Over the course of this term, marketing was certainly the one class where even new material seemed familiar. In a way, it made class concepts quickly understandable, but because it seemed easy on the surface, the more specific and detailed marketing strategies that we covered throughout the course really surprised me. It took some time to stop overlooking as I worked on different assignments, especially as we delved a bit deeper into the multiple steps that play a part in effective marketing.

My group’s company of choice was WestJet, and through the assignments, we were able to get a solid grasp of how specific and detailed a marketing plan had to be. This specificity made it difficult to create a video targeting the market we chose, which was business air travellers in their mid-thirties to forties. From the feedback we received, it was clear that the part we struggled with was making our video creative. We found it difficult to be extremely inventive and film our own clips for this video when the images we thought were most relevant to our content were difficult to create. I think a bit more in-class time spent on the video-creating and editing portion of the project would have been very helpful. The concept of making an engaging and well-executed video for a final project is very useful, but I think a more thorough tutorial would have made it easier.

While researching WestJet, I discovered how much work goes into shaping their brand so that it’s received positively by the Canadian market. Overall, I found the marketing project to be quite eye-opening as to how much detail and work actually goes into just getting a product to consumers.

The controversy over Time Magazine’s cover photo for their May 2012 issue is partially a reflection of how the world has shaped our opinions on parenting, and the way marketing has shaped our perception of controversy.

In his blog, Juan Sebastian raises a few good points about how this cover is a target to mothers everywhere, and is aimed at ruffling the feathers of moms across the states.  However, I think that there was more to be mentioned about the marketing related to this cover rather than the issue of parenting style. This cover is the result of marketing tactics that have a precedent in our society

What this controversy most strongly reminds me of is Hollie McNish’s response to those in opposition to public breastfeeding, which she presented through her moving and poignant spoken word poem, “Embarrassed”. As McNish points out in her poem, what we consider racy in one place is considered commonplace elsewhere, even though in essence, they are the same things.

The main issue is that there should be no reason for this to be controversial, but years of shaping from marketing has taught society that it should be as long as it is regarding women who are not supermodels.

Sources:

https://blogs.ubc.ca/sebastiancevallos/2013/10/20/magazine-cover-that-raises-questions/

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/07/05/hollie-mcnish-breastfeeding_n_3552062.html

Disneyfication:

“The…homogenization of consumption, merchandising, and emotional labor… used more broadly to describe the processes of stripping a real place or event of its original character and repackaging it in a sanitized format.”

Disney markets themselves as a producer of magic and a bringer of joy.Their image as the epitome of pure, whimsical fun seems to be working. With revenues upwards of $10 billion, Walt Disney Company is America’s largest transnational media conglomerate as of 2013.

However, Disney has had its fair share of public criticism. Some feel Disney’s ostensibly innocent films engender harmful ideas in children’s minds with negative racial and gender undertones. In the 2002 documentary “Mickey Mouse Monopoly”, Disney is accused of “hiding behind innocence” as a “fantasy that never needs to be questioned”. However, Michael Eisner, Disney’s CEO until 2002, boldly summarized their true purpose by stating: “We have no obligation to make history. We have no obligation to make art… To make money is our only objective.”

Disney’s breadth of media control makes this information more alarming. Under its ownership lies ABC Networks, A&E Networks, ESPN… and until 2005, even the Anaheim Ducks. They’re also the parent company of Baby Einstein. Talk about starting early on the marketing.

Thanks to the upsurge in globalization, Disney’s international impact is flourishing, but it’s only one part of Western media conglomerates’ massive, “near-monopoly” global media dominance. Western culture is perpetuated through more than just Disney films. It overpowers pop culture, music, and even books.

When people are submerged in such enormous volumes of media distributed by such a small concentration of firms, there is the risk of media companies publishing distorted (or disneyficated) information with only corporate benefits in mind. This not only impacts cultural diversity abroad. Even in America alone, more people should be questioning the true extent of Western media’s influence.

The sudden boom in health and environmental consciousness has pressured companies to make more sustainable and natural products. The appeal of the words “all-natural” and “recycled material” scrawled across cleanly designed packaging is certainly attractive, but sometimes the claims aren’t true.

The term “all-natural” on a product would usually indicate an option healthier than its counterparts. However, consumers have come to find that the term does not necessarily mean the same thing across all food companies. Many companies use it to their own liking to denote whatever they consider as natural, even if only a few components truly are. However, even experts consider the word too poorly defined to prove most companies as unjustified in using it on their products. Still, consumers who find discrepancies between the health claims and the actual ingredients accuse companies of greenwashing.

According to a 2010 report from TerraChoice, 95% of supposedly “green” products in 2010 were greenwashed, or made to seem more environmentally sustainable than they really were. Recently, Coca-Cola was accused of greenwashing the marketing for their new PlantBottle packaging, which has been introduced in the Western U.S. and Canada. The similarity between their circular PlantBottle logo and the recyclability symbol has been criticized as being misleading. According to Coke, the bottle uses up to 15% of plant-based material to produce monoethylene glycol for its PET plastic bottles, which Danish consumer ombudsperson Henrik Saugmandsgaard Øe states as an unjustifiable percentage for the name “PlantBottle”. The Danish environmental group Forest of the World also asserted that Coke has no evidence that its materials help reduce carbon emissions. Despite critics who say that Coke is trying to win over environmentally conscious consumers for profit with greenwashing, Coke has defended its PlantBottle packaging.