Parasites or life support?

I’m not a science expert. I really found my high school chemistry class to be a challenge. So when I went to college, I figured I would try to minimize the amount of time I spent working with beakers, Petri dishes and Bunsen burners. To fulfill part of my science requirement for general education courses, I decided to take something that I thought would be more my pace. Environmental Science.

I had a flashback to that semester when I went on my final spring break just last week. While staying with my parents for the week in Orlando, I found an unfortunate creature. It was just outside my parent’s house in the driveway. These other creatures were feeding off of it, but it was still trying to stay alive. I brought it inside the house, and I wasn’t exactly sure what to make of it. I took this picture:

That’s right, this creature was a newspaper. I did edit this photo a bit. I highlighted the “parasites” in blue.

Ok, so these ad parasites have been around for awhile, but they used to only be within the ad space of the paper. Now advertisers are covering the actual text of newspapers with their messages. Almost half of the front page was covered by these ads. This has actually been a reality for a couple of years, but it still blows me away that media organizations would allow their papers to undergo the advertising leech-infestation. What in the world would drive media owners to allow their papers to be- oh.

Right.

Which brings me back to my Environmental science class. In this class we learned about parasites and symbiotic relationships. When you hear about parasites, the general feeling is not very positive. However, in some cases, parasites can be helpful to the host. This is called mutualism. I think this is what newspapers are relying on for extra financial resources. Since newspapers are gradually dying (at least in the form that we are used to), they must rely on additional tactics to bring about revenue.

It’s just a little silly looking, and it feels odd to have to remove layers of ads to see the “front” page. Then again, why should I act like it is so odd? I mean after all, mutualism is just a part of nature.

Alternative methods of advertising: Part 2

In today’s world of an oversaturatied market of information, it seems that people need to be given several forms of media before the message can stick. My theory is this is because everyone is using the same types of advertising, which leaves the message lost in a junkyard of information.

Originality is important to make a memorable impact. However, if an ad is original and it does not implement the product or service into the message, then it is useless. Some of the following pictures that I found online seem to have the qualities of effective messages through creativity.

Alternative methods of advertising: Part 1

In the Truman Show, Jim Carrey plays a character named Truman Burbank, just your average guy with an average life. He has a wife, a desk job, a nice neighborhood and a best friend named Marlon. However, none of this really matters because none of it is real.

Truman’s entire life has been all part of a television show that he is unaware of. Everyone in his life is an actor. His world is one giant set.

One of the big factors of the show is that there are never any commercials. That way the audience can follow Truman’s life uninterrupted. What would it be like to watch endless television without any advertisements. Whoops, did I say there was no advertisements?

After a failed attempt to escape from the set, police officers (or actors playing police officers) return Truman back to his home.  He asks his wife, Meryl, why she stays with him when she can’t stand him. This is her response:

“That’s not true. Why don’t I make you some of this new Mococoa Drink? All natural. Cocoa beans from the upper slopes of Mount Nicaragua. No artificial sweeteners.”

Meryl displays the Chef's Pal knife to advertise the product during The Truman Show.

The show had no commercials, but it was full of advertisements. It featured what is called product placement. Product placement is when a brand, logo, or some other form of visual or verbal representation of a company is included in a favorable light on the television show or movie. This is a way for advertisements to continue throughout the length of the program. The example of Meryl Burbank above is an extremely obvious form of product placement

This is not something that only appears in The Truman Show. Think about the blatant closeups of products that you have seen in movies or on television. The one that sticks out most in my mind is a scene in Spiderman, when Peter Parker is trying out his new abilities in his room and he is trying to web a can of Dr. Pepper.

According to Product Placement News, “It was 1982 when ET handed “Reese’s Pieces” to Elliot and sales of Hershey’s peanut butter candy increased by 80%”

Apparently this is a very effective tool for advertising when done right. I would even go as far as to say that it is very possible that product placement could replace traditional commercial advertising. Perhaps not completely, but here are some facts:

Commercial breaks have increased in length steadily over the years.

VCRs and DVRs have made it possible for viewers to bypass the traditional commercials.

A big problem with the traditional commercial is getting the viewer to associate the product with the commercial. Sometimes people can remember the commercial, but they don’t have a clue what it was selling.

So, with such long commercial breaks already in place and the large transition to TiVo, a lot of advertisers will be wanting to incorporate their ads into the shows rather than having them being skipped over.

I think we are beginning to see television shows move away from creating their own fictional brands and start using actual brands.

Commentary on 2009 Superbowl ads

This year’s Superbowl was good, but the game was no where near as amazing as last year’s 4th quarter shocker when Eli Manning dodged a promising sack to initiate the pass with the phenomenal catch by David Tyree, changing the tides of the game, and quashing the Patriots undefeated season.

Were the advertisements better? Well, that may be entirely subjective, but this year’s lineup did have some interesting aspects that stood out.

If you watched the entire game, you may have noticed there was an ad that lasted one second. Do you remember what it was? You probably do, it was a Miller High Life adby Miller Brewing Co. What did this ad do? This ad was composed of the Miller guy saying “High Life”. The result: Everyone who was paying attention slapped their knees congratulating the advertisers for their brilliance.

According to The Business Journal, High Life senior brand manager Keven Oglesby said that this was to show that Miller, like its customers, strives to make smart choices. It was brilliant, better than discarding $3 million dollars.

Another usual thing this year was a trashy (yeah, I’ll say it, it’s my blog after all) ad put out by PETA. The average person, at least in my advertizing class, claims to have a negative feeling towards PETA, so they probably didn’t have anything to lose in regards to hurting their image. They submitted an ad to the NFL that was rejected because it was too sexually explicit. Why do I even bring this up? Because marketing an ad online as “the ad that was banned by the Super Bowl” stirs up a lot of viewership. There will be no link to that ad here.

Well, the rest of the ads, in my opinion, seemed to be more or less average for the Super Bowl, which means they were pretty good as far as entertainment is concerned. Their effectiveness remains to be seen.

This one was my favorite.