Blog #11:Life After Blogging

    Going into this assignment I was very unsure on how I was going to be able to pick apart ads and talk about the real meaning behind them.  After doing this assignment I feel like I have a way better understanding of advertising.  I know that ads have different meanings depending on how you look at it.  There could be a picture of a gorgeous woman in a bathing suit that is eating a burger, like most ads these days, but there is a different meaning behind it and for the people that are attracted because of the ad.
    After doing this blog I feel like a more open person.  I liked that fact that I was able to express my opinion on such a broad variety of different advertisements.  I think that it is a good idea for everyone to have an assignment like this in order to get a feel of what advertising is really like.  I hope that I can continue to keep blogging, whether it is about advertising or not, in order to express myself.  I will never look at an ad the way I did before doing this blog and entering the class, which believe me is a very good thing.

Blog #10: Consumer Behavior

   There are so many products that are advertised and for a short period of time and then we never see them again.  Why is this? It is because these products were not launched successfully.  They were not promoted or marketed correctly so people weren't buying them and that is why they are unsuccessful.  Who remembers these products?  Probably not too many or if you do remember you probably forgot about them because they weren't successful for a long time.
















   Different products can be unsuccessful for different reasons.  Take these examples below.  Yeah they were pretty cool back in the day when our country wasn't very technology savvy, but if you were to ask a ten year old if they would buy these cell phones that would probably laugh in your face.  Another reason that products become unsuccessful, especially in technology, is because we keep upgrading our technology devices.

  There are products that have so successful and have been around for years and then there are companies that have only been around for a little while, but still very successful.  Why are these companies successful? Because they know how to advertise and market their products well in order to attract customers.

Blog #9: A Day in the Life: Stella Artois

    It's a gorgeous sunny day in Orange County, California when Oliver wakes up.  He had a long day yesterday, busy with running his own business that he started at 28 years old, 7 years ago, but it is finally the weekend, and he has a day to relax.  Oliver gets up and takes a shower to make sure that he is starting his day off fresh.  Once he gets out of the shower he puts on his favorite Neiman Marcus cologne and his favorite Saks Fifth Avenue T-shirt and a pair of jeans with Steve Madden shoes.  He calls his assistant Taylor to pull the car around so that he can start his day early.  Oliver goes down to the garage and waits for Taylor to pull his Bentley around.  Oliver decides that it is a good day to go to Beverly Hills and meet up with his mom and have some lunch and do some shopping.  Once he arrives and pulls into Mastro's Steakhouse he sees his mom waiting for him at the bar with a gin martini waiting for him.  Oliver and his mom take a table outside since it is spring and the sun is shining.  Once the waitress comes to the table Oliver orders a San Pellegrino and a Filet Mignon medium rare.  He also orders a side of green beans and brussels sprouts.
      His mom orders a side salad with dressing on the side.  His mom and his make small talk about music and TV.  Oliver and his mom gossip about what is going to happen next on House of Cards, both of their favorite TV shows.  Oliver talks about he heard the Rolling Stones on the radio on his way over and it just put him in a great mood because it is his favorite band.    After him and his mom finish lunch, Taylor drives Oliver back to his house so he can change into his workout clothes and go for his daily five mile run to clear his head with his dog Hudson.  When he gets back from his run, he notices that Emily, his chef, went grocery shopping at Whole Foods because there were grocery bags on the kitchen counter.  After dinner, Oliver lies down in bed with Hudson and browse's on his Ipad for his next vacation.  After looking for about an hour or so he finally decides on Bora Bora for him and his sister.  Since it is late, and he has a long day ahead of him tomorrow he turns on Casablanca and doses off.

Blog #8: Day in the Life: AirFrance

   Lets take a minute and look at the day in a life of someone who would fly with Air France.

    A 35 year old women is driving her 2012 white Audi with her husband through the suburbs of the New York City on their way to pick up their kids from school.  Courtney and her husband Paul have two kids, eight and ten.  The younger girl is named Stephanie and the older girl is named Mallory. They go to a nice K-8 private school. Courtney doesn't really have a secure job.  Sometimes she helps volunteer at her children's school, but for the most part her husband provides the income.  Her husband took a break in-between his customers at his accounting firm in order to pick the kids up with his wife and take them to lunch.  After they pick up the kids from school they go to a restaurant near their house that has a little bit of everything on the menu.  Courtney decides to order an ice tea while she takes a look at the alcohol menu.   Once the waiter comes back she orders a glass of white wine and then orders the cobb salad.  After the family finishes their lunch, Courtney realizes that she needs to go to the grocery store real quick to pick something up for dinner.  Her and her husband run into Trader Joe's real quick to pick up some chicken for dinner.  When Courtney gets home she has the kids start their homework and Paul goes back to work to finish his day.  Since Courtney knows that she won't be leaving the house for the rest of the day she changes from her Nordstrom jeans into Victoria Secret sweatpants.  She decides to turn on some classical music while she reads her favorite book and relax before her husband comes home and she has to start cooking dinner.
    After dinner, her and her family sit down in the living room and turn on her favorite movie, Sixteen  Candles and watch it until the little ones fall asleep.  Once the kids are asleep around 8:30pm, her husbands puts them to bed while Courtney gets ready to do at home yoga in their spare bedroom.  At about 10:00pm her and her husband lie down in bed and talk about how excited they are to take a trip to Paris in two months.

Blog #7: Political Manifesto

      For our political campaign we decided to do women's equality in the workplace.  The reason that we picked this topic is because their is a lot of inequality in the workplace for women right now and has been for a very long time.  We picked Emma Watson to be our spokesperson because she is a feminist and strongly believes in equality for women in all aspects.
       Times have changed drastically and it is time for women to get more credit then they are receiving.  Women are more then capable then doing the same job as men, and deserve to get credit for their hard work.  For our campaign we decided to make a Facebook page about what it is like to be "Equally United".  On the Facebook page we have women that have made a difference in society and things that we can do to promote equality for women.

Blog #6: Gender Stereotyping

      Have you ever looked at a little kids toy ad and noticed the color and the products that they are promoting.  Nine times out of ten there are pink and purple toys for girls and blue and green toys for boys.  The type of toys are also different.  Girls are encouraged to play with dolls, and playhouses, and cooking equipment while men are encouraged to play with guns, and action figures and trucks and cars.  Parents want their boys to play with "manly" toys while girls are suppose to play with "girlie" toys.
     As you can see in the top ad the colors are switched.  The girl in the pink is playing with toys that are bleu and vice versa.  This is trying to show how boys and girls are gendered from the day that they are born.  This picture came from an ad in the New York Times in an article that talks about gender stereotyped toys.  Elizabeth Sweet says in the articles, "But by 1995, the gendered advertising of toys had crept back to midcentury levels, and it’s even more extreme today. In fact, finding a toy that is not marketed either explicitly or subtly (through use of color, for example) by gender has become incredibly difficult".  This shows how toys are made specially for genders  Toy makers know that they should make legos and building blocks in blue and green and make dollhouses and cooking equipment in pink and purple.  The article also talks about hard it is to find some gendered toys in the opposite colors.  If you take a minute to think about a toy store like Toys R Us or even Target, you can tell what aisle will have what just by the colors of it.  It is very unlikely to find gender neutral colored aisle.  By making the stores these way, it is just promoting gender stereotyping because it is unlikely that a girl and her mom are going to walk down the blue and green aisle.

    Gender stereotyping also occurs in job occupations.  I am sure the majority of the population know that a lot of women get paid less that a man even when they have the same occupation.  In the nurse ad it shows how unlikely it is to be a nurse when you are a man and if you want to become a male nurse you have to be able to stand up to the stereotypes and judgements.  Gender stereotyping can also occur in sports like the clip that I have above.  This is from the movie "Sandlot" that is about a group of guys who play pickup baseball games.  This quote, "You play baseball like a GIRL" was said to the opposing team in order to insult them.
      As you can see gender stereotyping is everywhere.  It is in sports, TV, ads, jobs, and much more and I think that we are a long way away from seeing it disappear.  Being a sociology major I don't believe in a specific gender stereotype.  I don't see how our society has made it okay for little girls to only play with dolls and playhouses and for boys to play with guns and cars.  And if we see a young child playing with the opposite toy, especially a boy, we automatically make assumptions about them.

Blog #5 Racial Stereotypes

 

Is racial stereotyping ever okay to do especially in advertising.  Absolutely not. You see this everyday though so maybe advertisers think that it is a way to humor the public and to get their company more recognized.  In both of these ads here we see racial stereotyping.  In the first ad there are four people doing a line up for some type of crime.  There are three white males and a dark colored male.  The three males are pointing to the dark skinned man, and the dark skinned man is even pointing to himself.  This shows that since there is a dark skinned man in the line up, it must mean that he have done the crime.  In the other ad there is a Chinese boy who failed his exam.  A lot of stereotypes are made about Chinese males and how they are exceptionally smart and are about average but this little boy is different because he failed a test. 

       Racial Stereotyping was huge in the past because we had a really big race issue going on when there was slavery and much more.  I think that people thought that it was okay to use racial stereotypes in the past to promote their product but I don't think that it is okay to do it so bluntly now.  I think that advertisers have ethnic responsibilities and a lot of people look at ads before they buy the products.  Why would someone want to buy a product where the advertiser used racial stereotyping in order to promote it.  In an article by Stanford Business about racial stereotyping it says, "Even among the most well-intentioned and consciously egalitarian people, says the associate professor of organizational behavior, non-conscious associations about ethnic groups still have a pernicious effect on behavior and attitudes".  This shows that people still have a problem with racial stereotyping no matter what social class they are in.