EOC Week 7: The Pitch

For my final project, I am going to market Q-Tips to men. My plan is to create a commercial which emphasizes the many ways that the product can be used. To make the ad appeal to men, I am going to use male targeted humor. For instance, one idea I have so far is to have a series of shots with voice over; the first shot will be something like a man building a Lincoln-Log type house out of Q-Tips with voice-over reading "for the building man." The next clip can be two men using the Q-Tips like swords to sword fight with voice-over reading "for the fighting man." After maybe a few more joke uses, I will have some real uses. "For the hygienic man" will have a man cleaning his ears with the Q-Tips with fine print at the bottom saying not to insert it into your ear canal. Another real use could be "for the cleaning man" or something to that effect and a clip of a man using Q-Tips to clean his sports memorabilia or something that men typically collect and display that need frequent cleaning. To end the commercial I want to have some sort of slogan which I have not decided on yet; something that gets at the idea that there's a different use for each different man.

EOC Week 6: Nine Apps

One of my personal favorite apps for the Blackberry is the Google Maps app. Technobuzz.net talks about the free Google Maps app in a list of the 51 best free Blackberry apps: “Many of today’s BlackBerry handsets come with built-in GPS; one of the best is Google Maps for Mobile.” It is great because it shows you exactly where you are and what direction you are heading on the map with a blue dot and arrow. Google Maps also can automatically set the destination or start point as the location that you are at without having to input an address. Another great app for the Blackberry is the free app Poynt. Poynt is used to find local businesses, compare gas prices, look for restaurants, and even give you a list of the top ten movies in theatres, among other things. The free Sudoku app is also an excellent app for the Blackberry.  Robb Dunewood of Rimarkable.com  says “Sudoku is the most addictive game, free or otherwise, that I have yet to play on my BlackBerry,” and I have to say that I agree. Whenever I find myself with a spare minute or two and nothing to do, I whip out my Blackberry and continue the puzzle where I left off last. One of the stupidest apps I have ever heard of is called Enjoy Toilet Paper. The app allows you to virtually unroll a spool of toilet paper as quickly as possible on the IPhone’s touch screen. The absolute stupidest app I have seen is called Cry Translator. To use the app, hold the phone up near your baby as it is crying; the app will then translate the crying and tell the parent to either feed the child, let it sleep, change it, give it a pacifier, or give it a teddy bear or some equivalent. “You can buy Cry Translator for $29.99, but you'll wind up with an app that's essentially a Magic 8 Ball for parenting” says Kenneth Butler of Laptopmag.com. The How Tall app measures how tall a person is by measuring the acceleration due to gravity of the phone after dropping it from the height of the persons head. This app is among the dumbest apps ever created; who is willing to spend $9.99 on an app that requires you to drop your $500 phone from six feet in the air? I think that a good idea for an app would be one that allows the user to sing something into it and the app tells you what note would harmonize with what you just sang. The app would also include something similar to a guitar tuner so that while you are singing into it, you can see what note you are hitting.

EOC Week 5: Best & Worst Super Bowl Commercials

Every year, commercials that air during the Super Bowl end up being just as talked about as the game it itself. This year, however, there didn’t seem to be any commercials that were truly worth the almost $3 million dollars it cost for a 30 second spot. The best commercial, in my opinion, was the Volkswagen Passat commercial with the little kid dressed up like Darth Vader. The commercial used the iconic Star Wars score that is instantly recognizable by almost all Americans. Using the Star Wars theme allowed everyone who knows Star Wars to be able to relate to the commercial, and in turn, relate to the product. The commercial also has no speaking in it, just the intense Star Wars music, which made the entire production seem very epic. The worst commercial that I saw during the Super Bowl, in my opinion, was the commercial for the Kia Optima. This commercial also did not have any speaking in it, but instead just had a musical score to accompany it. The Kia commercial’s goal, I think, was to make it look and feel like a movie; which it did. The only problem with their goal is that Kia makes inexpensive vehicles and the commercial was extremely high budget and included a lot of special effects; it just didn’t feel like it matched up right. The content of the commercial also didn’t seem very relevant to the product it was advertising. Besides these two commercials I just mentioned, there were of a slew of good, bad, and mediocre commercials all vying for the chance to be the next most talked about Super Bowl commercial.

Week 4 EOC: Business to Business vs. Consumer Marketing

In business to business marketing, the buyers who are targeted are few in number but spend much more than consumers. A business buyer may spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a single sale; losing that customer is a much bigger loss than losing a sale in the consumer market. The purchasing decision making process is much different between business customers and consumers, as well. It is common for a consumer to make a purchase with little to no research behind it; such a purchase by a business customer would be irresponsible and does not happen. When businesses make large purchases, there can be hundreds of people who weigh in on the decision, making it a very long and arduous process.  To be able to obtain and maintain large business accounts, it is important to establish close relationships and partnerships between buyer and seller. Consumer marketing is an entirely different process. In consumer marketing, there are a vast number of buyers being targeted; to be able to effectively market to them, they are targeted in groups referred to as demographics. Building relationships with the buyer is also important in consumer marketing, but they are not as intimate as the relationships built in business to business marketing. Products are often purchased based on a single ad that was viewed or a small amount of research done by the consumer; therefore, creating ads that work is in a medium that will be received by the targeted demographic is very important. The only real similarity between business to business marketing and consumer marketing is that they both require “a deep-down understanding of customer needs and customer-driven marketing strategies that create superior customer value” (Armstrong and Kotler 158).