What Is Real - Me or the Commercialization of Me?

     After watching the documentary Miss Representation, in class, one of our discussion questions was "What is real - you or the commercialization of you?" This question really stuck out to me because it is something I have never really thought about before. The thought of there being another version of me that wasn't quite me is completely crazy to me. And the fact that this other me -- the one that advertisers see -- could be more predominant than how I see me just doesn't sit right with me. Luckily, I didn't have to look too far for my answer. I realized that while the me I think I am may not necessarily be the most accurate depiction of me, it is far closer than the one that advertisers have of me. I am much more than a walking wallet that is willing to spend its money on anything and everything it sees. I have already determined that most advertisements have little to no effect on me anyways. The common advertising techniques just don't work on me. I don't buy that many things, so I don't feel that advertisers can really have a more accurate and real idea of who I am than I do. I am certainly more real than my commercialization.

How Does the Media Influence Women and Men?

      In class, we watched a documentary called Miss Representation, which focuses on how women are represented in the media and its effects on them. It says that the media teaches girls and women that the most important thing about them is the way they look. Everything revolves around the way they look. The media sets unrealistic expectations of how they should look by photoshopping and digitally altering pictures of women on magazines and on social media. They do this to promote the idea that women should be tall and skinny to be considered beautiful. This teaches girls that if they do not look this way, they are not beautiful. As a result, they become self-conscious about how they look and become vulnerable to objectification, both from others and themselves. People begin to believe that a woman's sole purpose is to just stand around and look pretty, and this expectation has damaged women's representation in positions of power and in prominence in places like Hollywood or other media outlets. The documentary didn't focus a whole lot on the media's effect on men, but it did touch on it. It said that boys are taught from a very young age to be very masculine and to suppress their emotions. They said that men suppressing their emotions combined with the objectification of women leads to violence against women. Overall, the message of the video was that the media heavily influences the way people see themselves and they way they act, usually for the negative. It is our job to ignore and see past these forced messages and just exist as we want to, without anybody telling us how to do so.

Stealth Marketing

 

           While watching Making Cents Out of Teens: Merchants of Cool, a documentary about the various techniques used by advertisers to sell their products and how this must change over time, I came across the term “stealth marketing.” According to marketing-schools.org stealth marketing is any type of marketing technique in which the advertisers are trying to sell something to consumers without the consumers knowing they are being sold something. A very common example of this would be product placement in a movie or TV show, or placing actors out in cities to talk to normal people about whatever product they are trying to push. The goal of this type of advertisement is to create a buzz around a certain product, so that people will be more receptive to direct advertisement later on. I am interested in the ethicality of stealth marketing. When looking at the definition, I feel very strongly that it is not ethical and I feel like I have been purposefully deceived and taken advantage of. I feel offended that people may have, or at least have tried to appeal to use my subconscious to control me. But when I look at actual examples of this technique, I feel better about it. It seems a bit more obvious than I had originally imagined. Like with product placement, it’s either so subtle that I didn’t recognize it, or so blatantly obvious that I laugh at it. If I ever make a decision based solely on product placement, it will most likely be to not buy a product because it was so annoying. At that point, I’d probably go with the competition just to spite the company. But very rarely do I think it would ever come down to just that. That being said, I would absolutely promote a product in person or on social media for money, but it would probably have to be for a considerable amount of money. It would also depend on the product, how I feel about it, and its reputation. Although almost every product has a price that I would do it for. I think my only condition would be that people know I’m getting paid for it. I’m not too sure why, but the transparency would make me feel much better. I would like to be a non-deceptive as possible. However, I don’t think I would be too hard for people to figure out that I am getting paid for it, just like how it is fairly easy for me to spot this marketing.

For more information of stealth marketing, go to: http://www.marketing-schools.org/types-of-marketing/stealth-marketing.html

Advertising and Coolness

 

          Recently in class, we watched Making Cents Out of Teens: Merchants of Cool, which is a documentary about how advertisers try to keep up with the times and how they market their products. Something that I thought was very interesting about their tactics is that advertisers send people around to find out what is considered “cool.” These people are called cool hunters. They talk to people and look at the trends they see and common threads and interest between them. The cool hunters then report back to the advertisers about what is cool. The advertisers use this information to craft their ads to appeal to young people. Specifically, they are targeting teenagers because they have a lot of excess money to spend. But the most interesting part of this is that the advertisers doing this essentially destroys the coolness of whatever cool thing they put in the ad. This is because when something is brought to the mainstream, everybody tries to do that cool thing. This makes it lose its specialness and its coolness. Then the “cool kids” move on to something else and advertisers have to figure out what that is so they can put it into their ads and ultimately inadvertently destroy them. And it continues on in a cycle forever until the cool kids find something that is completely indigestible by advertisers. This is usually something that is highly vulgar or inappropriate in some other way for the mainstream population. I think that this plays a large role in the rebellious teen stereotype. While this problem may not cause the stereotype, it definitely would exacerbate it. In their effort to find something that is cool, they stray further and further from the media and everything else that is seen as “safe” or “mainstream.” While this stereotype used to be very common and still is to an extent, it is slowly decreasing. Some of this void has been taken up by hipsters, whose whole thing is liking something before it was considered cool. They like smaller, lesser known things, like indie movies or very small bands. This is a more peaceful escape from mainstream media and culture than the rebellious teen movement was. But I find it quite ironic that in their search for cool, advertisers end up destroying cool, or taking the coolness of a thing away. Advertisers are aware that this is happening, but they do not know how to combat it. All they can do for now is keep on looking for and destroying coolness until they can find another way to do things.

While writing my previous blog, an idea popped into my head that really intrigued me. I was writing about the effectiveness of commercials and I began to talk about how I want to see Star Wars IX even though I know almost nothing about it. That led me to think about if movies today are just advertisements for their sequels. This is especially prevalent today, as many major film studios are intent on setting up their own highly successful film franchises, much like the Marvel Cinematic Universe or Star Wars. These franchises usually release at least one movie per year, and require audiences too watch most, if not all, of the previous movies in order to watch the new ones. It has even gotten to the extent that movies contain entire scenes with no other purpose than to set up sequels, usually placed during the credits or at the very end of the credits. These scenes can also be put into the main part of the movie, where they set up a plot thread, and just leave it hanging until the next movie. And while these scenes can be very enjoyable, it is almost undeniable that they are pure advertisement for the next movie. It’s pretty obvious. This is a very smart business tactic because fans of a movie/franchise don’t have to wait around for months wonder if there will be another movie in their favorite series. As soon as the audiences walk out of the theater, they know that the story is not over and that they have more movies to enjoy their favorite characters. The studios are basically guaranteeing that audiences will come back to spend even more money next year. While this can certainly be handled incorrectly and quite obviously, there are plenty of movies that can pull this off organically. So as long as it doesn’t feel too forced, I am okay with this type of advertisement.

How Effective Are Commercials?

            Commercials and advertisements surround us constantly throughout the day. There is no escape from them, wherever you may be. But their prevalence in our society has led me to an interesting question: How many commercials truly convince you to buy something? I know that I don’t typically find commercials too effective in persuading me to buy or do something. If I buy something, the chances are that I would buy it without having to look at a commercial for it. I would either already know enough about the product through my own research or have it recommended to me by a friend. The closest thing to an actual advertisement that I think would convince me to buy something is a review for the product. This could be an in-hand product review, like for a phone, or a written review for something like a movie that I was on the fence about seeing. Although in this specific case, and probably only in this specific case, a commercial might just convince me, but not very often. Usually, I hear about movies a long time in advance and make up my decision about whether or not I want to see it then, like with Star Wars IX. I haven’t seen anything for it yet, they probably haven’t even started shooting it, but I have heard about it and I know that I want to see it. But as for the ads and commercials, I don’t think that they are very effective at all. Once in a while, they might convince me to buy something, but I think this is a rare occurrence.

Politics and Media

    The current state of politics and its relationship with media is kind of weird. I’m not sure if it is the Trump presidency or if it has always been like this and I was just too young to notice or care, but it seems to me like more people are involved in politics since the 2016 election. More people are talking about them, big political issues and debates have become more mainstream, and people almost always have an opinion about everything. There are also more people who quickly jump to extremes, as well. It just seems like public focus has shifted more towards Washington D.C. than normal.

    Perhaps the oddest thing about all of this is the White House’s relationship with late night talk shows or comedy shows, Saturday Night Live or The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. These two shows in particular have gotten a lot more popular over the last two years. They have done very well making fun of President Trump and his administration. As much as they oppose him and make fun of him, at the end of the day, is presidency has been a good thing for them, at least in terms of business. It seems that every day something so crazy happens surrounding President Trump or his administration that they never run out of material. Their main focuses have shifted towards the White House. This has become so drastic that some people events these programs as their main source of news, myself included.

    Many of these late night comedy shows are left-leaning, politically. They have found their audience who is not pleased with the current administration. The shows attempt to ease their audience’s pain by making them laugh. More and more people flock to these shows because they feel better when watching them. While they’re watching, they hear the news, which eliminates their need to watch regular news programs.

    So, in a way, these shows have their increasing successes because of the very thing that they oppose. I thought that it was kind of weird, but now it makes perfect sense to me. Conflict keeps things interesting. Of everything stayed perfect all the time, there would be no competition and everything would be boring.

My Issues with Instagram

     My preferred social media platform is Instagram. I have mentioned that here before. But lately, I found it has gotten so much more difficult to use. 

     Since I do not have a whole lot of free time in my life right now, I do not check it as regularly as I’d like. I end up only checking it about once every week or two. This makes my life just that much more difficult because I like to see each and every post that people I follow post. I don’t want to miss anything, even if I do end up seeing it very late. Earlier today, I was finally checking my main feed after twenty-two days. But I got to pictures from about two weeks ago and then the feed just wouldn’t load any more.  It wasn’t that my WiFi cut out or anything like that. I just reached the bottom of my feed and there was no sign that suggested that the app had any intention of showing me posts from before that. I was kind of mad. I had spent hours trying to look at all the posts I had missed in the past three weeks, but it wasn’t even letting me see all of them. So I had to go to each account’s profile to see their pictures from this missing time frame. Why is there a bottom to my feed? Why doesn’t it just continue forever, just loading a few posts at a time like normal? It is a complete mystery to me. 

     Also, I have noticed that posts in my feed do are not always in chronological order. Sure, they follow a loose chronology, so that you won’t get posts from months ago in between a few posts from yesterday, but a post from five hours ago might show up before a post from three hours ago. I don’t get this either. Is there any purpose to having my posts show up in a somewhat random order? Because I just find it plain annoying and pointless. 

     I really wish Instagram would fix these very annoying issues with their app because overall I quite like it and I think it is vastly superior to other forms of social media.