Post 10: Consumer Behavior Workshop: 3/11/2015 (La Ve Triple Filtree)

Advertisements for alcohol drinks is often associated with parties or leisure moments, and the poster of  "La Ve Triple Filtree" from Stella Artois is no exception. In the poster, we have an intimate dressed blond lady and a blond man standing on the balcony of a resort hotel. The lady was in the dress is holding the wired phone along with her hip, which maybe sexual suggestive. The man in the white shirt was standing in front of the lady, laying his elbow on the balcony while reading the brochure, which most likely related with the beer product because of the obvious product name and image. In other words, it seems like the high classed couple ordering something to enjoy their times and the are thinking about ordering the product that is presented at the lower right corner while the product not on the top of the poster. On the lower left corner, we got at description on why this beer is special as it is triple filtered.

Consumer Behavior Analysis:
1. Gender Split: This ad seem like it is for mostly for mens. The adviser seems to believe that it is every man's dream to go out on vacation with a sexy lady (or special someone) on the side, and with a beer is the dream come true.

2.  Age: It is most likely men from 21 - 65 years old.

3. Marital Status: As for this, it can be universal for both single or married man. husband/boyfriend ordering beer (the product) for himself and his wife/girlfriend at the resort vacation.

4. Judging from the wearing of the man in the poster, it tried to attract the traditional white-collar male people in the society. the man in the poster seem like a higher up on the vacation.

5. Car: Most likely the Sedans from Honda or Chevy

6. Urban/Rural: Definitely Urban people but can also attract rural people who know what it is

7. Grocery Shopping: Most Likely the consumer will go to Safeway, but 7-11 or other liquor stores might be consideration

8. Favorite clothing brand: It might be Nautica or Tommy Hilfiger.

9. Favorite Music: Pop singing or Classical musical

10. Favorite Movie: Citizen Kane, Taken 3, Expandable. Drama or action movies

11. TV or TV shows: NBC,  Top Gear, Undatable, Family Guy

12. Alcoholic Drink: Budlight, of Stella Artois

13. Non Alcololic Drink: Water, Coke, Orange Juice, Tea

14. Favorite Eatery: Stake, fruits, pasta, subway sandwich

15. Fragrance: BOSS

16. Sporting Activity: Tennis, Surfing, Soccer, Pool, and tracking

17. Favorite Vacation destinations: Beaches, Mountain, Boating, Cruising

18. Dog or Cat: most likely any dogs, like Chihuahuas, Labradors

19. Kid Names: Johnny, Sammy, Jen,

20. Mac or PC: Apply to both platforms.  

Post 9: Political Campaign Project (Workshop on 3/4/15)

On 3/4/2015 Wednesday, Me, Nicole Solis, and Brandon Torres gathered in the classroom to make a fictional political campaign for our workshop assignment. We decided to work on the immigration issues of America. Since I did am not so interested on the issue, Brandon and Nicole did most of the plannings while I offer the suggestions. We decided to name our party "The Foreigners League." We support United States stand out as a multicultural country. Our catchphrase is called, "Immigrants UNITE the U.S.A." Our party believes that American should give the same opportunity to our migrant workers as they all have the potential to offer America back. After all, our country is bulid up from the practice of immigrations from all over the world. While my fellow group members decided to work on the ideal and explanations of our goals, I decided to work on our campaign poster for our cause. We achieve this through in-class meetings and contribute our parts on Google Slides applications.

Post 8: Greenpeace UK Commercial: Go Beyond Oil (2010)

In 2010, Greenpeace has made a political campaign that is against oil fracking and drilling. In the campaign video, it starts with explaining humanity dependence on extracting oil, but on the second half, it started to say that our dependence of oil will drill the world in to emptiness and contribute to global warming. While everything was considered valid to this point, the explaining of alternate energy source and solution was relatively vague. The campaign explicitly claims that electric source is an alternative to the oils sources. What the ad did not mention is that electricity is also not exactly the cleanest energy and the electric car batteries can be a big factor for the pollutions. If Greenpeace are dedicated in creating a sustainable environment, they need to think about the next steps after abandoning oil drilling and consuming. The electric consumption also produces large amounts of CO2 and thus causes more likeliness for global warming. According to "Spatial and temporal heterogeneity of marginal emissions: Implications for electric cars and other electricity-shifting policies" by Joshua S. Graff Zivin, Matthew J. Kotchen, and Erin T. Mansur, The power plants that existing on earth generates randomly large amounts of the carbon dioxide and there are no definitive way to seek out the most responsible power plants that creates CO2. It is true that alternative energy source is yet and need to be found, but dependence on power plants is not one of them as power plants produces no less pollutions to our environment.

source:Joshua S. Graff Zivin, Matthew J. Kotchen, Erin T. Mansur. (2014). Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization(7), Part A,  248-268
doi:10.1016/j.jebo.2014.03.010

Post 7: Gender Stereotypes in our 2/25 workshop commercials

In this workshop, we discussed the gender stereotypes in advertisements. One particular ad that caught my interest was the Diet Coke commercial where man become the sexual object in the ad while the women in the ad were the initializers of the event. First we seen a bunch of women in picnic, they were drinking the diet cokes, and one of them spotted a young, built gardner. One of the ladies rolled a diet coke can to the gardner and tell him to open the coke that has been shaken while on its way to him. As a result, the gardner was soaked with coke, and here is where he took of his t-shirt and shows off his well-build torso to impress the picnic ladies. To make this ad more intimate, we have a background song that is about a woman who is desperately in love with a man and do anything with the man. Me and my group figured out it is another sexism ad, it jut this time man is the sexual object. In other words, role reversal on the traditional gender stereotypes. Next, we were asked that what if the gender between the character swapped, and what would be wrong with it. If the gender were swapped, I personally would feel like it is a bunch of picnic guys bulling a hard working girl with soda tricks, and the girl would go on and show the guys her body after being soaked by soda. In short, it would be very inappropriate than it originally was. However, the original ad was already wrong enough since I think using anyone as sexual object is silly and demeaning.

   

Post 6 Gender Stereotype in Advertising

The purpose of commercial and advertisement is to sell something to audiences. When it come to woman in commercial, sex-related theme will likely be involved as it will attract peoples attentions. In other words, women are often shown as the willingly and unwillingly the target of the gender stereotypes in our media. Such phenomenon will continue to exist if people continuing on falling with commercial that is sex-related. Even though most of people knows using sex as selling point is not the most moral idea in advertising, but it is most likely effective. Sexism in commercial has been a trend, according to "Sexism in Advertising and marketing to Woman" by Michelle Miller, the sexual portrayal such as woman's body parts, positioning, and speaking in advertising has become very obvious and advertising companies are pushing the boundaries even further because people are just easily fascinated by such portrayals. The 2014 Subway Halloween commercial depicts no less of such situations as it shows that Subway's sandwich help keep a woman's body in shape for her Halloween costumes.

Journal source: Miller, M. (2005). Sexism in advertising and marketing to women. International Journal Of Advertising, 24(1), 113-115.

Post 5: Stereotypes on the most recent Transformers Movie

1.

Stereotyping is and will always be an continuous issue that spread around every corner of the modern media. There is one movie that has obviously flawed depiction on both gender and racial diversity called Transformers: Age of Extinction -directed by Michael Bay and written by Ehren Kruger- possibly either the most loved or hated movie of 2014. This movie basically promotes all forms of stereotypes with all races and gender, be they positive or negative. In other words, the movie encourages the popular beliefs and misconceptions on both genders and race around the world.

2. 

-In the beginning of the film, Cade Yeager, the main human protagonist, was being harassed briefly by a bossy, overweight landlady who is an African American. Ever though this character and scene were ment to be comic relief of the film.

-And then, we got a 'Drift', one of the 'good' transformers that took appearance and personality of Japanese samurai, who is formally a villain according to his back story, speaking with slight Asian accent and idioms, and being exceptional in close range combat with his foes. 

-The females in the movie did not escape the traditional stereotypes and misconceptions too. For example, Su Yueming, the asian female character of  the film, basically fit to the typical "Dragon Lady" vibe due to the movie mainly focus on her sassy attitude and her superior martial arts. In "Asian-American Retroperspective at Locarno Film Festival" by Dan Georgakas, Such Asian image were already found since in 1920s such as "Anna May Wong" as she was being sexual and sassy in the movie. 

-Last but not least, this film is promoting traditional masculinity since most competent roles such as main hero and villain are played by European Males. And there no female transformers appear on screen despite their recent increasing popularity in other continuities of Transformers franchise.

Image URL:https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiH1ol5m8RguIeBSo_xgrcxPrbz2TB_-BGgbNadbupbxuQdXtoxtcOln4Z8IaYCrqKU6bqjUDfeQJoUfVZBKEhV98tpOb3FFxrS5NPecZwt4oKXaHhQmJmaw0xmLlaF8RI0s_cULh-M2bk6/s1600/Transformers+4+Promo+Banner+(2).jpg

Journal URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41689445

Post 4: Racial Stereotypes in commercial

LAY'S Do Us A Flavors 2015

The practice of stereotype throughout our history is inevitable, be they positive, neutral, or negative portrayal. Stereotypes on race and gender exist in every single part our perception and it comes in any size and shapes. Let take examples from food, tastes, and flavors. People automatically associated that flavor with the origins of the related cultures and it people. For instance, we automatically associate wasabi with Japanese or Asian culture. Such idea is also shown in this commercial. We all does stereotype on race consciously or unconsciously, and how is it appropriate in the society are still   debatable.

Stereotypes in food related advertising are perhaps one of the most difficult issue for many ad agency these days. The company wanted to depict the themes of the food in a rightful method, yet they may offend the certain groups of people unconsciously through racial stereotypes. In "25 Most Racist Advertisement and Commercials" there are many racist ad commercial that involves with food in American history such as Lucky Charms cereals commercial and the older Jello commercial.

Website link: http://www.adsavvy.org/25-most-racist-advertisements-and-commercials/

Post 3: Semiotic Analysis

Blog Post #3 Semiotic Analysis

Printed Ad:

This particular printed ad was founded in the "Dirt Rider" magazine was called "Healthcare for your bike" by Pivot Works. The denotation is the X-Ray structure of the dirt bike as a hospital patient. Viewers got to see the structures of the "patient" bike as the connotation aspect of the ad. The ad pointed out the problem area of the bike. The ad even went further and added the little patient status in between the bike and the title banner. Finally, the name of the company "Pivot Works" located between the wheels of the bike. In the lower left corner of the ad, the company offering their bearings and seals as the "prescription" for the bike. It tries to give the viewers the semiotic senses of the bike is as important of the owner's health.

Signifier: The X-ray on bike

Signified: The Bikes condition (health)

Denotation: The bike and it structures, problems, and the bearing and seals to fix the problem.

Connotation: The bike is the patient that needs to be treated

Myth: Pivot Works' product was the solution of the problem (or bikes disease)

Video Ad:

This particular ad from Toyota is trying to symbolize the safety their production cars with computer systems that help prevent accidents.. The reason why they make is ad interesting is that the audience got to see how does the accident preventing system works, such as vehicle stability control or line keep assist that keep the drivers on the track, or pre-collusion systems that help drivers prevent the fatal accident. It is a very straight forward ad that tell the potential customers that this car company values safety above all and has the technology to prove their ideals in driver safety.  

Signifier: Car that can prevent accidents

Signified: Car with awesome technology

Denotation: This new system now rolling across the new Toyota cars

Connotation: Our cars protect the drivers from dangerous situations

Myth: Our car is the safest with technology that prevent accidents

Public Ad:

This is the public ad that is shown above the door way on a subway retail store. It has the chicken sandwich covered the right half of the whole ad. On the left half of the ad it show the name of their new product called: "Grilled Chicken" and the main trademark SUBWAY right below their new product. This ad is very self explanatory by showcasing (obviously exaggerated) details of the 6-inch sandwich to attract the potential customers.

Signifier: The chicken sandwich

Signified: Try our new product

Denotation: A nice look at the sandwich

Connotation: Try out new sandwich

Myth: Everyone should try this new flavor

Post 2: My favorite Super Bowl ad and it's agency

Yesterday, I went to watch Super Bowl 2015, not because I am interested in American Football, but for searching a creative advertisements. The whole event is basically a big advertisement montage, so it is likely for me to find a great one. Of course, I found the one advertise called "Invisible Mindy Kaling" from  which was actually brilliant amongst all the insurance advertisements I have ever seen.
Maybe it is because sometimes, I felt like I am reliable to her in some ways as sometime peoples seem to forget my existences whenever they were distracted by other conversations. I think it would be nicer if people don't pretend me invisible, especially when I needed attentions. I also love the narrator aspect of the commercial, it one of the styles I like with. That ad has definitely got my attention and I do make their brand in considerations if I am getting insurance.

The "Invisible Mindy Kaling"

Post 1: My Experiences With Advertising

My interest in advertising or commercial traces back to the time during grade school in Taiwan. I often got attracted by the catchphrases, jokes, and puns that presented in the commercial, and sometime ended up buying the said product. Over the years, I realized being in Advertising field is a opportunity to share creativity, and plays a permeant role in the market. I found out that a successful ad needs to be attractive in certain way and clearly represent the product it is selling. In America, the one of many advertisements that I will always remember is the Pepsi truck commercial with I thought was fun and creative. As I graphic designer, I found advertising is the logical next step for my future, and it fit my interest the best. It is likely that I will go work at the advertising company after graduation or study advertising major after I reapply SJSU.

My favorite commercial in US:

Bonus: My favorite commercial in Taiwan (in Mandrin Chinese):

This is basically the concept of Voodoo! You start with speaking a curse to someone you resent before you eat the product, and it will happen!! I fall for this so terribly when I was in grade school!