Closing Blog

As the semester has finally come to an end, I wanted to talk about how my first experience with blogging has gone. It has been surprisingly fun and it was cool to be able to critique different advertisements--specifically in my case, commercials and print ads. Advertising is all around us and it was really the first time in my life that I was attentive about it and did some deeper digging to think about things like: who's the target market? Were they successfully reached? What is the objective of the ad? What is their single-minded proposition? Why did they make their print ad so small or large? Why did they choose those colors? Does wordy or not wordy help a specific advertisement? There are so many aspects to advertising that I never took the time to realize. Originally, when I first heard about this assignment of having to blog two times a week, I was pretty unhappy about it. I had never blogged before and didn't really know what to do. Four months later, I am certain I will continue to blog. I am going to change my blog site because I will probably go another route in my blogging that isn't directly at advertisements. I'm sure there will be some blogs of me critiquing and criticizing certain ads but I just want to blog about different situations going on in the world around me. I want to thank Jane, my advertising teacher this semester, for allowing me and everyone else in the class to be exposed to blogging because I know if I never took this class, I would never consider blogging...ever! So thank you! I'm out for now...until next time bloggers!

Winner Winner...CUTIES for Dinner!

So our advertising group presented a creative pitch about Cuties today and we came out on top! We were able to combine humor with the creative briefs objective and SMP and we felt like we had huge success! We had a lot of fun putting together different ideas for executions and being able to explain them to the class. We had 3 different commercials that we would air on television, and what we felt really brought home our point was having our background music incorporated within our presentation. The music differed for each commercial because each commercial would have a different scenario and we were able to match the commercials with the proper soundtrack. For example, in our first commercial, we called it Cutie Countdown and it was about a bunch of dads running to the grocery store with their kids and a grocery list written out by their wives. At the top of the list, it says "Cuties". The dads all see there is only one bag left and suddenly turn into superheroes! (as I blogged before, our big idea was BE THE HERO). We have the Diaper Wrangler and the Bottle Blaster for two heroes in a showdown for the last bag of Cuties. They are throwing diapers or squirting bottles into one another's eyes. Then an employee rolls up with a cart full of Cuties saying "Chill guys, Cuties are back!" During this entire commercial, we have the song Final Countdown playing. One of our other commercial ideas was a dad watching his kid play in a soccer game. The dad is relaxing, interacting with the other parents and suddenly his wife calls and says, "honey, you have snack duty today, I hope you remembered the Cuties." Then time stands still when he realizes he forgot. He sprints to his minivan with a stroller, backpack, and diaper bag trying to get home and back in time for halftime with his Cuties. He gets home dumps the bowl of Cuties into his backpack and gets back in the car. He's driving like a madman to get back to the game. The soccer field is in sight, he skids into the parking lot and grabs his backpack full of Cuties. Just then, the theme song from Chariots of Fire begins to play and the dad begins to run towards his son in slow-motion. He's dripping sweat, he's pushing the stroller but it begins to veer out of control so he leaves in behind, he jumps over a dog and diapers are flying out of his diaper bag. He gets to the team just in time and his son goes, "Dad! You remembered snack duty!" and the dad says while gasping for air, "yes I did!" and he begins passing out Cuties to all the little kids and they begin to rejoice and praise him. Our punch line would then be, "Don't miss your chance to be the hero...buy Cuties!" and in the background, the dad is bent over at the waist and the other parents are all smiling and patting him on the back. We had a blast being able to create a pitch for Cuties and our team was able to pull together and get first place in the creative brief for Uniqlo and then get first place in the creative pitch for Cuties. Vitality...where would you be without us?

Cuties Clementines

So my advertising group is working on a creative pitch for Cuties Clementines as seen in the picture above. One point that the brief team made that caught our eye was that their target market was not only moms but dads as well. We thought we could really capitalize on this niche within the market so we did. We have made thought of several ideas that incorporate dad's "being the hero" and we have been able to run with that. Our group has several execution strategies including 5 commercials and 1 print ad that we would be placing in a magazine. We are extremely excited to pitch our idea to the class on Thursday and if there weren't other groups competing with us for the Cuties pitch, I would have gone into more detail about our ideas. I will come back and blog about how our pitch went and how I thought we executed our pitch to the class.

Earl Cox: The Martin Agency

Earl Cox was supposed to come speak to our advertising class yesterday, but had a last minute cancellation. I was really excited about Earl Cox coming to speak to our class after I did my research on The Martin Agency because I found out that they came up with the “Virginia is for lovers” campaign which is now nationally known because I knew about this all the way up in Boston…my home town. This agency was founded in July 1965 in Richmond, Virginia and they are one of the nation’s leading agencies today. According to their website, they have consistently been in the top 5 marketing agencies in the country! Earl Cox’s role for the company is the chief strategy office and partner. He got his BA from Virginia Tech and he has worked on big campaign ideas including GEICO and UPS which is pretty cool. I feel like he would’ve been a really great speaker to hear from for at least two reasons: he’s a Virginia Tech alum that has gone through some similar things that we have and because of his experience with big companies like GEICO and UPS. Unfortunately, he cancelled but I know he would’ve had some great things to tell our class especially about strategies.

Inflatable Airbag in a Mag?

After our discussion in class on Tuesday, we talked about how there are many layouts to an ad. This one caught my eye because it's more than just an ad on paper...it's an ad that comes off the paper! On the page before the actually inflatable airbag, it says, "hit this spot hard and find out why the new Peugeot 408 provides a lot more safety". After the reader hits down on the spot, there is a tiny airbag that inflates on the next page and then the ad goes into detail about all the airbags this car provides. This ad really attacked the design principles we talked about in class specifically the depth & perception and movement. Having an ad in a magazine move will set you apart from other competitors because not many companies do that. It also increases the depth of the ad as well with this inflatable airbag. The last and final thing this ad did was that it nailed the first impression. It needed to draw the reader in and it definitely did. If I ever saw an ad that said "hit this hard", I would do it 10 times out of 10 and then I would be exposed to the reality of how that airbag inflates in a car. What a great marketing idea!

Nike ID

I think this is a very clever yet simple print ad made by Nike. After we saw Brandon Thornton and hear him talk about how Nike ID has played such a huge impact on Nike, I decided to go check out some of their ads for it. This one grabs the reader's attention immediately with great VISUALS with their variety of colors that they use. It is very creative or UNIQUE because its showing a shoe being dunked in paint which can seem odd to some reader's which will cause them to look into this ad a bit more. Once they look at it, I think they can draw some conclusions that the consumer can customize their shoe to whatever color they like...on that same note, I think it could also be confusing because some consumers may not be able to connect this idea because this ad has a lack of words; and by lack of words, I mean NO WORDS. Through in class discussion, we talk about how the headline is used to draw the reader in...there is no headline so how can they draw them in with it. That is something I wish Nike had put a little more thought into and if they put something simple in there that talks about customizing your own shoe the way you want it, I feel like that could increase their already awesome idea of Nike ID.

Miller Light "Man's Up"

So this commercial came out a couple of years ago, but I remember that they came out with a few different commercials with this theme of "Man Up" and have a Miller Lite. Obviously, their challenge is to be able to compete with other brands specifically bud light. The objective that Miller Lite is trying to achieve is to position Miller Lite as a light yet tasty beer in the mind of the consumer. I really liked these commercials even though they may come across as a little bold by calling out their target audience (mainly 21-35 year old men) for not being too "girly" to order a Miller Lite but I like it because they used humor to help get across their message. The SMP for this ad, I thought, was that if you use a "carry-all", you aren't ready for a Miller Lite. It's a manly alternative to a "light" beer, but you get more taste instead of a mediocre light beer. Miller Lite came out with several other commercials like this that have the same theme as I mentioned earlier. For example, they have one where instead of a man using a purse, he think skinny jeans is a good look. Same message where it seems like guys are doing girly things and when they become a man, to try Miller Lite. Immediately after watching this commercial, I stopped knitting and ran to the bar to get a manly Miller Lite...so MAN UP!