My space

So I'm home for the holidays and I think my family tries to relate to me by talking about marketing campaigns they've seen. My brother pointed out an interesting one that Honda is running for its dirtbike products. They show a bunch of photos of people riding dirtbikes in the mountains and at the top of all the pictures it reads "My space." At the bottom it says something clever about teaching your children that there is more to life than their internet profiles. It's actually a clever attack on MySpace.com and probably really appeals to parents who are concerned with their children's recent craze in using the internet as a social tool. They are concerned that their children will get so caught up in their virtual lives that they forget to experience their real lives, atleast that's how my parents put it. Speaking of dirtbikes, I think at some point in everyone's life, they should have the opportunity to experience an "Idaho Christmas." My brothers and sisters and I spent the afternoon pulling eachother through 2 feet of snow on a sled tied to the back of a dirtbike, which goes pretty fast despite the icy roads. The exciting part is when you get pulled right over the top of a snow mound created on the side of the road by the snow plows! It was also pretty fun to see the look from the police officer that lives at the bottom of our street when we flew by while he was shoveling his sidewalk. Aw... there's no place like home in good old Idaho!

I just finished one of my final presentations for a marketing class. We actually did a full Intergrated Marketing Communications pitch for a local business here in Provo. It was pretty fun to see everyone else's presentations. It's amazing what you can get when you make a bunch of creative marketing students compete with each other for grades. I think some lot of the people in my class could do a better job at marketing than a lot of the professionals who are making the big bucks!

I'm currently burried in final exams. Check back in a few days and I plan to be back in action with my blogging. Thanks for the patience.

The Final Day (but not really): Today is the final day of my school project (which is what this blog originated as) I have to admit that when I started the project a couple months ago, I was a little unconvinced about the magic of blogging. I was counting down the days until the project would be complete. If you read back to my earliest blog entries, this fact is probably very apparent. I'm afraid my opinion has changed. I think I am acutally going to continue blogging. I've found I enjoy blogging and reading blogs and looking around the communities on MyBlogLog.com, everything about the internet and its blogging connections is fascinating to me. So thank you to all of those who have read and commented. You've inspired me!

In my last post, I said that I thought the younger generation preferred humorous marketing to catchy slogans. At my ripe old age of 20, I would have to consider myself part of the "younger generation" and conclude that we definately prefer humor. Yesterday I saw the funniest commercial. It was for lottery tickets and it is hilarious! You have to watch this. http://www.metacafe.com/watch/6047/do_you_know_who_i_am/

Is the jingle dying out? I have to say that in my opinion, the age of the "jingle" as an advertising strategy is quickly dying, if not already dead. In recent years, very few jingles have been successful. Most people, especially in the younger generation, think that jingles are corny and boring. I personally prefer humor to a stupid song anyway. I heard an absolutely horrible one tonight. It was for Beehive Bail Bonds. http://www.beehivebailbonds.com It was awful! It was some lame 70's heavy metal rock song that just repeated the phrase, "Stuck in jail? Call beehive bail bonds." It wasn't even brief. It was a full song that just sang that over and over again. I just think that jingles are out and marketers need to find a new way to make their name stick.

I appologize for my absense from my blog the past four days. I have been very sick and trapped in Idaho, of all places, because of my inability to drive. I'm feeling a little better today and plan to return to school tomorrow. To top off my terrible weekend, last night I was barely conscious but realized I need to do some laundry and, without thinking about it, I threw my sweatshirt in with my laundry, which had my cell phone in the pocket. Apparently, you aren't supposed to put cell phones through a washing machine. Well, I was in a panic all night because destroying your cell phone is a key opportunity for cell phone companies to take advantage of you. I was going to go in to the Sprint store today and they were going to charge me $150 cancellation fee on my contract or they were going to sell me a new phone for no less than $200. I would have to do one of these because they tied me into a two year contract when I signed up. Luckily, my genious fiance disassembled the entire phone last night and laid it out on a paper towel overnight to dry, and this morning when we put it back together, it miraculously still worked. TAKE THAT, SPRINT! Anyway, at some point there has got to be a low cost competitor that enters the cell phone market as competing with no contract requirements and cheap phones for those of us who don't care about cameras, etc. I want a cell phone that I can sign up for, pay month to month, and cancel anytime I want. I would probably never cancel! I think a company like this could quickly steal a large % of market share, especially if they marketed some signing bonus like, "we'll pay your contract cancellation fee for you!" Hmm... maybe I should go into the cell phone industry.

Another very bad marketing campaign: People who aren't from Utah have probably never seen this campaign, although you can get a general feeling for it if you go to the Brent Brown Automotive Group website http://www.brentbrownauto.com/ I hate this advertising campaign. They are using the slogan "We'll bend over backwards for your!" and they show photographs and TV ads of all their car dealers bending over backwards. It's just creepy. I guess they have a memorable slogan, but all I can think about is how much I don't want to go to their car lot and see all of these creepy car dealers that are always doing backbends. And I especially don't trust these circus freaks to sell me a car!

My brief thought for the day: (Imagine this in the Mastercard advertisement voice... it sounds better) My idea of the perfect morning is knowing that you will be late for class if you stop at the gas station for Snickers flavored hot chocolate, and stopping anyway. My challenge to you: be late to something this month just for fun. Merry Christmas everyone!
A disclaimer: Only do it once. I am normally someone who is very annoyed by non-punctuality.

iPod marketing conspiracy: iPod is running a new promotion for Christmas. Here's how it works: You order an iPod online and when you go to check out, they tell you they will engrave a personalized name or message on the back of you iPod at no extra cost to you. It's FREE! So you think, "great!" and you write your name or some cute little message to your sister and you've got the perfect Christmas gift. But here's my theory about the conspiracy behind this: iPod wants us to think they are just being nice and upgrading our item for free, but really they are trying to limit resale through eBay, classifieds, etc. Because really... who wants to buy a used iPod if the back of it is engraved with the phrase "Jim and Ralph forever" if the person buying the iPod is neither Jim nor Ralph? This so called "free feature" is really just a way of ensuring that everytime someone wants an iPod they go directly to Apple rather than shopping around on eBay for a used one at a bargain price. Tricky, tricky.

Shiny Stuff

I rememember being a young student in gradeschool. I thought I had a radical environmentalist idea when I realized that product packaging was wasteful. I think I actually read an article in one of those Weekly Readers that started the hype and I began intensely protesting products that had excessive packaging. And for a 10 year-old who buys candy bars at the dollar store at least three times a year with her own money, I'm sure my protest had a great impact. However, today my class had a discussion on packaging and its importance. This is another aspect of marketing that I am aware of but have given very little thought to in the past. It's amazing what a difference packaging can make. I thought of a weird example. I can't eat McDonald's hamburgers. It's not that I think I'm too go for McDonald's or that I am a vegetarian, or that I only eat healthy foods. There is just something about a McDonald's hamburger that gives me an "icky" feeling. This morning I realized what it was. It's the wrapper they put it in! It's a very low quality paper and decorated with a gross shade of red and yellow writing. However, I eat roast beef sandwhiches from Arby's all the time, and I don't even like roast beef, but they have those pretty, shiny wrappers. I was rather dissappointed when I figured out this system. I like to think I am immune to the dirty tricks of marketers because I am one of those dirty marketers... but I guess I'm just an easily persuaded sheep following the imaginary herd that marketers create, just like everyone else.

I am once again deterring from my marketing topic. I am considering changing this to a more general blog because I have had several recent entries that had nothing to do with marketing. Tonight I would just like to say that The Office is probably one of the greatest TV sitcoms I have ever seen. I find it is as entertaining as Arrested Development and 24, the only other shows I can stand to watch. I was working on a marketing project tonight (see... this post is kind of related to my topic) and I found myself wishing it was Thursday night instead of Monday night so that I could waste my time sitting in front of the television hoping for Jim and Pam to finally hook up and for Dwight to discover more of his desk items frozen in jell-o. Yes, I am pathetic because I would probably rather laugh at Michael's awkward comments than work on my marketing project, but hey... I'm just a young college student!

Recent Marketing Campaigns that I like:
--Ebay's "IT" campaign: it's cute and memorable.
--Cacao Reserve Hershey's Chocolate direct mailing campaign really gave the brand a perception of exclusitivity.
--Tonight I saw a TV commercial for high-speed internet in which a man poored some kind of magic silver elixer out of his interent cable that made him do the dishes faster. My fiance commented that "we needed to get some of that stuff." Of course, I can't even remember which internet company it was, so maybe it wasn't that successful.
--Burger King's all-inclusive marketing that uses funny phrases on the french fry wrappers, food bags, the doors, etc. They seem to have copied this from Jack-in-the-Box, who put funny conversational phrases on their bags years ago. However, Burger King has done it ten times better. I love it! If you have some free time, go to Burger King and just start reading everything. It is hilarious. It even makes me hate the creepy Burger King "giant head" a little less.
This list will definatly be added to. I thought of so many marketing campaigns that I loved today, but it's defintaly 2am because I can't remember most of them.

Recent Marketing Campaigns I don't like:
--The "tis beer" Christmas campaign... it almost seems like it's mocking Christmas.
--Laugh. Live. Love. a Coca-cola billboard. I usually love Coca-Cola marketing. This is the first time I have disliked something they do, but this phrase just seems a bit intense for soda.
--Utah news advertisements. They are positioning nightly news programs as an exciting day time Soap Opera. I hate the way they do "teasers" and tell you something intriguing about a news story but won't tell you what it is actually about until you tune in the news program hours later. The few times I have acutally watched the show to find out what they were talking about, it has been very disappointing.

I am working on a project in school that includes creating a hypothetical new restaurant and developing a marketing plan. It's been very interesting to me since that is what I want to do someday. We have to develop a restaurant that we think would be successful in Provo, Utah, which is a pretty difficult market because of how cheap BYU students are. They are extremely price sensitive. We decided to develop an autentic Brazilian restaurant that is lower priced than the other Brazilian restaurants like Tucanos and Rodizzio Grill. We are going to have it opperate "Cafe Rio" style. You walk in, order, then sit down with your food. I wonder if a restaurant like that would actually be successful in Provo. It certianly isn't the type of restaurant I have always dreamed of opening. I envisioned a high class restaurant in the downtown area of a major city (Minneapolis was the ideal for me) Anyway, if anyone has any good ideas about marketing a restaurant, especially our little Brazilian project, I'd love some input.