Simrat Tatla's Blog

As my classmate, Matthew Ho mentioned in his blog, Inspired with a Jolt of Inspiration, I found that today’s in-class video, Art & Copy, was a great way to wrap up this course. I have to admit, coming into Sauder was not at all what I expected. I came in with a blind eye; I hadn’t properly contemplated how different, how difficult, and how much work it would be to even slightly skim the feeling of success. Through my first year, I was finding it extremely hard to adjust to this new free and independant life.

Even at the start of my second year, when I had vowed to myself that this year would be different, that I would study the hardest I had ever done, I still felt as if I wasn’t on the path that I was supposed to be on. After the first term of my second year had come to an end, I felt as if I was drowning in a pool of my 500lb accounting textbook and Comm290 excel sheets, while choking on my econ assignments. I had even contemplated whether or not this was the right faculty for me. And then this marketing class came along and I felt as if I could finally come up for a breath of fresh air.

It had always been my plan to specialize in HR and I would have never guessed that I would like marketing enough to want to specialize in it as well. The video, Art & Copy, had just finalized my decision. I am so intrigued by how the creativity that goes into marketing can give birth to such inspiring and empowering brand images. Take Tommy Hilfiger, for example. In the movie they mentioned how George Lois took Tommy Hilfiger and turned this name famous just overnight with the following advertisement:

George Lois Tommy Hilfiger Ad

The impact a single advertisement can have on the public just amazes me and the thought of being apart of a team that has the ability to create this just gives me boosebumps. Someone once told me that you should do something in life that you’re passionate about, because that’s just how much harder your going to work at it to make it a success. The feeling that I got in class today while watching this video made me see that now I finally feel like I am heading in the direction that I am supposed to be going and it really does feel like the start of something new.

Reading my classmate Enzo’s blog about how Twitter has become so powerful that there is now a company called Sponsored Tweets that pays celebrities and influential/popular “tweeters” to tweet about their products, had me realize how Twitter has become a huge disintermediary in the marketing industry. Twitter allows celebrities themselves to update their statuses and pictures about where they currently are and what they are currently doing and I think their “followers” feel a more personal connection with them because they can comment on the pictures and reply to the tweets and create some sort of contact with the celebrity. Sponsored Tweets knows that if the celebrities tweet about their products to their followers and encourage them to go purchase it, it will have a major effect on their sales results. Even if a celebrity is in a commercial for a product, consumers have it in the back of their mind that the commercial is scripted and that the celebrity is getting paid to promote this product; however, since Twitter is made for people to share short status updates about their lives, a celebrity saying how much they love a product and taking a picture with it off their own cell phone and sharing it with their followers, makes people believe that the celebrity actually supports the product.

This is a picture that Kourtney Kardashian updated on her twitter to promote her own line at Sears.

Even magazine sales in the US  have decreased 10% in 2011, as comsumers can get this same information online straight from the celebrity through websites like Twitter, Facebook, CelebrityBuzz (an online celebrity blog website) and not other secondary sources provided by the magazine.

I feel that the internet is a crucial factor that plays a role in the substantial increase of disintermediaries now as it helps to create direct sales channels from the manufacturer and the consumer. Twitter especially plays a major role in developing more personal connections with their users, as following celebrities and viewing their updates is extremely similar to viewing the users own friends updates.

Today I discovered the show Toddlers and Tiaras. I had heard of this show before from my reality-TV obsessed roommate, but refused to be persuaded in watching this show where the 3-year-old girls reminded me of real-life chuckie dolls (the whole idea of the show disturbed me). However, after watching an episode on TV today, I was hooked; and not because it was a good show that I had to keep watching, but because I was in such horrific shock of how psychotic the moms of these toddlers were and how they expected these young, baby girls to wear make-up, to get self tanners, and even get waxes! On the episode that I watched one mom revealed that she only wanted to have a daughter so that she could put her into these beauty pageants. Searching online, I even came across an interview from ABC News where one mom admitted to giving her 8 year-old daughter daughter botox:

This unhealthy body image that is being presented to these girls at such a younger age is only paving a life of insecurities and depriving these small children from living an innocent childhood where these body issues should not be something that they are constantly thinking about. However, marketers have used this strategy of promoting these body images that young girls should supposedly have, to sell their products. In this advertisement for Calvin Klein, these “tweens” are being portrayed as having an older and more reavealing body image that it perceived as being a body that they should also have.

Calvin Klein Ad

This article I found online today depicts how more and more companies are targeting the “tween” market and providing them with these provactive images that bestow sexual images upon these kids at such a young age. These unethical practices are making younger children more self-concsious about their bodies and are only creating vulnerability issues that will continue to grow along with these kids.

Being born as apart of a generation that grew up witnessing, experiencing, and depending on the high advancements of technology, or the term I have grown to appreciate (and love saying), being an Echo Boomer, has had me spending most of my time either checking my emails, on social media sites, reading other blogs, texting away on my phone, or doing all of these activities at once on my iPhone.

I remember when I was 8-years-old and I got my first Hotmail account on our big box of a computer that took up a whole quarter of our living room (and which my dad still for some strange reason will not let us throw away even though we got a new computer a few years ago).

Our old school computer

Now here I am, 11 years later, sitting at home typing this post on my MacBook Pro using a wireless internet connection while at the same time listening to my sister telling me that her school district has now made a twitter account so students can follow them and see any announcements they make, such as having a snow day.

It astonishes me how much technology can change during time and how it takes less and less time for companies to come out with all these new and advanced products.

Take Apple, for example. Two years ago I purchased an iPhone 3G and within those two years Apple has come out with the iPhone 3Gs, the iPhone 4, and just recently the iPhone 4s; I’ve even heard rumors of the iPhone 5 coming out in the summer of 2012.

Companies have always been targeting my generation with newer, must-have technologies and I have to admit, I just recently purchased the new iPhone 4s, and I don’t know how I lived without it.

Here’s a post from one of my favourite blogs by Bethany Joy Galeotti, reminiscing the good ol’ days when we used to talk to people in person before trying to contact them through facebook, twitter, texts, etc. etc.

BJG’s blog

Hi! My name is Simrat Tatla, but everyone just calls me Simrat or Sim, and I am a second year Commerce student interested in specializing in Human Resources and International Business.

During my first year here at Sauder, I was extremely disappointed that I wouldn’t be able to take a marketing course until my second year. However, now the time has finally come for me to let my creative juices flow!

About a year and a half ago, I worked as a Barista at Starbucks and one of my main responsibilities was to promote all the new drinks or pastries that Starbucks would come out with. Whenever a new promotion was about to come out, we would re-decorate the store with posters of the up-and-coming item. My favourite time was during the holidays when all the holiday drinks came out, all the cups changed and there were Christmas decorations all around the store!

Starbucks Holiday Decorations

At this moment, my favourite commercial on television is the new Blackberry Bold ad where 20 or so bike riders ride around the city at night on these neon-coloured bikes. I have to admit, I am an iPhone fanatic and I would never, ever trade in my iPhone for a Blackberry, but I just couldn’t keep my eyes off this commercial!

And now, something personal about myself….hmmm. I don’t know if this is personal or just kind of embarrasing, but I am a reality tv junkie. I just can’t get enough. One of my favourites, and pleace don’t hate me, is Keeping Up with the Kardashians. I don’t care what anyone says, it is addicting!!

The greatest lesson I’ve learned would have to be from my parents. Growing up in India, my parents did not have the necessities and luxuries that my sisters and I have been fortunate enough to grow up with such as more advanced technology, more job opportunities, and the ability to pursue our education. My parents have provided my sisters and I with a very advantageous lifestyle that we sometimes take for granted. My parents taught me to appreciate everything that we have because they worked their whole life so that we could have a better life growing up than they did.

The pre-recorded video of Brian Wong speaking to our Comm101 class really got me thinking. My mind was pondering on how young he was and how fast he completed his few years at Sauder. He has already done so much with his life and he’s barely 20 years old. He kept emphasizing in the video to go for whatever you want. Don’t hesitate, just do it, take a risk. So, I started thinking, what do I want to go for? I want to take a leap into something but what? I have my interests set on international business and also economic development but trying to figure out what I want to do with that is extremely frustrating. One day I want to achieve the feeling of knowing that taking that risk was the best decision of my life but what that risk may be is still unknown to me.

After doing Case 3, I had become very intrigued by marketing. The process of the non-Olympic sponsor companies such as Telus and Lululemon finding loopholes and working their way around the rules to promote their companies during the Winter Olympics or how Lululemon would put it, the “Cool Sporting Event That Takes Place in British Columbia Between 2009 and 2011”, was very interesting to watch. What attracted me to marketing was how different your mind seems to work compared to when in finance or accounting. You need to find strategic ways to market your product; it’s not just about the numbers. Finding creative and original ways to promote your company would definitely be the kind of career I would be interested in.

Luluemon's slogan during the 2010 Winter Olympics

As you can tell from my previous posts, I am somewhat of a Youtube fanatic. During my last visit I came across a Youtube channel called ImprovEverywhere with videos of a bunch of people doing random and crazy acts around New York. Some of these included performing spontaneous musicals in a grocery store, freezing at random times at a subway station and, my all-time favourite, wearing no pants on a subway.

Even though the stunts of ImprovEverywhere don’t really have a real purpose other than causing chaos throughout New York, they brought to my attention how bringing people together to perform these ridiculous stunts can be so effective. So, being the business student that I am, I started to think of how these stunts could be used as a great way to market certain products. What better way to promote your company than having hundreds of people coming together, doing crazy things that people will always remember? I have always been unsure of what to specialize in through my BCom experience, but if I get to be this creative and enjoy myself this much in marketing, then I’m sold.

Watch ImprovEverywhere’s videos on their Youtube Channel!

ImprovEverywhere

While surfing youtube on my break from studying (or attempting to study), I came across a video of a very effective way of promoting the TV phenomenon, GLEE. This video was made by Fox and filmed in a very crowded place with hundreds of people, probably during Christmas time as there was a big Christmas tree in the middle of the floor. Glee’s version of Don’t Stop Believin’ began playing and one person in the middle of the crowd began dancing. Eventually others joined that one person and the songs playing went through a variety of Glee songs. You can tell from the video that the dancing was pre-planned as they all danced the same moves but having that many people dance together to promote this show is such a creative, fun, and original tactic. This “flash mob” created a sense of unity within people while they watched and people will relate that feeling back to Glee. This was a very clever promotional stunt for Fox.

Check out the video here!