Azealia Banks is a female rapper that is most known for her hit song “212” about her life in New York which was released in late 2011. Since then, she has released a mixtape and multiple songs on the internet, and she continuously promised to release her debut album titled “Broke With Expensive Taste”. However, people started to lose hope such a long time ago waiting for Azealia Banks to release this album because she would announce release date after release date, and every single time it would be pushed back.

COMM 464 revolves around internet marketing, and let me say, Azealia Banks and her team should really take a course like this. For her to continuously let her fans down with release dates definitely hurt her image. She had so much potential, but she essentially became a joke on twitter where people would post things such as a skeleton and write “me while waiting for Azealia Banks’ album to be released”. No one wants this for their brand because it is so negative and something like this could break a artist trying to strive in the music industry.

Despite the YEARS of struggling, Azealia Banks just released her album finally this week. Not only did she release her album, she released it without any notice. People had given up on the idea that she was releasing one, and when they did that is when she released it. It essentially was a surprise such as when Beyonce released her very successful surprise album last year. Azealia Banks isn’t as major as Beyonce however I do believe that her marketing strategy at the end of the day has paid off. She claims that she was the girl who cried wolf, so she could never give another release date again and that she would have to just release the music if she wanted to start to be successful again, and that’s exactly what she did.

Even though she was struggling in the industry so much, I believe with improved marketing tactics that she can come back from this.

For those of you that know, Halo is a very successful video game franchise that consists of four games: Halo Combat Evolved, Halo 2, Halo 3, and Halo 4. These games are for Xbox and Xbox 360, however are not on the newest console, Xbox One, until now.

343 Industries released Halo: The Master Chief Collection on November 11th, which was the 10 year anniversary to the most popular Halo, which was Halo 2. I myself was VERY excited for this collection because it consists of all four games on one disc, and I even pre-ordered it, not knowing the disaster that was to come.

When the game finally rolled out and people could play it, customers were quick to realize, that the game isn’t actually playable. One could say that the game was not even close to being ready for release, but 343 industries put the game out anyways just to match the anniversary. There are so many glitches with the game and it essentially nothing that was promised.

What I find super interesting about this disaster is how well the Halo twitter account and some executive producers of the game are handling the backlash. They are constantly all on twitter reassuring that they are working around the clock to get the game fixed and answering everyone’s questions. At first I noticed so many people absolutely furious about the mishap, but the more that the producers answer questions and give out updates on fixes, the more I see that the consumers are happy.

The reason that there has been a turnaround is because Halo is showing that they actually care about their brand and their twitter followers, so they are engaging back with them to keep them calm. I also believe that the backlash has slowed down because of how loyal Halo fans are of the brand. Halo isn’t exactly a role model brand, because they are in deep hot water, however their customer service and brand loyalty is very high that some companies should be taking tips.

When the internet was first started, I bet that no one would have ever thought that it would become such a powerful tool and essentially make people famous. This blog is going to talk about a recent internet sensation Bethany Mota who started to become famous just by simply promoting her YouTube videos.

Pictured above, Bethany Mota is a YouTube personality that made her first YouTube video in 2009 and now has tons of fans and most recently is competing on the hit TV show Dancing With The Stars. Her story shows how powerful the internet can be with the proper exposure, advertising techniques, and social media skills. These are all things that were touched on some way or another in COMM 464.

Bethany was successful in promoting her own brand, herself, through videos and social media in order to become famous and have great brand awareness. I’m not one to watch YouTube videos about make up, however Bethany Mota has been so successful at exposing her brand, that even I know about her. The first time I saw her was when she won a MTV Video Award, and then shortly after I saw her on Dancing With The Stars. This shows how even though she first promoted her brand as something specific, she now is known for more than one thing because of how she shaped her brand to be so successful.

I don’t want to be famous or anything, however I do find it super interesting how with proper knowledge, skills, techniques, and a little bit of luck, that one can become so popular just by using the internet!

Most people had no words when they found out what happened with the New England Patriots recently on their twitter account. The picture below is a real screenshot of a real tweet, with a explicit word scratched out.

Apparently, according to the Patriots’ twitter account, they were doing some sort of jersey giveaway on their twitter for people who retweeted their tweet. At first glance this sounds like a great marketing tool, get people away of the brand and give away free stuff… YAY! However, companies have to be VERY careful with stuff like this.

The Patriots’ claimed that they had some sort of system that automatically sent out the tweet to the winners with a picture of the jerseys and that it was essentially not reviewed by human eyes first, as there was too many winners. Next thing you know, the @Patriots twitter account was tweeting to this very racist account, causing so many people to be in an uproar, and they have the right!

This is a perfect example on how social media needs to be treated very carefully because in one tweet or post, your whole brand can be DESTROYED. I think that everything being posted on social media should go through human eyes and not through a system. I understand things like hootsuite posting stuff for the future and such, however someone should always approve of the content before it is just posted. It could really save a company one day!

When you see a cute animal on a white background, what do you think of? If its a TV advertisement you generally get to see these cute animals, do cute things, and you think of TELUS, at least I do!  The TV advertisements are pretty obvious, but if its a online advertisement will you still relate it back to TELUS?

The answer is, not every time, but most of the time you will. I feel like this is because TELUS has done a great job over the years to create a great online brand that is very recognizable. They do a great job at switching up the animals so that they always have new content. If they were to use the same animal all of the time, it would be effective at brand awareness, however it would probably lower in brand engagement because people would get bored of it.

To improve TELUS’ animal marketing campaigns, they have also released many stuffed animals that they give out to workers and to customers. The stuffed animals are just as cute as the real life animals, and I think it is a very successful method that TELUS uses. Pictured below are some of the stuffed animals which I grabbed off of a blog called teluscritters.

Having these stuffed animals is great marketing and a great tool to help aide their online presence be known! Good job TELUS!

Being in this class has been very insightful so far and every class I learn about new tools that I can use to make my own website and personal blog more successful.

In the past I created a website www.trevwoh.com where I blog about Big Brother events. Big Brother is a reality television show that has multiple different versions. I made that website and those blogs in my spare time and for fun. I used to tweet them out to some contestants from the TV show to try and get them some views, but after taking COMM 464, I realize how much of a rookie I was.

First of all, my content was way to long. No one is going to read a 3000 word blog! They just aren’t! COMM 464 has taught me that and many more useful things, such as ways to monitor my website traffic through Google Analytics. I would occasionally look at WordPress analytics and not really care about the statistics, and found them of no value.

I now know that analytics are very important, as that was the mini assignment that I was assigned. I could use the data to help determine ways to get more traffic to my website.

I feel like I stopped blogging because I always found myself so busy, and at the same time I felt it was such a hard task, but now I know if I tune my blog posts properly that there could potentially be some benefit from it!