Advertising Research

Advertising research uncovers data that's needed to make advertising decisions. The type of information that a company should know before developing their advertising campaign are:

 1.  How people see its products and services 

 2.  How potential customers view the competition 

 3.  What brand or company image would be most credible 

 4.  Which ads have the best look and feel, aesthetically

Strategy Research: Helps define the product, idea or concept 

 1. Creative Concept Research: measures consumers’ responses to creative thoughts 

 2. Pretesting of ads: diagnose potential problems with communication prior to a campaign

 3. Posttesting of ads: evaluate the success and effectiveness of a campaign after it is exposed 

Twitter

Twitter is a great social media tool for anyone! Business can really get some exposure or boost their sales simply by posting tweets. Believe it or not.

Modcloth.com, a vintage clothing website, has grown substantially in the last year. I personally, have purchased over 6 items in the last 6 months and participate in their twitter contests every monday.  (#fundaymonday) They engage with their followers by tweeting directly to them, being personal can do so much more for your business.

One instance that demonstrates how careful you need to be with your business is Kim Kardashian and her bling-phone. People can publish anything about your business and in-turn affect your sales. Kim Kardashian threatened a company that "blings" out phones via twitter by saying if they didn't return her phone soon enough she would expose their name.

Social media is giving itself a big name in todays generation. People are creating jobs for themselves through tweeting and making it too!

At my position in Reeve Union we promoted our Reeve Bloggers by creating a poster after a photo shoot I had with them. It was a lot of fun and I'm proud of the work we did, in turn the bloggers have had more followers now. If you've seen this poster around Reeve, I did it! :)

"Great Advertising"

What makes great advertising?

The breakdown of positions that should be held in an advertising team


                                                             > Art Director > Non Verbal Ad Design
Creative Team > Creative Director
                                                             > Copy Writer > Verbal Message


Next, you can see how the audience can take your message

1 Informational              
   Avoidance or Removal


2 Transformational                        
    Positive Reinforcement for Rewards


3 Boom
    Gets Attention NOW!


Options 1 and 3 often fail to resonate with the audience or stick with them.

All of this adds up to great advertising. If everyone does their job and properly advertising for their company or product will be effective.

GMR Marketing

In January, Marketing Manager Kate Unger arranged for a trip to visit a large marketing agency that all of us Reeve Marketing students fell in love with. GMR Marketing. Based through out the United State, Canada, Europe and Asia Pacific this super marketing agency does it all!

I was mostly blown away by their website. A client or customer can easily find out what they need to by searching their site. It's user-friendly and has a lot of content to keep the customer informed.

Also, while we were there visiting, Art Director Krista Hansen Ludwig and HR Representative Karla Barillas told us to email our resumes to them and they had great feedback.

Reeve Marketing

I work for Reeve Memorial Union as a graphic designer. On some exciting occasions we get to rebrand areas around campus or recreate their logos. Since the graphic designers office space is now moving to a much more spacious area where we can also be with our boss more often than not, we have also decided to make ourselves available as designers to student organizations rather than only inside Reeve. Harrison Bowden, another graphic designer, had created a new brand for reeve marketing. After critique and the rest of the office's opinion he had switched things up a little bit.

He used the concept of CMYK with the colors and we will hopefully be tying in Copy This's new logo to work with ours. The top version with just the RM was his first one and the version with the circles is the final.

Pros and Cons to Broadcast Media

I found this site while looking through the pros and cons of broadcast media.

These SWOT (Strengths Weaknesses Opportunities and Threats) analyses are great for viewing positive and negative parts to your company that are internal and external.

Your strengths and weaknesses are something that is internal to your company. It derives from you. You can control these things and make them better or worse. Opportunities and threats come from outside the company, like a competitor and satisfied or unsatisfied customers.

85% of all brand purchases are made by women. Check this out - I found it very interesting.

Branding

The American Marketing Association (AMA) defines a brand as a name, symbol, term, sign or design or a combination of them intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of other sellers.

Branding is about getting your audience to view you as the one that provides the solution to their problems.

The objects that good brand will do include:

Delivers the message straight forward

Confirms your credibility

Connects the audience

Motivates the customer

Make the users loyalty firm in you

To make it in the branding world, you need to understand the needs and wants of your customer. Do this by integrating your brand strategies through your company at all points of the public consumer.

A strong brans is as valuable to your company as you make it. It's important to spend time investing in researching, defining and building your brand. Your brand is the source of a promis to your consumer.

Nappy Roots

So here is my process at work that reminds me of this class when we studied art design and production.
I get a project from my boss through a sheet of paper called a publicity form. The customer or client comes in and fills it out for whatever they desire to be designed to promote their event. Once I get the pub-form I create as many proofs or thumbnails as I see fit. Once that is done I can mock up about two of them and present both to the client so they can see their options. This also let's me as the designer stay creative.

Here are both mock up posters that were presented for UW-Oshkosh's Bye-Gosh Fest band Nappy Roots.

Allocating Funds for Advertising

So where do people get funds for advertising anyways?

Sales Percentage
Market Share
Objective Task
Empirical Research

Advertising is a result of sales and advertising creates sales. Increases in the market share are related closely to increases in the marketing budget. Advertising can be seen as a long term investment. Check this out. This is awesome.

Art Design and Production

There are 5 parts to art design and production, thumbnails, rough layout, comprehensive, mechanical and dummy.

Thumbnails are just a small fast drawing or description of your idea or concept.
Rough layouts can be drawn to the actual size to get a better feel for the concept.
Comprehensive is a facsimile of the finished ad
Mechanical is text and visuals in exact position, readu for camera before mass production
Dummy is a mock up of what your idea, concept or ad would actually look like. It presents the look and feel.

I don't understand how someone can be teaching about design yet design this video.

Can I get recognized via youtube?!

Ever caught yourself wondering where your 15 minutes of fame is? Or better yet - a lifetime after a simple video post. Three people, we all know and love for making our world such a better place, Rebecca Black, Justin Beiber, and that kid that sings to every song in his bedroom and sometimes gets guest appearances from 50 cent.

These people have made money from advertisers on youtube. Because they have became more popular to watch, ad space is more expensive and the poster gets paid more as well.

Has that always been there?

Today I was driving past festival foods and saw the brightly colored rainbow band across the doorway with the bobbled letters reading "festival". I started to think about their branding visuals and what they meant, or if they were consistant, good and effective. Sure, when you hear the word festival you think colors, fun, exciting and so much more - but what about their boomerang symbol, does everyone remember that? The boomerang is supposed to remind the customers about giving back, the same way a boomerang comes back to you after you throw it. Does anyone know how these two tie together? Or why they use two different concepts?

Festival has a catchy jingle that everyone knows, you're probably singing it now... right? "Great stuff for not a lot of money, festival foods!" But what about the visuals, the boomerang, one would think, would give more of an Austrailian or safari feel and the rainbow colors, ribbon and word festival do not mesh along side of this.

What are your thoughts?

Our Generation

So it's the night before my presentation for ad class, and I'm not nervous one-bit. My group has met three times and we're completely prepared. Not to mention our topic is social media ... uh, hello? Have you been paying attention? Not nervous one bit! Social media is our generation, our way of life and it certainly is the future. We're going to stress four important ways of business via the internet - youtube, facebook, twitter and craigslist. It's amazing how people can advertise and do business online for FREE these days.

Check these sites out and give 'em a whirl. I'm sure you already know how to use at least two of these popular sites and heard of at least three of them.

Enjoy the presentation tomorrow - and for cryin' out loud, please answer at least one of our questions instead of staring at us! We don't need a repeat of every single presentation.

Working with Hearts and Hands

Hands on Oshkosh is an event that takes place each year for students that attend the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh and also community members. Groups are sectioned off to surrounding organizations and schools in the Oshkosh community.

As Reeve Unions newest graphic designer, I was given the task to create the logo. A logo, wordmark or creation is an important part to the event or product that is being promoted. It speaks to the audience and should be aesthetically pleasing.

Each year the logo changes slightly and is printed on posters, t-shirts, napkin holders, and also displayed on our CampusVision. The hand theme plays a role every year - obviously, but this year I incorporated a heart on the hand. Personally when I took part in the event I felt like I was doing it out of the kindness of my heart and giving back to the community unselfishly.

The t-shirts were a hit at the event. All participants received a bright lime green shirt with the logo in blue and white, the committee had opposite colors. We had them printed from Offbeat Press, an awesome local t-shirt business in Oshkosh.

On Comet, On Cupid, On Donner, On BLITZEN!

After two years of being the marketing and pr intern for the College of Business at UW Oshkosh, I have now moved on to a new job as a graphic designer at Reeve Memorial Union. The things I've learned so far amazes me. Being proficient in Creative Suite 5 and learning to work in an awesome team environment are just the highlights.

My advertising class is starting to make my ears perk with all the talk of typography, art directors, design work and the like. This site caught my eye when watching the 2011 results reel. I instantly was hooked when Professor Jin Lee showed us this in class. Head over heels in love. Can I work for you guys?

Through weaving my way around the site to almost every page, I've learned a lot about blitz agency. Everything right down to the way you navigate is beautifully artistic and ingenious! < Come on, you're going to tell me that little red slider isn't sick?... LOVE IT!

Check this site out and L<3VE IT! just as much as I do.