At the moment there are so many adverts on tv that stick in my mind, but i’m afraid not for the right reasons. Its not the tone of the ad that irritates me, not even really the content, its the occasional, and increasingly frequent injection of slightly odd phrases.
The one that always sticks in my mind is for Febreze Mist and Refresh room spray, which has the opening phrase, “It’s bad enough when your house smells like fish….”. Erm, yeah I imagine it isn’t pleasant but I can’t say that’s most common of occurances, in my household at least! When was the last time you walked into someones house and thought, “urgh, it smells of fish?”.
I’ve just seen another one while i’m writing this post! A new advert for Specsavers transition lenses, which shows a nature photographer in a beautiful desert taking fabulous photographs. A really good looking advert that shows the product in a very attractive way. However, why do they introduce the advert by saying “You don’t need to be a nature photographer to wear new transition lenses.” I agree, you don’t. Its a good product that would be useful to many people, but i’m afraid it really irritates me when advertisers use such ridiculous language!
I presume they’re falling back on the old addage of people pay attention to 70% how you look but only 10% what you say.
It has been reported today that a pro-life Christian organisation are suing Google over their refusal to let them advertise their pro-life opinions when the word “abortion” is searched for. And I have to say I tend to agree with their decision.
Someone searching for abortion is likely to be researching their options and this should include both pro-life and pro-choice opinions and I think it would be irresponsable for Google to allow sponsored adverts supporting either side. This is particularly true of sites with a strong religious influence. As it is the nature of Google to allow the most popular sites to be displayed first, is it not logical to assume that both sides would be represented, allowing the user to choose what they want to look at rather than be swayed by religious zealots or otherwise?
I understand that organisations want to sell their services, be it pro-choice or pro-life, but I can’t help feeling that this and other contentious topics should not be the subject of advertising and promotion. However, there is nothing stopping them from advertising if the search was “abortion pro-life” or “abortion pro-choice”, as the user is being more specific about which camp they are interested in.
I’m glad that Google are taking an ethical stance on this issue, and hope that they win their case. I’d love to know your thoughts.
Today, I was watching a presentation titled “Is PR a Black Art?”, which got me wondering…
The Group showed a video parody (I sincerely hope it was a parody!) of a Hollywood PR team creating and mapping out the fake relationship of 2 young actors to coincide with the release of their movie in increase interest and thus increase box office takings.
The intention of the film was clearly to demonstrate how PR is percieved as a business. Perhaps naively I feel this is a huge exageration of the reality of the industry. But if this is an example of the assumptions the public make about the public relations industry, is there a future in the industry?
The responsability of Public Relations is to manage the flow of information between organisations and their publics, while maintaining their reputation or creating a perception about their business. However, if the PR practicioners can’t control the perception of their own industry, is it suprising that the public are so cynical?
Now i know i’ve admitted to watching trashy TV before, but i think both I and Jim Carrey have reached a new low. While flicking through channels this weekend I came across what I think is probably the most shameless and expensive PR stunt i’ve ever seen! As part of the opening credits of American Idol was an animated segment showing the characters of the new animated Dr Seuss movie “Horton hears a who” getting excited about to watch American Idol. On top of this Jim Carrey, the star voice of Horton, the main character in the movie, was placed awkwardly in the audience dressed as his character, an Elephant, and shameless “plugs” for Fox, who produces both American Idol and Horton, from both Carrey and Ryan Seacrest, the presenter. Now i’m all for making a statement and using all the tools at your disposal to do so. But to be honest this was just embarrassing.
Given that the time and effort required to create even a short animation is huge, clearly 20th Century Fox feel that this level of investment is essential in order to avoid the very public embarrassment of a box-office flop. “Horton,” computer animated by Fox’s Blue Sky Studios team, cost about $90 million to make, not counting the tens of millions in prints and advertising, so it represents a hefty gamble. Fortunately for Fox, its aggressive marketing campaign appears to be paying off. Before the weekend it was predicted that the movie would rake in a conservative (by industry standards) $36 million in its opening weekend. Stats out today reveal that in fact opening weekend was a huge success and brought home closer to $45 million.
Just goes to show just how powerful carefully targeted PR can be, even if i do find it offensive!
At the moment i’m very busy with lots of uni work, so apologies for the lack of posts! At least always thinking about and researching varying topics has not only opened my eyes to a world I wasn’t fully aware of, but has made me realise just how skeptical I am!
Take for instance citizen journalism, a topic i’m studying for a PR and New Media module run by Richard Bailey. A good example of citizen journalism gone wrong was the introduction of a wikitorial (wiki-editorial) launched by the LA Times in 2005. The premise of the wikitorial was that an editorial piece would be put on the site and in true wiki style the piece would be improved greatly by the input of the well informed public. However this was not the case. The wiki was removed from the site and the project abandoned after the wiki was abused with an influx of pornographic images.
While the concept is altruistic and optimistic, in reality wiki’s often reach a half-hearted middle ground as strong opinons in one direction are quickly tempered by the opposite opinion. And given that the topic of this wikitorial was called “War and Consequences” and examined the US involvement in Iraq it is inevitable that strong opinions from all sides would want to be represented. A difficult task for the administrator!
I get the impression from this story that the LA Times wanted to be the first on the bandwagon, demonstrated by launching it as a public-Beta, which by their own admission “is a fancy way of saying we’re making something available even though we haven’t completely figured it out.” Is there a point? I think its a good idea badly executed, which is a shame.
Needless to say the wikitorial has not yet been reinstated.
Today i came across an interesting blog post while attempting to start some research for my dissertation. The blog (or more specifically i should say podcast) on research talk podcasts talks about everyone’s friend Google, and its potential influence in market research. Although I doubt if Google will ever really be able to replace planned market research entirely it does have some interesting implications.
And as attention continues to shift online, and Google solidifies its position as a dominant destination, it is clearly becoming more adept at understanding not only consumer behaviour but also intention – i.e., when you enter a search query, you’re telling Google what you want to see, read, buy, do etc. And Google takes advantage of that to give you ever more relevant results.
While this is undoubtedly a useful and abundant tool for marketers in obtaining detailed information about individual consumers, this does raise some questions. Where are the boundries when it comes to privacy? For most people using the internet is anonymous and Google is a trusted site. Should Google start selling consumer information what will happen to the trust, or indeed lack thereof commonly associated with large businesses? And how can it possible be targetted? In businesses several people may use the same terminal, and the same applies with households. For example, within the space of a few hours a 10 year old could be doing some research for homework and only a few hours later a parent may use the same home PC to look up something unsuitable for children, so how does Google distinguish between users to recommend “ever more relevent results” and at the same time protect its users?
Perhaps not what you were expecting under the title of news, but with this part of the blog i’m going to take the opportunity to bring you the strangest news i can find from around the globe. Using the internet alone i’m going to source the most ludicrous tales of who-knows-what to make you squint at your screen and drop your jaw in disbelief as you can’t help but think aloud “………what?”.
The best one i found today was an American story about an apparently evil Elmo doll! The boy (who had a seemingly very large collection of Sesame Street toys for such a small boy!) had worn down the batteries of his doll which had been programmed to say the boy’s name and so his mother replaced the batteries. So far so normal. It wasn’t until the boy started repeating the doll that his mother was aware of the problem. The doll had started chanting “Kill James” (the boy’s name) whenever he was affectionately squeezed! Given his mother’s concern over her childs “death threats”, toy company Fisher-Price have agreed to issue the family with a replacement doll.
I don’t know about you but a talking doll is scary enough to me, let alone one which issues death threats to children!
Being a student i’m sure it won’t come as any suprise to learn that i frequently indulge in some rather trashy TV. One such programme upon which I have become unwittingly hooked is ITV2’s Coleen’s Real Women. I was initially attracted by the concept of taking everyday people and thrusting them into the limelight of the mainstream modelling industry so they could enjoy their fifteen minutes of fame. Surely this is a selfless gesture from the everyday-scouse-childhood-sweetheart of a football hero come good, Coleen McLoughlin, who herself has found fame in her own right as the “face” of George at ASDA. Not so.
Now call me cynical, but surely this was a concept created with the participating Brands at the fore-front of every decision. This a perfect platform for these companies to publically express their supposed neglect of the size zero phenomena currently plaguing the fashion industry. This is achieved through recruiting real women, i.e. you and me, to represent their brand in a very public campaign. While the programme is both positive and suspensful the eventual outcome is obvious; in all but one of the five episodes aired so far four real women have been given the job. While this is great for the women involved its still the brand who wins in the long run. They have an hour long programme of blatant promotion, which they hope will create brand awareness and increase sales as a result women being enlightened in that this is a product for real women. Perhaps Sweaty Betty, the only company who did not take on a real girl (and interestingly did not hire a model either) are the real winners. They get all the publicity and continue to appeal to their target market who perhaps don’t want a real women to represent them, as a sportswear brand perhaps this shows a conflict of interest and after all, models make products look glamorous, real women make them look ordinary. Or just maybe their failure to comply with the latest marketing fad has eliminated a huge number of prospective customers?
As i say, i’m a viewer of this programme against my better judgement and i’m interested to see just how many companies succumb to the guilt of CSR and i’ll keep you updated!
Hello, I’m Hayley and this is my first blog! To be totally honest this is quite alien to me and i’m finding it a bit intimidating! I’ve had Facebook for a while and been using MSN messenger for years but this is another step, putting your thoughts out there for anyone to read. But i’ve put it off for long enough now, time to bite the bullet and give it a go for myself, see what all the fuss is about!
In order to get mysef ready i’ve been looking at some blogging sites, one in particular mentioned by Richard Bailey my PR and New Media lecturer. As i’m looking around the site i’m not entirely sure what i’m looking for or whatis to be achieved by reading it, particularly in relation to PR. So far its not making much sense to me but i’m going to remain open minded and i want to learn. Clearly this is is the direction the industry is moving in and I don’t want to be the last one on the Bandwagon. So not only is this an assignment for a university course its a genuine attempt to learn the skills required for the industry in which i want to work.
While perusing said blog i did come across some rather interesting information that helped answer some of my questions as to why blogging has become such a huge phenomena. a study has shown that “45% of the 15-44 age group read online news on a daily basis, compared to just 38% who read newspapers”. This is important from a marketing perspective as far as advertising is concerned, but perhaps more importantly in developing an understanding of the nature of customers and has huge implications in planning marketing communications stratgies for the future.
So in this short space of time i’m already warming to the idea. Maybe blogging isn’t just about computer geeks and people with too much to say as per my preconception. it’ll be interesting to read back this post in a few months time and see how my opinions have changed. Watch this space…