If I could turn back time...

... and be back in Milan this spring (I cannot believe it was only a year ago when I was there!) I would have saved my money and bought these Tod's jellies. The Tod's ballerina shoes I bought (for way too much last spring) kill my feet by the end of the day. I can promise you these would not crunch my toes or be difficult to clean from the Pullman dust. My white leather Tod's sitting in my closet? I cannot say the same.
Not that this color is practical, but they also come in black, silver, white, and clear!

Chanel No. 5 brings the heat

My grandmother wore this scent, and the air of mystery surrounding this perfume captures her personality perfectly. Scenes from this take me right back to Paris... and make me question the way women are portrayed as sexual objects that men can't resist (Gender & the Media college course in action). Sleeping naked on a public train? I think not. Still evokes an emotion I can't help but get sucked into.


I think I enjoyed watching a brief history of Chanel No. 5 more than that video however. Check out this site for images of Coco, what flowers are used in the formula, and how it has reinvented itself.
Chanel No. 5: The Story

We all get bad press

Everyone could benefit from a publicist. Just think of how well celebrities say "I can't reveal any details" yet they leave you with just enough to leave you hanging. Do you know how many times I wish I had said that? They know exactly how to build up a celebrity's image, and how to quickly do damage control when something goes wrong. All those times you've been screamed at in the face, not that they could avoid all those attacks, but they could certainly help you deal with the situation appropriately. They are like personal brand builders. This concept is so important right now because people need to maintain a pure image in the mind of their employers. Granted not even the best publicist can recover from incidents caused by people like Eliot Spitzer, but they certainly prove their abilities when the celebrity's image does recover. Think of Bill Clinton! Many people thought he was despicable (many people still do), but today we've moved on to remember him as a effective leader and environmental warrior.

You Can't Win 'em All

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/10/tnt-cancels-trust-me/

I have to devote one post to one of my growing favorite shows that I recently found out was canceled. Trust Me depicted life in a fictional advertising agency RGM that boasts clients including Dove Hair Care, Bertolli, and Buick. Product placement was the obvious source of funding for the show, which would feature one product as a client for an entire episode. In this sense, the show was doomed from the start. The only people that could relate to the show were people in advertising because not many people can believe that advertising is stressful and harmful to your personal life. Since advertising is depicted as a glamorous career, audiences had a hard time connecting with the characters. Also, many people have a chip on their shoulder when they think about advertisers due to beliefs of subliminal messages and false advertising. The audience who watched the show could never relate to the problems of the people who lie to them everyday. The last few episodes of Trust Me gained 1.4 million viewers, which was too low of a number for TNT to cope with. Sadly, Trust Me got the axe along with many other creatively successful shows.

The College Achilles Heel

Textbook prices are a heated topic among college students. Raising buyback prices by the Bookie was an item high on the list for ASWSU this semester. I decided to compare prices for my books for the upcoming semester to see how much I could save by shopping prices online. Granted convenience should be factored into the prices offered by the Bookie since it is much easier to buy books on campus. The Bookie practices demand-based pricing, by placing prices and how many books they will buy back based on how many textbooks the teacher reserves for the upcoming semester. You could even accuse the Bookie and Crimson & Gray of practicing price fixing since they sell and buy back books at nearly identical prices. However, in comparison, sites like Half.com and the Amazon Marketplace offer great deals for used books thanks to online auction pricing systems.
Here is what I found for the book Retailing by Dunne
The Bookie: $168.90 New $126.70 Used
Amazon.com: $159.96 New $65.00 Used
Half.com: $54.95 Best Price
Ebay.com: $60.00 Lowest bid
Moral of the story is sometimes it pays to shop around.

Any way you want it

The messaging strategy of this commercial is brilliant on AT&T's part. Someone finally realized that Generation Y is all about the band Journey as the classic throwback. Play any Journey song at a social gathering and you can instantly have the entire room singing along. And as we all know, texting is a signature trait of Generation Y'ers. So with a quick call to action message at the end to get their AT&T phone anyway they want it, viewers are left with the simple message they need to convince them this is the phone for their generation. This commercial also follows the AIDA model extremely well. The target audience's ATTENTION is immediately grabbed by the song, their INTEREST is peaked when they see the easy to use features of the phone and how texting is made so simple. DESIRE is built at the end of the commercial when customers feel the need to buy the latest phone from AT&T to fit their texting needs, then ACTION is taken by the consumer who goes out and makes the purchase. That's the way we need it.

Nice Try Time Warner

The greatly hated Time Warner Cable tried to schmooze college students at one of the Cougar basketball games by handing out free noise makers. This promotional item certainly entertained students throughout the game and may have helped ease bad relations students have with the cable company. In the Pullman region, there are limited options for cable service, which is why Time Warner is able to offer average service at high rates. Time Warner was smart to try and get their image integrated into college basketball games. Even if a student wasn't at the game, they may see a picture taken from the game through consumer-generated media. A certain amount of word-of-mouth marketing also occurred from this marketing stunt from students talking about how they received the noise maker. All in all, good effort from Time Warner, but you still have a ways to go in my book.

Product Placement Complications

Advertisers spend millions of dollars to place their brand in highly viewed shows or movies. The common belief has been that by placing your brand in specific movies, the advertiser benefits from reaching a target audience and being "endorsed" to a certain degree by the characters or actors in the show. This clip by Martin Lindstrom from Advertising Age raises an interesting question, does product placement work? According to their study which scanned the brains of consumers when they viewed the product placements, sometimes the brands were actually deleted from the viewer's mind. Whether or not this study proves that product placement actually works is questionable. A better question may be do consumers actually receive the message, properly decode it, and then become convinced to buy the product? Or, as seen from the backlash after Transformers was released, is product placement a huge incentive for consumers not to buy the product. These are important questions that advertisers must answer before paying $26 million to be a part of the next episode of American Idol.

http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1370868150/bctid3302395001

Major Tom in Control

Lincoln made a smart move when they teamed up with rising band Shiny Toy Guns to produce this commercial. Then Shiny Toy Guys made the smarter move, after much anticipation, releasing the cover of the Peter Schilling song on their website FOR FREE! Unfortunately it has expired (sorry for everyone who just got excited) but the limited time free promotion of the song got the Shiny Toy Guns name out there to a whole new audience. As for why this is smart for Lincoln:
1. They teamed up with a hip new band to stay current with the Young Influentials. This download actively sought after when people heard a clip during the Lincoln MKZ commercial.
2. They stayed current with their core demographic who were around when this song debuted in the 80's along with David Bowie's similar themed tunes about Major Tom. This is the second cover of a "Major Tom" song for a Lincoln commercial. The first was a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity" for the 2009 Lincoln MKS.
3. The space/futuristic theme of the song and lyrics about taking off fit perfectly with the features of the car and style of the commercial.

For anyone interested, here is the original version of the song by Peter Schilling, quite entertaining:

April Showers bring May... Sales?

Floral delivery companies are counting on promotional discounts and advertising to keep sales up this year for Mother's Day despite the recession, as discussed in this Advertising Age article: http://adage.com/article?article_id=136417
Flowers are certainly considered a seasonal product, with peak sales during the December holidays, Valentine's Day, and 25% of sales occurring in May for Mother's Day. That's why sales this upcoming month are critical to keep the competing brands alive. The big players are Proflowers.com and 1-800-Flowers.com who both have devised advertising strategies to see a smaller hit in sales than one might expect. Luckily, its anticipated that most people who bought flowers last year will also buy this year, but at a lower quantity.
Proflowers.com offers discounts to people who mention the DJ's name that announced the promotion on the radio. This allows marketers to figure out which radio ad placements prove to be the most effective. A clever strategy for the marketers! 1-800-Flowers.com launched the Spot a Mom campaign across multiple media platforms with 50% of spending on the web. They utilized buzz marketing through Facebook, Twitter, and blogging to remind people to buy flowers for all the "moms" in their life. This should prove an effective Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) strategy because it encourages people to place more than one order through their website. It should be interesting to see which strategy works!