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http://marketing-expert.blogspot.com/

This marketing blog discusses, in the most recent post, the invent of Google Places and its effect on bricks and mortar and online businesses.  Google is immensely popular and relied upon by people, and with the ability to have your business be given priority over other options can have a very real impact on the success of your company.  I think that the author of the blog actually understates just how large of an impact it can have.  From purely personal experience, whether in my own city or traveling, Google becomes my most reliable source on which areas to check out, and helps me to pick out particular shops and restaurants of note before i even get on my way.  Choosing to aggressively advertise through Google, and particularly Google Places, has the potentially to save a floundering business or push a successful one through to higher levels of success than ever expected.

This week I was looking through Frankie’s article on the explosion, and predicted continued growth, of social media (http://fcena.wordpress.com/2010/11/19/the-fright-of-the-new-world/).  While the source article is compelling, I find the response to minor fear unjustified.  Growth and new innovations, in any field, must be met with an accepting and flexible state of mind for any company wishing to continue to grow.  Giving in to this fear of the unknown will cause a company to hesitate at a time when it needs to be proactive.  Being one of the first into a new form of media will allow a company to develop a competitive advantage over other companies, and will allow them to focus on further innovation and expansion in this new field while their competitors struggle to catch up.  Embrace the new.

This video is an advertisement used to show the applications of the relatively-new science of augmented reality.  The video highlights how this technology can be used in the real estate business, which is very exciting for those in the industry.  The video is also excellent in showing the applications of this technology in an open-ended fashion, providing implications for ways in which it could also be utilized in many other ways and for numerous other purposes.  This is an excellent representation of the exciting possibilities which can be created by blending the real world with the virtual world, essentially creating an alternate reality which can be continually adjusted and improved upon to meet our needs.  I view this not so much as an advertisement for a single product or company, but more so as a suggestion at how our world and way of life may change in the next several years.

Last week I was shown the video below by a friend.  It is a compilation of a set of commercial ran to advertise Panda cheese.  These commercials go to show how humor can have a place in advertising if used properly.  I think the level of popularity that this video, and similar videos that use humor in their advertisements (such as the current Old Spice campaign), is a testament to the power of comedy in gaining the attention of the population, and developing a high level of brand recognition in a very positive way.  Any one of my group of friends could see an image of that Panda in an obscure advertisement and immediately be able to tell you it is the Panda Cheese panda.  Because I find this video so entertaining, I’ve been sharing it with people around me, all the while not realizing that I am acting as a means for the company to spread their name and image.  If your commercials are so funny and entertaining that people take the time to spread awareness of them on their own behalf, then I get the feeling your advertisement plan is on the right track.

Here’s the video.  They won’t let you embed this video, so booerns to that.  I promise it isn’t a rick roll.  This time…

The other day I ran across an article which namely took a stab at hipsters, equating them with the death of originality and cultural growth in North America.  Personally, I’m indifferent to hipsters; wear what you want, I could care less.  There was one part of the article I found interesting, where the writer commented on the effect that corporate marketing has on the path of cultural evolution for particular groups.  I found this passage particular revealing.  It’s well known that advertising and marketing can effect the growth of style, a major identifying factor of particular social groups, but it also made me think about the more subtle effects this can take on.  For instance, with the development of 3D technology for major movies, someone along the chain of command thought it would be prudent to update 3D glasses that people wear at the theatre.  Because of this redevelopment of 3D glasses into a more modern, ‘trendier’ look, these glasses were adopted by particular groups, with the lenses popped out, and adopted into their daily style.  Who would have seen that coming?

This is a link to the article if you have a few minutes to kill.  It’s actually a very good read.  https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/79/hipster.html?page=68&worsethanyouthought