attitude.  It makes you think (cognitive) about what is happening to our environment and how Nissan is doing their role in helping, it makes you feel (affective) good about Nissan and it makes you want to do (behavioral) , as in buy their cars.  With this ad Nissan has successfully changed my attitudes towards their brand, and in my opinion, that’s good marketing.

Hello friends, my name is Billy and in case you are lost, this is my blog.  So I guess here is a little bit of background info about me :  I am a Vancouverite however I grew up in Surrey B.C., I am a student at the University of British Columbia, and I am an avid sports fan for a slew of teams.  The purpose of this blog is for my COMM 296 intro to marketing course, however I’ve always kind of wanted to try blogging, so this gave me a good reason to start.  I actually follow a few blogs online and I hope to make mine as interesting as the ones I follow religiously.  With that being said I will do my best to make sure that anything I put on here isn’t just gibberish.