While looking for inspiration for my final blog post of the semester I came across a blog on adfreak written by Gabriel Beltrone. In her post entitled “Pepsi NEXT Refreshes the Taste Test with Web Parodies” she talks about the effectiveness of ads generated by companies specifically for the web. This got me thinking about a trend towards “banned ads” which are advertisements containing to much questionable content to be shown on mainstream TV. For the most the most part these ads contain enough violence/inuendo/substance abuse to be on par with many late night television programs. As a result these “banned ads” are only posted online on sites such as youtube and consumers actually have to go and search them out.

It may seem strange to think that consumers would voluntarily watch advertisements, but the same elements that make the ads unsuitable for tv also make them hilarious and shocking. These to factors combine to elevate the advertisement to a form of entertainment for consumers. As was discussed in the video from class today, this makes the ad infinitely more effective. In fact, when combined with the power of the internet and social media, entertaining banned ads can be the ultimate tool for reaching the mature but imature segment. These consumers will seek out the ad, watch it over and over again, and pass it on to other friends who will enjoy it. To reach a large audience the marketer needs only to create an entertaining ad without boundaries and make it available, consumers and their social networks will take care of the rest

Once again, I was looking for inspiratioin for my next post within my classmates blogs, when I came across Aleksandar Novakovic’s blog post entitled “A Colourful Impact.” Alex’s post talks primarily about the psychological impacts which different colour have on human beings, but he also talked about how a brands colour can be come one of its primary identifying features. In doing this he referenced the in class excerise where we identified numerous brands based on a small part of their logo, and how instrumental the colour scheme is to making a brand identifiable.

I agree with Alex that colour is important but going back to the in class exercise, the shape of the logo, and the shapes within the logo played an equally important role in identification. The lines that make up the IBM logo, the arches of McDonalds, Nike’s swoosh, and the one of a kind font that makes up Coke’s logo are all recognizable in whole or in part, and in black and white or vibrant colour. This level of indentifiablility may may or may not stem from relationships which people subconciously form between certain shapes and feelings, but it certainly makes me wonder about all of the considerations which go into creating an imediately distinguishable trademark. I also think, it stands as a true testament to the power of branding, and the size of the impact which repeated exposure to an image can have on a consumers ability to remember and recall an image

I was looking through the class blogroll for some inspiration and I came across Clayton Dang’s blog about Google+. In his blog, Clayton made made a very compelling case for some of google+’s features which are superior to Facebook’s. This example got me thinking about the reasons why consumer’s sometimes choose a seemingly inferior product. Finally, I realized that consumers don’t choose inferior products, they choose products which provide them with the greatest value even if that value is largely dependant on some overlooked or intangible factor, and not just the hard facts about a product. In the The case of Facebook and Google+, this fact or is each website’s user base. Since Facebook and Google+ are social networking sites the primary service which they provide to their users is to allow them to connect with their friends online. However, in order to provide this service, the site must actually have a person’s friends as users. This provides an instant barrier. Google+ could have the best website in the world, but if people cannot connect to their friends than google+ does not deliver any value to consumers. Another example of this was the Blackberry vs. Iphone debate at my highschool. Based on features and technology alone, the iphone was a better piece of equipment for a highschool student. Even so, everyone used blackberry’s. This was because when everyone had blackberry’s, everyone used bbm. This single and essentially redundant feature when placed beside texting was enough to defeat a better piece of technology. These two examples demonstrate that consumers often make choices based on intangible or underweighted factors with little regard for what product is objectively “better.”

In class today we were discussing how Social Media has the potential to backfire on a company by providing customers with and incredibly public, and easily accessible forum to voice any bad experiences they may have had. I agree with much of what was said in class about the potential upsides and downsides of social media from the point of view of companies, but I was thinking about it more afterwards and realized that one major risk that is never discussed is the tendency for companies (and bcom students) to look at social media as a kind of magic marketing tool that will help them to reach so many new consumers and increase there popularity and sales. However, I think the reality is that social media does not always deliver as promised. The biggest problem with advertising using social media is that it requires customers to take action. A facebook page and a Twitter profile are not like television ads or billboards. The customer can’t just sit on the couch or drive past and have the desired message delivered to them. Instead, they actually have to go out and find it which takes effort on the part of the consumer. This lowers the potential of reaching new customers with social media because the only people who are going to look for a facebook page or twitter profile are customers which already use and enjoy the companies products. A final barrier is that fact that many people just don’t think of liking companies on facebook or following them on twitter, because unless it carries some potential benefit for consumers it just seems like volunteering to be bombarded with ads. These factors among others mean that social media is farm from a magic wand, and is just another tool in the marketers bag of tricks

My name’s Taylor Carter and I am taking this class primarily because it is required course for my bcom, but I hope that it will still be an interesting and informative experience. My experience with marketing is mostly limited to being a consumer, but I have also had expereince going door to door delivering flyers as part of a summer job. I don’t know if this is considered to be part of marketing or if it would be reffered to as something else. Off the top of my head my two favourite ads are the original “I’m on a horse” old spice commercial and the “Mad World” commercial for Gears of War. These are my two favourite commercials because they were both very original and memorable, and, with regards to the old spice commercial, had a noticeable impact on other companies’ advertising.

A little bit of background about me is that I am from north vancouver, my family has lived in Canada for as long as any of us can remember, and I ski and mountain bike. I also used to play rugby for UBC but I suffered too many concussions and now I only spectate.