All Publicity is Good Publicity

I don't know if i agree with this statement. If I was a celebrity, I would not want to have a bad image. I think that would hurt my reputation and my fame. I understand that if a person is trying to get his name out there and become famous, a story about his doing something socially unacceptable would get his name known, but to me, I would want to be known for positive reasons. Britney Spears is a good example of someone who has a lot of publicity but may not be good. She is very well known, but we know her as not a very good person. She has kind of a bad reputation to a lot of people now, even though she may be a talented singer. Today, people don't really think about her talent, they think of all the crazy things she's done. I just don't think that all publicity is good publicity. I would want to be known for the good things I do and not bad, maybe made up things.

News for You

Young adults today do not seem to intake as much news compared to the rest of society. Many are not interested, feel they read enough in class and choose not to read the paper in their free time, or they plain old do not care. With the average sales of newspapers dropping a great deal, the question arises as to where people obtain their news in the current day? Also, how does the news compare to such news as BBC or NY Times?
I personally do not read the paper. The only paper I happen to read is the UNCG student newspaper which is conveniently located in every building I have class in. My daily routine includes checking my mail in the morning and then scanning the news of the Yahoo home page. I personally like their articles because most of the time it is fun, interesting articles and less of the 'hard' news that always seems to be plastered on the covers of newspapers today. I personally do not like it because reading all of the sad stories and tragedies in America along with other countries seem to bring me down throughout the day thus I choose to avoid those. An interesting article I read today was "Tips for Avoiding Common Diet Mistakes" which is informative but probably not necessary. To compare my selection of news to that of BBC and NY Times is quite a difference.
When I searched BBC and NY Times news websites, NY Times homepage consisted of a picture with coffins and the article containing information about the death toll in Afghan rising. Then on the front page of BBC was police officers wearing gas masks and the article was about how Georgia was under a state of emergency. Both of these news websites consist of current worldly and political issues. Though these are important to me, it is not something I have an interest in reading day to day therefore I stick to a more friendly news setting that consists of new discovered recipes, and other more upbeat articles.

The Art of Advertising

I work at a local sports bar called JP Looney's. The other night one of my co-workers called the work phone at Looney's and asked to speak to me. As I answered the phone she asked me if I could go in the bathroom, go into one of the stalls and read off the number of one of the advertisements that was posted on the stall door. It was for a ski resort that she was interested in going to.

Once I hung up the phone with her I was laughing because the whole situation was funny to me. A certain add on the bathroom stall door caught her eye while she was taking care of business and it created business for the company. When thinking of strategic ways of pushing your product and discovering the best ways of marketing and advertising your product, bathroom stalls would not be the first thing that came to my mind but yet it was a genius place. Though I did not realize before, sitting here typing this I can picture those certain advertisements on that same stall without even realizing it before.

Advertising seems to be in so many places that we see, but may not immediately be interpreted as advertising, thus creating the extraordinary "subliminal advertising". This is surrounded by us every day and we may not realize it, and also may not realize that we are being influenced by subliminal advertising. Something that really is crazy to me is how it is in many movies now. Someone will be holding a soda where the can is turned just perfectly towards the screen so the viewer can observe that it is indeed a Coke can.

After having this particular class and being exposed to so many different ways of advertising, it makes you more aware, thus trying to pick up on these specific strategies of advertising.

The Apple 1984 Macintosh ad is a mystery to many including myself. Asking questions of why it was so popular leaving sales to exceed through the roof once this advertisement was aired. The ad was shown once during the Super Bowl game on January 22, 1984 and would never be aired after this. The commercial being shown only once was a choice...a strategic marketing technic so to say. But why? Why spend money on creating this well thought out commercial if only it was going to be shown once? These are just a few questions I asked myself.

Once watching the advertisment over and over again to break down the science and trying to gain the knowledge of how the creaters of this ad were thinking, I came to a few conclusions of my own. First it was as if the commericial was more of a short film. Second I noticed that all of the people gathered together were not just one generation but several. This to me would be a way to show people that this new product is not just for young people, but for everyone. Then, you had this woman come and throw the axe which sort of left you boggled until the words came on the screen,"On January 24th, Apple Computers will introduce Macintosh. And you'll see why 1984 won't be like '1984'." To me this made such an impact that perhaps people were so shocked by this that it immediatly drew them to the product.
The director Ridley Scott was interviewed and it really went in depth in to why this commercial succeeded and why it was created like it was.

Yahoo Avataars

I have a very similar opinion to Kristen and I want to expand more on the concept of the Yahoo Avataars. Before our professor sent this assignment out I have never heard of the Yahoo Avataar before. I went through the process of creating one and ended a half an hour later with great frustration. I have always been one that is in to fun and interesting parts of the technological world but this experience was not one of them. For me it was a long process of creating something that I did not find a valid point of it existing. By this I mean the development of this person that is attached to your messaging system. For me when I am instant messaging (I have personally always used AIM) I just want to type to that person; with Avataar it is that and also has a great extension of accessories you could say. Yes, being able to outfit the person how you want and change their hair style is fun, but I still do not see the point of it. Perhaps I am missing something but what Yahoo failed to do is tell me why this other stuff is important and perhaps more explanation would make me want to use this more.

Yahoo! Avatar

I think Yahoo! Avatars are very cute. It's a fun little activity that people can do, but I don't really get the point of it. What is the purpose of them and what are they used for? For suggestions on how to improve it, have the homepage explain what Yahoo! Avatars are. That's really my only suggestion. I love how you can have pets and other accessories for your personal avatar. I typed in some things to search and most things were available, so I think as far as all the extras go, there is a good variety. It's got a good selection of appearances like skin color, hair style, apparel items, and accessories.