Well, you said to start with introductions, so fair enough. My name’s Vivek Menon, and I’m taking this course because its required (although I’m also the guy who brought up the whole “applied psychology” thing, which I’m still standing by.)
My experience with marketing has been fairly typical to the average student I suppose, except for one probably significant difference; I have grown up in many different places around the world, and consequently, have interacted with or been advertised to in a multitude of mediums. Everything from super advanced touch display kiosks in Bangalore to large badly-spelt descriptions of mechanical services in rural Ghana. I suppose in that regard, I have a rather interesting experience with marketing, in that I’ve learnt to recognize how it changes depending not just because of who its trying to market something to, but where it’s trying to do it.
As far as a favorite advertisement, I don’t really have one; but I do have series of ads that I found rather interesting in their design. A little while ago, there was a mini web-campaign centered around replacing the Old Spice Guy. As a response, they created a mini-series of wepisodes that involved him fighting his replacement, and winning, as per the votes after each episode. It was a really interesting example of consumer-driven advertising; where they literally got to decide how they next advertisement would go. Though strictly speaking, they didn’t really do much advertising as per the traditional commercial sense, it still bears noting that this entire series is all about the face that will represent a Deodorant company. The most interesting thing is that even though he won, he still wont be appearing in current generation Old Spice commercials, because of contractual issues. I thought it was all very interesting, and I’ve included a playlist of the webisodes they’ve made, as well as the starting episode below.
Something personal about myself is probably harder. I suppose one interesting thing is that I know how to play the Veena, which is a four thousand year old classical Indian instrument that many believe is the origins for the majority of stringed instruments, including the guitar. I suppose that’s not exactly personal, but I don’t mind 60 people knowing that.