Today in my marketing class we came across the topic of branding, which is a fascinating topic to me.  It is unbelievable that every person in my class could distinguish between different companies’ logos without even seeing the entire symbol.  If recognizing and distinguishing between concepts and formulas in my classes were as easy as this, university would be a breeze.  So why can we all recognize these symbols in a blink of an eye?  Because of brand exposure of course!

Later that day I came across a blog from one of my fellow students mentioning a documentary movie about brand integration.  And what better way to expose your brand than in a movie?  Although I do have to agree with him, it is insane that companies will pay millions of dollars to have their product shown in a five second clip of a movie.  And it is even crazier to think that in the end this advertising strategy usually pays off.  Yet on the other hand, some companies also work very hard to have their products not shown in different types of media.  As I learned in class, Lady GaGa loves to incorporate different brands into her music videos and sometimes companies don’t like this.  Since they don’t want to be associated with Lady GaGa they will ensure that she is not advertising their brand.  It’s a funny world we live in; companies might pay millions to advertise their product in a video, yet on the other hand they might go to extreme lengths to avoid this from happening.