4 Lessons From TEDxMSU

1. Open your mind. Show your smile. Find more positive things, rather than the negative ones.
2. You could speak English with an excellent accent even if you're not a native speaker.
3. To be a glocal(=global+local) citizen.
4. Discover the hero in your mind. Speak for those who are silent.

A Brief Analysis of Roxy‘s Social Media Marketing Strategy

Since Roxy is a fashion brand mainly targeting youth, it would be a smart strategy to invest on social media that most of young people frequently use. And actually that is what Roxy has done. Roxy has built its Facebook page (1.9 million followers now, while last week was 1.1 million), Twitter profile (20 thousand followers), and Youtube channel (10 thousand subscribers). All these profiles are not static pages. By communicating with their followers directly on these media and frequently updating news and videos of new products and activities or competitions of surfing and snowboarding, Roxy has built a close connection with its targeting consumers on social media.

Roxy also updated its official blog on its official website every day. Adaptive to its fun and alive, naturally beautiful, daring and confident brand image, their blog is quite visual appealing with bright colors and lively pictures. I personally think the “temperament” of its blog is very suitable to its targeting niche market including surfing, snowboarding, swimwear or some other extreme sports.

Not only does Roxy utilize those free social networks and official websites to maintain a positive relationship with its targeting markets, but also they convey a message that Roxy is more than a cool clothing brand, but a lifestyle that people probably live too. While Roxy has be quite successful in its social media marketing, I would suggest them build campaigns on Pinterest too, whose visual features would quite fit for Roxy’s brand image.

Do Subliminal Messages Have Huge Powers?

Derren Brown is a master of mind control. Just share two videos of his tricks of our mind here. You could see the huge power of subliminal messages. These videos are really hard to believe. Actually you could see many people posted their suspicion in the comment box of Youtube. By myself, I still have some doubt about the execution of these two experiments. If you feel interested, you could find more similar ones on Youtube as Derren Brown has made series of such experiments.

Check them out:

Share another article: Subliminal Marketing: How Ads Manipulate Us

Hidden Tricks in Logo Designing

Have you noticed the hidden message after you saw the logo of FedEx for hundreds of times? The arrow stands for the fast speed and precision. I have no idea about the meaning of the spoon. Perhaps it's just a coincidence.  Lindon Leader, the designer of the logo called the subtle arrow a "hidden bonus": if people get the punch line, it's good; but if not, it will not reduce the communication power of the logo.

Check out the interview with the logo designer: The Man Behind the FedEx Logo

I also found some other interesting logos that hid messages behind. I'd like to share them here:

Don't get them or want more? Go to:

25 logos with hidden messages – Amazing Graphic Designing tricks! 

Do you think those subtle information hidden in the logos will work? I'll share more about subliminal marketing in my next post.

To be continued...

Glengarry Glen Ross Teaches You How to Sell

The leading role in this "Glengarry Glen Ross - Put That Coffee Down" video describes the process of personal selling by personal examples as well as verbal instruction:

The man in this video yielded to get others' attention with lots of dirty talk, threatened to get their interest, disdained to arouse their desire, and shouted "always be closing", which would finally make people act.

----This is absolutely not a normal way that salesperson dare to use to their targeted customers, but the general concept of AIDI that the video emphasizes does work. Sales process in our daily life normally follows the AIDI concept - attention, interest, desire, and action. No one would deny the video is a successful example of how to sell.

3 Ways to Experience Infographics

Would you prefer reading a whole-text or an infographic? I would totally go for an infographic! It's summative,visual and entertaining. I mean, a huge amount of data is boring, but with graphics, they're not.

If you want to see some awesome infographics, you could:
     Check out my board of Infographic on Pinterest.
     Visit this site: Daily Infographic. An infographic a day.

If you want to create your own infographic, here are some ways:
     Find & Make Your Own Infographics With Visual.ly
     10 Awesome Free Tools To Make Infographics

At last, try the app of 'What about me?', which provides an infographic of your life by connecting to your Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube profile. I am soooooo surprised to find that among all those divisions, the most of me is science (16%), followed by tech (15%), food (15%), and study (15%)!

Wedding+App? Wedding App!

Have you ever thought about creating an app just for your wedding?

Unbelievable!

Janet & Timmy is a wedding app made for Janet Chow & Timmy Hung, who are one of the famous celebrities in Hong Kong. They spent 200,000 RMB, which is more than 30,000$, producing this tailor-made app.

The app includes their love story, wedding invitation, wedding photos, and location-based services. Some of the contents like the wedding tour and guest list could only be seen with passwords provided for relatives and friends.

That must be a cool and innovative idea of wedding. But I'm wondering whether some hackers would like to take this challenge. Plus, this app could be kept for just one year. Does it worth it? Well, if only you are happy with it, just do it!

Have Fun with "Draw Something"

Haha, just be addicted to "Draw Something" today.

Some funny things happened to us, who are easy to mix up some similar words, like Jessica drew a puppet while the word actually was "puppy", Vic took "ballet" as "ballot"...Lol, plus our bad sketching, it makes our guessing even harder! And usually we would use some words hint with the sketch. Maybe this app should change their name as "write sth"!

Laugh at our drawing:

Look at some fantastic drawings:
Draw Something: 20 Amazing Smartphone Sketches

Funeral - Share An Impressive Commercial From Singapore

This ad is really touching. At the funeral of her husband, the lady didn't speak highly of her husband, but told some little imperfect stories about him. You may think it funny that what she missed so much was his snore. But in the end, she told us it is those little imperfections make our life perfect. Maybe that's what family is about - to find a life partner who is beautifully imperfect to you.

Building Connections with Whom You Are Selling to

I read a story illustrating salesmanship which was about Sir Francis Younghusband's first trial of climbing Mt. Everest. When he sought permission of climbing the mountain from the Tibetan side from the then ruling Lama, the Lama was surprised why this Englishman wanted to do that. Guess how Sir Francis explained it to the Lama? He told the Lama that he was from a sect whose Gods could only be worshipped on the top of mountains. The Lama took this explaination easily as it was quite understandable for religious people.

That might be an example of personal selling which suggests building connections with your customers. But it works for nonpersonal selling too, such as advertising, public relation, sales promotion, etc. Get to know your targeted customers, and build a relationship with them - that's what customer relationship marketing is asking for. If we expand this point to our daily life, doesn't it work for other human relationships too, like friendship, marriage, or family?

Talking From "Sex, Death, and Subliminal Advertising"

My marketing teacher showed the video of Sex, Death, and Subliminal Advertising to us in class. The video itself is like a magic, taking us to a magical world of advertising by uncovering so much hidden information within ads around us. But when I first saw it, I doubt these subliminal messages work on people. I mean, if I can't even recognize the hidden information, how can I be affected by them? 

But today I read a chapter about subliminal advertising in a book. It says that many research help to answer a question -  "Can we perceive something that we are not aware of consciously, and can it affect us?" This question may help advertisers decide the effectiveness of subliminal appeals. Actually a popular argument about subliminal message is that the audience is affected by them unconsciously without noticing them consciously.  

I agree with the statement that different persons have different thresholds of perception. Also I think subliminal advertising would work on those who could perceive it and even with a stronger effect on them than regular advertising. But the answer of how many people could perceive it is a X. That's why I think using subliminal advertising is a risk to some extent.

A Hilarious Campaign of Columbia: Great Moments in Trying Stuff Series

Have you ever thought about putting your waterproof coat on a cat or using the shoe as a drain maker to get food drained? Unimaginable! Columbia has made a series of Great Moments in Trying Stuff videos which I think are all full of fun! It's quite a smart tactic to discover some unintended uses of your products and then make hilarious videos to market your products to consumers.

Check them out:

http://www.youtube.com/user/ColumbiaSportswear/featured 

You'll love it!

Check Out My Board of Ad Campaign on Pinterest

Remember in one of my previous posts: Board of Ad Campaign on Pinterest, I declared that I would start to pin amazing ad campaigns? The good news is that I've went over all these 100 Captivating Ogilvy Campaigns and here comes the result of my efforts combining Pinterest with advertising campaigns - board of Ad Campaign. 

It has been a habit that I watched four campaigns each day and pinned them to my Ad Campaign board so that I could share them with my friends on Facebook and my followers on Pinterest. And some of those ad campaigns could get "likes" or "repins" from other users while others not although they're really creative and fantastic campaigns. Actually I found that pics which were over exaggerated or sexually appealing would be easy to get repins. The reason might be that Pinterest is a social bookmarking website based on pictures. People on Pinterest are exposed to so many pictures that they could not have enough time or energy to pay attention to the content of every picture. Therefore, they would firstly be absorbed by the "looking" of a picture which stands for the ad campaign,and then got started to notice the content of the ad campaign itself. 

Anyway, I would keep on pinning captivating campaigns onto Pinterest. As a student majoring in advertising, I think this habit would keep me on the cutting edge of this area and provide me with a creative perspective toward various things.

10 Guidelines To Be A Mad Man With Plots [Video]

I just read the article by David Dunne - Being a Mad Man Without Losing the Plot, which provides 10 guidelines to help evaluate advertising. I'm trying to list the examples that he mentioned in a video form, thus making the article more visually appealing:

The advertising campaign must be--

1. noticeable (Diamond Shreddies campaign)

2. insight-based (Never Stop Milk campaign of the Prairie Milk Marketing Partnership)

3. memorable (1984 Apple's Macintosh)



4. branded (Dove Evolution)

5. 'campaignable' (Nescafe)

  

    negative example: Molson Canada - rant

6. differentiated (Dockers' Nice Pants campaign)

7. motivating (Got Milk/Deprivation campaign of the California Milk Processor Board)

8. ethical (Benetton's 'shock' campaign)

     Since the 'shock' campaign was forced to end because of its unethicity, I coul only find this new controvertial 'unhate' campaign which features kissing of world learder.

9. financially sustainable (Talk to Chuck campaign by Charles Schwab)

10. integrated (Doritos' 2009 Become the Doritos Guru campaign)

     In the Doritos Guru campaign, consumers could win a prize of $25,000 by naming a new flavor for Doritos and making a commercial of it by themselfves. Apart from a YouTube channel, they also built a Facebook Fan page and devoted to other online advertising including display ads.

   Scream Cheese - Doritos Guru Winner:

--These 10 qualities above would provide us "a systematic way of thinking" about ad campaigns, thus helping us evaluate whether the advertising is effective and worthwhile.

Location-Based Services: Foursquare and Beer Apps for St. Patrick's Day

I’ve been a frequent user of Foursquare check-in function. Actually there’re many research have done to find out people’s motivations to use Foursquare. The research showed that people might check in for a)badges and fun, b)keeping in connection with their friends, c)finding a good tip about the place or discovering a new place, d)recording the places where they have been to. I would definitely agree that all these motivations have played a certain role in formulating my behavior of using Foursquare to check-in.

I also found there have been many location-based apps coming out at a certain time for different occasions or festivals during a year. Like for Saint Patrick’s Day, we have beer apps (10 Best Beer Apps for St. Patrick’s Day) which could help pinpoint nearby brews, show the map to go there and also help you find the way back home after the drinking day. It’s a good and innovative idea to combine retailers with location-based apps. But when I check out some of those apps, I found there have been few local retailers in Lansing area who are active on those apps. It might be too new a trend for retailers to catch up.

I believe location-based services are offering new opportunities to marketers in mobile commerce. It's also a good chance for retailers to build enduring relationships with their consumers through using location-based services.

From Advertising System Structure to My Future Job

I just realized that advertising system is such a huge system:

I could work for an ad agency, either a full-service agency, or a specialist, or a boutique, or in-house!

If I am not to work for an ad agency, I might work for an advertiser, who is the one who pay to advertise. That's a big range -- from food industry to household suppliers, or even the government who is absolutely not going to pay to advertise in my home country.

Then, if I don't feel like working for the advertiser, I could work for the media, where most of the money for advertising is spent. Media is a tremendous party of newspaper, television, radio, magazines, and all kinds of new media which are based on digital technology like computer technology.

What else can I work for? Manufacturers, retailers, research group, control institutions, etc. Plenty!

Suddenly I feel so bright about my future career...

A Bright Idea of Advertising to Both Elders and Children

When our class talked about advertising to elders and children today, I just can't help thinking of that hilarious 2012 Super Bowl commercial of Doritos called Sling Baby.
It seems to be a problem that "older people are often absent from mass media - when present, subjected to stereotypes".
It's also a problem that children are vulnerable consumers nevertheless valuable to marketers.
However, this "Sling Baby" commercial, which combines the elders and children - two vulnerable groups of consumers, seems to handle the problems of advertising to older people and children so well. I am definitely amused by the cute baby as well as the cute granny. I would guess besides children, older people would like to go for Doritos after watching this commercial!

Check it out:

Inherent Risks That Social Media Brings to Marketing

People in social media could be any professions like a musician, a writer, a doctor, a journalist or an expert in certain area, therefore, how a potential community member would respond to the content could be various and uncertain, also, how much credence of the response could be given by marketers is hard to ascertain.

Another risk in social media is the issues of control and ownership caused by Mashups, which could combine data from more than one source into a single integrated tool, for example, adding location information from Google Maps to real-estate data from Craigslist. Thus, nobody has complete control over social media contents, even the individual who created the content could not control how the content would be used by others.

Different Perspectives About Kony 2012

It's the comments and debates about the video of Kony 2012 made it go viral:

‘KONY 2012′ Tops 100 Million Views, Becomes the Most Viral Video in History [STUDY]

Joseph Kony: What You Should Know The story behind the man behind the viral video.

Food Campaign on Pinterest

If one day you feel like opening your own food business, you might think this useful:
     8 Best Practices for Food Brands on Pinterest

--It's not only about pinning your food on the web, but also--more importantly--getting people engaged and involved in your campaign, by a contest or anything else that might be attractive to pinners.

Two Habits to Keep Creative

Inspired by the interview of Francisco De La Torre-Rocha, I decided to develop these two habits:

"When I find something interesting, I either bookmark it, take a picture of it or simply write it down in my idea book."

-- I used to have a tiny notebook to take notes of my inspirations. I should buy a new one for drawing or scribbling, and writing down interesting things that inspire me or might inspire me.

"I have developed my own automatic tools to refresh myself every morning. As soon as I wake up and have my first coffee in the morning at 7am, it all starts with a quick visit to my own blog. I have designed that site to automatically update itself using custom RSS scripts that seek content 10-14 times a day with ideas from many creative/ideas websites such as Trend Hunter, We Make Money Not Art, et cetera. I have also linked up my blog to automatically update my Facebook and Twitter updates, so they are always updated with fresh creative content that helps me stay freshly creative. "

-- I have done half of the work--the form. I need to focus more on the other half--the content--to keep myself on the cutting edge.

Several Tips Learned About Youtube Marketing

As it’s a trend that many people today watch and share videos from Youtube, marketers have realized that online videos should be an important part of their marketing strategy. How to market to consumers through Youtube is a topic that marketers today should learn.

Firstly, Youtube marketing is not just about posting your videos online and then sitting back, waiting for people to come to you. There’re a great many videos uploaded to Youtube every minute, so we face an intense competition for attracting viewers. Having a video go viral is a result of luck as well as effort. No matter how good the content of a video is, it needs the promotion and distribution plan. We could send the video to friends by email, blog it, or share it through Facebook and other social media platforms, to extend the reach of the video.

Adding friends on Youtube is a necessary step, since the more friends we have, the more people we can share our video with. Moreover, by creating a bulletin on Youtube, we could alert our friends and subscribers about our video update to drive more traffic to our video.

Creating a Youtube channel is easy, but how to manage your channel consistently is not a simple job. Many brands have their own channel on Youtube. The fact is that the brands that achieve long-term success on Youtube are those who publish fresh things consistently and frequently, such as Roxy, Ford Models, Nikefootball, etc. 

Nigahiga Rocks Youtube

I love watching the Youtube channel of Nigahiga, which was created by Ryan Higa, a 21-year-old Japanese American. His channel now ranks the second on Youtube with more than 5 million subscribers, surpassed only by Equal 3. The creativity and fun should be the key factor for his videos’ success with no doubt. The humor is not only about his flashy shows, but also about the creative and distinctive use of languages. And actually after watching several videos he made, I personally felt Higa (the vlogger) is so cute especially when he frowns with his knitted brows. It makes me think the personal charm of the vlogger could do a great help to attract audiences as well as keeping loyal audiences.

One more interesting thing I found about Higa is that he played a role in Jeremy Lin’s self-produced video, which shows 5 quick steps on how to get into Harvard. This video is quite fun and has successfully created a buzz in China after Jeremy Lin rocked NBA this season. In this video, Higa played a very small role who wants to enter Harvard and Jeremy Lin is definitely the shining star, but it makes me think that a successful vlogger not only follows the trend, but also could seize the opportunity to create a trend.

From Higa’s channel, I easily got access to his Facebook, Twitter, Google+, MySpace, personal official website and his own official merchandises, which feature “teehee”—the word most of his videos are ended with.

Madonna's Banned Pepsi Commercial 1989

The Commercial

The MV

The commercial is banned because of the content of its theme song's music video which was said to be offensive to Christians. 

More background information:

http://www.pophistorydig.com/?tag=madonna-pepsi-commercial

What a strong power of consumer boycott!

More importantly--

How strong is the religious power!

I just can't understand one thing:

     If the Christian group successfully made Pepsi cancel the commercial which was not offensive at all, why didn't they pull the music video which was the actual "culprit"? Did they fail to threaten Madonna in the way that they threatened Pepsi?
     The result seemed to be that Madonna gained both fame and wealth--soaring record sales of that album and no return of that $5 million payment from Pepsi, while Pepsi was the only one that lost both reputation and money in the controversy.

Edible Ads of The New Volkswagen

                                 Source: trendhunter.com via Lu on Pinterest

It looks just like a normal sheet of paper in a magazine.

Can you imagine it is edible?!

The ingredients contain “glutinous rice flour, water, salt, propylene glycol, FD&C colour, glycerine.”

Do you feel like eating up the road?!

The New Volkswagen could make it happen to you!

----What makes this ad amazing is that it could be consumed mentally and physically at the same time!

The Opportunities And Challenges That LBS Provide For Marketers

Foursquare, who claimed that its members were over 10 million in September 2011, is a kind of location-based services (LBS), which are able to accurately point out a user’s location at a specific time. And I strongly believe that LBS are offering new opportunities to marketers in mobile commerce. Actually many marketers have worked with location apps. For example, Starbucks rewards customers who check-in on Foursquare; Gap has given rewards to the first 10,000 customers who check-in to their stores on Facebook by giving away free jeans. Marketers also need to decide which location app they should turn to since different app has different speciality: Gowalla (bought by Facebook) targets at travelers; Foodspotting aims for people who likes trying new food; and Checkpoints is tailored to grocery stores.

Moreover, the development of LBS will bring not only new opportunities but also challenges for retailers in relationship marketing, which has been a trend of marketing strategy for both global companies and regional or local chain enterprises. To fully make use of LBS applications, enhancing online identity has become more important for retailers to keep in touch with their consumers on a personal level, and then motivate consumers to repeat their purchasing and reach their social connections.

Recreated Political Ads of Daisy ad

Since the arise of the first "daisy girl" ad aiming at voting for President Johnson in 1964, it seems that we have more recreations of that famous Johnson Daisy ad. Check out those attack ads:

http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/1964/peace-little-girl-daisy