New Advertising Methods

Hello again,

I know it has been a really long absence, but since few people have actually stumbled onto my blog, I don’t think it was a major inconvenience to anybody. Having said this, buckle up, because I am about to rock your world with four examples of companies with great advertising strategies. I have covered four different areas of advertising, just in case you wanted to see more than one kind. First off, we are going to start with a real up-and-comer: Interactive Mobile Advertising.

The video link below will show you an example of an interactive advertisement for the USA Network TV series, White Collar. This show is not only fun to watch, but it obviously has an excellent marketing team behind it. Watch the video first, and then read on to hear my take on it.

http://vimeo.com/19033123

If you haven’t seen the show, it centers on a former criminal who was convicted of forgery. He is let out under the condition that he helps the FBI catch criminals in the White Collar crime division. This ad does a great job of linking the show’s premise into an advertisement for people who may have found it. Additionally, the reward for participating is exclusive footage, which will thrill those already loyal to the show, and may be a selling point to those who haven’t committed yet. Whoa! Did anybody else catch that? As long as a participant completes the ad, they will find relevance in the video afterwards. Instead of just showing a schedule, they found a way to make it worthwhile for current viewers to play the game as well.

Maybe you don’t like watching TV. Maybe you like going outside. Ok, I mean you’re reading this blog most likely indoors, but whatever I won’t judge. Maybe you brought your laptop outside. I don’t know. Regardless, Outdoor Interactive Advertisement can be insanely interesting. This link has several great examples.

http://www.fastcocreate.com/1680513/the-14-most-arresting-interactive-outdoor-ads-from-vibrating-benches-to-geofencing#1

I specifically like the augmented reality ones offered by Axe and National Geographic. These ads make the experience more of an adventure for the viewer. Who wouldn’t be surprised to see dinosaurs when they were planning on taking the subway to work?

            Ok so I get it. You are inside. Not outside. On your computer. So do me a favor. Go to Google, and search the phrase “zerg rush”.  Just do it. I’ll wait. Did it work?

Of course it did. If you waited, you saw all of the o’s come down and start eating your links. Maybe you even noticed, if you click the o’s enough, they disappear. This is a form of Interactive Internet Advertisement. It was put in place just before Starcraft 2 came out. In the game, you can play as an alien race that just eats everything. So Google came up with a way to be interactive with those who were searching the game.

Alright, so we covered three different kinds of advertising. Anything else cool? Did we cover everything? Well, not exactly. How about Interactive Advertising in Video Games?  Seriously! There is definitely such a thing. Take a look at the below screen shot. 

This is an example of how advertisements can show up in videogames. What could possibly be a better way to show you an ad then by putting it right on the floor of a boxing mat. What are you supposed to do, not punch the other guy out in the ring? No You are going to fight him because it releases video game endorphins, and you will likely be reading the ad repeatedly. Whether you like it or not.

            So. In summary ads are everywhere now. Worried? I’m not. It just means advertisements are getting more creative, and we will see less boring videos. Maybe I’ll return in ten years to see what the new form of advertising is. Until then, enjoy being indoors browsing the web. I will be taking a walk outside. Looking at all the advertisements in the woods.

Marvel and its Use of Social Media

I wouldn’t consider myself a Facebook addict, but I do spend a lot of time playing one game on it. As I may have mentioned, I am a huge nerd. So when Avengers was coming out, I scoured the internet for anything having to do with the movie. What I found was that Marvel, the company behind the Avengers, had a huge presence on Facebook. There are two things I noticed that they did very well.

First and foremost is their entertainment ability. Marvel managed to create a fun game that allows players to create their ideal team of superheroes and fight against villains in a turn based strategy game. While this game is free, spending money allows you to unlock the more popular heroes, or skins that make those characters better. These micro transactions make Marvel enough money to keep the game running, but the existence of the game is also a great form of adver-gaming. When you play the game, you are constantly reminded that Marvel not only exists, but has a lot to offer the consumer. Lesser known properties are given time in the story line, which may cause people to go buy comics or find other ways to learn about the brand. Additionally, Marvel ties in their movie properties with the game, offering special items and skins that are limited time only. These special additions are a great idea because it causes players who may be more casual to play much more frequently in order to get the limited edition items.

Second, Marvel doesn’t just make their own adver-games, they also helped Acura, a sponsor of the movie, gain awareness in the marketplace. They created  an online hub where you could go and “become a S.H.E.I.L.D. member. Of course, there was Acura branding all over the place, but by playing the Acura themed driving games and passing the quizzes, the user would be treated to some unique content, including a short clip that they hadn’t shown before. I of course played through these games, since I wanted to see the video. In all honesty, the site looked great. They did a great job of making the site look high-tech and secret agent-like.

Both of these games show that companies like Marvel can provide quality entertainment while still increasing their brand awareness. This internet advertising takes little financial commitment, and can actually capture an audience’s undivided attention, whereas traditional ads tend to make people more likely to close the ad or just stop watching. This kind of advertising looks to be the future of the industry, as people find new ways to skip or block ads. With these kinds of adver-games, a company can ensure the attention of their audience, and provide an advertisement that doesn’t just play once and then leave the customer’s mind, it provides an experience that the customer is likely to seek out again and repeat in the future.

The Vatican

In light of Pope Benedict’s retirement, I was online looking at articles about the pope’s opinions on various issues. I found a link to an article on BBC.com, found below.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21417767

I thought the most interesting part of this article was the comments he made about other religious groups. This was interesting to me since the pope has had very conservative views on a number of topics. He has made several statements, one of which on this site is that deviating from traditional gender roles was "a violation of the natural order." I thought it was remarkable that two different groups of people, such as the Vatican and feminists, would feel so differently about a topic. This actually goes into the debate about culture, and the thought that one’s culture is superior, also known as ethnocentrism. The article goes on to talk about Islam, as well as secularism, and not surprisingly, he wasn’t supportive of either one. What initially surprised me was the hard stance he took on several of these groups. Despite being religious, he is also a public figure, and his tone seemed to me to be a little more condemning as opposed to coming across with a willingness to understand. I think that this is a flaw in our world; people are much more willing to look down upon other groups instead of trying to reach agreements.

I looked for other articles relating to his position, and I found a bunch, but not many of them had different content. I read through the comments of these sites, and unfortunately, all the commentators started flame wars in their posts. This only served to back up my previous conclusion. People in general would much rather fight over their beliefs than try to accept somebody else’s. I guess accept in this scenario isn’t even the right word. Understand would be a better choice. I know that most people’s religions say that they are the only ones with the “right answer.” And it’s fine for people to disagree on what that answer is. But I think that we as a species, as a culture, and even as individuals, would be much better off if we took a second, stood back, and asked ourselves “Why does this person feel this way?”

I thought that I would read this article, and it would simply inform me of the opinions held by the papal office, but it was a lot more thought provoking than I originally realized. It definitely made me think about how the news we hear pretty much always has more depth than we assume. 

A Social Media Experience: The Unexpected Connection

Hello followers!

I’m not sure how many of you know of this game, but I frequently play League of Legends. I always used to think of this game as “just a game” but after one of my matches today, I realized that it is so much more than that. It is a social media experience that connects me with people across the globe. And thus, my topic for today, is

A Social Media Experience: The Unexpected Connection

So for those of you who don’t know, a very basic background about League of Legends, which from here on will be called LOL (Ha). It starts, generally, with two teams, each of them having five players. These players can be invited from your friends list, otherwise they are randomly chosen. Each player gets to choose a character, and then the game starts. There are three “lanes of play” so typically two people take the bottom lane, two top, and one person holds the mid lane. During the game, your characters use six total spells as well as a basic attack, and they kill enemy minions, champions, and eventually try to take down all of the turrets and enemy structures in their lane. Obviously the mechanics are a lot more advanced, for instance, there is a forested area that allows players to change lanes to surprise attack an enemy, but we don’t need to go into that for now.

Anyway, I started a game with four other random people, and normally in LOL, whoever calls a lane first (top, bot, mid) gets that lane. But, people online are stubborn, and don’t feel the need to follow social niceties. As it were, I found myself calling “top” only to have another person call “solo top” fifteen seconds later (there had been other comments in between). I tried to explain that I had called top, and they were welcome to join, but after loading, as I ran to the top lane, they started to tell me to leave and go to another lane. Getting frustrated at this point, I thought about the typical internet bully when they use social media. It is likely that they were trying to get a ryze (LOL players will get that) out of me, and the best thing to do would be to troll them, since nothing makes an argumentative player more unhappy than when someone doesn’t try to argue with them. Henceforth, the only comment I typed in response to this player telling me to “go bot” was the statement “Long hair don’t care.” This served my purpose to sufficiently aggravate the other player, and eventually he just stopped talking. We both ended up staying on top lane, and ok for the most part. We lost the game, probably due to me. However, it was definitely a victory for yours truly, as I learned a valuable way to solve conflicts on the internet. And I like to think at the end of the day, this guy still remembers the name LuphosMoonChild. If he doesn’t, maybe I’ll see him again. And in the chat box I can type “My hair got longer since last time :) ”  Until next time? Until next time.

Introduction

Hello, my name is Josh, and this is my blog.
I am a senior in UW-Whitewater, with my major in Marketing. I am also pursuing an advertising minor. Outside of academia, I am a resident assistant in Wells East, a job which I thoroughly enjoy. Oh also, I am engaged. I will be married on October 5th 2013. And yes, I help with the wedding planning. I get asked that question frequently. My fiancé owns a Pomeranian and a cat, both of which I also really enjoy spending time with.
 In what little free time I have, I enjoy hobbies including art, playing the drums, and reading. I specifically have an affinity for horror monsters, as the best books I have ever read were Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Frankenstein. However, my favorite fictional character of all time is hands down the werewolf. Which makes a lot of sense, considering the wolf is my favorite animal. Additionally, I don’t just enjoy art in the traditional sense. Aside from drawing, I also think it is insanely fun to come up with creative ways to fix broken things, or up-cycle ( I guess that’s the term?) things that no longer work as originally intended. My current project is to fix my shoes, they have this MASSIVE gash in them (I mean like the mother-of-all gashes) And I am trying to find a way to sew through leather/make a patch or put something on the inside of the shoe? Any suggestions and I will appreciate it. I tried epoxy. This was a bit of a digression.
If you couldn’t tell by now, I would mostly describe myself as a geek. I am an avid reader of comics, I am a huge fan of anything sci-fi, horror, fantasy etc. and more recently have gotten into playing Magic the Gathering. Of course my deck is all werewolves. I enjoy outdoors activities, such as hiking, camping, and just being outdoors and looking at the environment. I really like animals as well, and never pass up the chance to pet one if I see it. I used this interest of mine to a practical use when I had to remove a bat from a resident’s room last year by using a bag.  I absolutely love movies and the entire film industry in general. Not surprisingly, this last year was a good year at theaters for me, since I got to see The Avengers, my new favorite movie, as well as the aptly named Amazing Spider-Man. Also please don’t ask me if I saw The Hobbit. I wanted to, but my schedule was busy, and then my fiancé saw it twice (she is a huge lord of the rings fan) so I haven’t had the chance, and it makes me sooooo sad. But such is life, and I shall see it, and its beautiful wargs (seeing a pattern here) soon.
I am very social, but I don’t always seem that way in large groups (ten or more, if you need a baseline). They tend to freak me out. But, if you see me and there aren’t hordes of people bearing down on me, I am friendly and would love to talk about anything. Even sports. Which I am bad at. A word of caution though, if you talk about my interests, I might accidentally monopolize the conversation, not because I want to, but I get overly excited. So, just tell me to shut up and I won’t be offended. So stop by and say hello. Or whatever. J

Josh