Lemme Upgrade ya

Beyonce is on everything. American express, Fragrances, House of Derion, Pepsi, Disney, and she even has her own phone. If Beyonce is the spokesperson for everything , what is going to set these brands apart. I feel likebeyonce is a great entertainer and should be promoting a few things, but she doesnt make me wanna buy anything, but her music. I also feel like this is taking beyonce's equity down , especially when she started doing commercials for Direct TV. REALLY BEYONCE ? REALLY? I am sure its not hurting her at all but it makes her seem less classy everytime i see her in an ad for something. She has "upgraded" a few to many brands for my liking.

Sampling

During thanksgiving break i was reading through a few Details magazines and looking at all the gragrance ads. I was thinking what sets any of these ads apart. They all position themselves as fragrances that will make you sexy. The only part of the ads that made me the little bit interested was the sampling. Just becuse Tom fords new fragrance has a bottle inbetween a ladies legs covering her "lady areas" does not make any one more attractive, it actually has a horrid smell. So i finally decided that "light blue" By D&G had the most pleasant smell. The ad itself was'nt appealing to me, even being a gay man, but i still feel like i am going to purchase the fragrance.

Holi-DUH? WHAT?

As part of Hyundai's new holiday sales event, they launched an ad campaign centered around the word "duh." The event is called the Big Duh Holiday Sales Event, and here's one of the tv advertisements for it:

Obviously, this ad is unique and quirky and catches your attention. But is it in a positive way? Cody and I first saw this commercial a few weeks ago when we were watching tv together, and actually got a completely different impression that what I think the marketers intended. Cody interpreted the "Duh" statement that they repeatedly emphasize to replace the "Dai" in Hyundai. Like Hyunduh, which, when said aloud sounds a lot like Honda, a rivaling car company. Once I watched this commercial several more times, I realized the "duh" has nothing to do with the brand of the car persay, but is more just a really annoying central idea for this ad campaign. The advertisements take our favorite Christmas songs and minimize them to a series of "duhs" in varying tones and keys, and then throws in some creepy, trippykaleidoscope-like shots of carolers spinning and singing in colorful robes. What does this have to do with this car company? The word "duh" does not make me want to buy anything. It makes me feel like I'm twelve. And I'm sure twelve year olds are not the target market for this product.

American Apparel: Brilliant Simplicity

So I was surfing around on YouTube a few weeks ago, searching for a tv advertisement that grabbed my attention enough for me to blog about it. Instead, as I clicked on various video clips, beside them, in the white margins of the page, I was encountered with ads for other companies, the most appealing of which was for American Apparel. So I promptly clicked on it and began an online shopping spree, completely distracting myself from my original task at hand.

American Apparel is a company specializing in men's and women's apparel aimed primarily at college-aged people and young adults, so choosing to buy ad space on a website like YouTube was a smart decision for them, seeing as it's most popular amongst this age group.

American Apparel's ad campaign could be described as raw, simplistic, bold, and sexually-charged. I personally find their ads to be brilliant. Without ever really saying much at all in text form, American Apparel ads consistently portray the image their brand is all about. Anyone who is familiar with the brand can instantly recognize an American Apparel ad when they see one. Their signature look of bold, basic garments hugging the bodies of hipster boys and girls standing against a white backdrop is one that has become synonimous with quirky trendy fashion and the American Apparel look.

I think many of its loyal customers also appreciate the brand's use of not always drop-dead gorgeous models with perfect bodies, but rather real-life models with flaws, untamed hair, and unconventional styles. American Apparel also will often use employees of the company in their advertisements.

Spice Up your holidays

The Spice girls have recently cashed in on promoting English hypermarket TESCO. The commercials are fun and nostalgic, the ads are remeniscient of their campy feature film Spice World. This is a great marketing tool for Tesco, becuase it brings some glamour to the brand. This move also is a great tool to market the Spice Girls and their upcoming world tour, which me and Kacie will be attending Feb.13th. Victoria Beckham(Posh Spice) also will be the new face Marc Jacobs, which also benifits Tesco in adding a bit of glamour to the brand. The question is how will Marc Jacobs be affected by this. In my opinion the two companies cater to different consumers, so Posh will still build on Marc Jacobs equity. Check out the commercials, they are hilarious!
http://youtube.com/watch?v=BJfJOkRFZbo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtMHAxJR2XU

"piece of me"

If anyone payed attention to last weeks billboard top 100 albums chart they would know that Britney Spears, whom has had four consectutive number one studio albums, came in at the number two spot last week. She was beat out by the Eagles. Of course i am heartbroken, but i can only make sense out of this from the fundemental marketing principles that i have learned. I blame this misfortune soley on the different target markets that these two artist atttract. The Eagle's attract a more mature audience, porbably people that are baby boomers. This generation is clueless to the idea of dowloading music legally and illegally. So therefore the Eagles profited from their target market's inability to illegal download their music and lower their sales.Ms. Spears target market is much younger, mostly consisting of teenagers and young college students. This generation is highly savvy when it comes to illegally downloading music through fileshare programs like lime-wire. I had the album a week prior to its release, but i purchased Britney's Fifth Studio album "Blackout" the morning of it's release on itunes and plan on buying the bonus tack version at Target this week. So Ms. Spears streak has been broken by her target market illegally downloading her music. Not to mention the fact the the Eagles album was exclusively sold at wal-mart , which excludes the album from the billboard charts, but the people at billboard changed the rules after naming Britney number one , and changing the rules 11 hours before releasing the charts.

New York Times vs. BBC

The first thing I noticed about the BBC website in comparision to the New York Times one was that it offered the news in 33 different languages, whereas NYT provides their news strictly in English. This was really interesting to me and intrigued me into checking out the BBC News more, a news publication I had never even read before. I also thought their "Day In Pictures" feature was a unique touch that many readers could appreciate and enjoy. However, overall, I felt like the New York Times seemed like it had much more news to offer, especially on the main page. The New York Times covers every inch of their front page of the website with news stories of all types in an organizational manner. I also like that the NWT website looks more like a physical newspaper than the BBC News. BBC News also didn't have ANY advertisements at all on their main page, which was odd to me. Once you look at the individual categories such as News, Sports, etc. the ads begin to surface, but there still aren't that many. I wonder why that is? I think the New York Times does a better job of making their website look appealing to viewers and also makes better use of advertisements without going overboard.