reverse engineering

progress post 2

what i have so far

Another day goes by, and my information is still on the wikipedia page. I will try to figure out how to print screen on a Mac so i can post a picture at a later date.

wikipedia

I check the wiki page i edited yesterday, and my information is still on there. cool.

wikipedia entry

today, November 19th, i found a wikipedia entry that i wanted to edit. i simply clicked the edit button, typed a short sentence that was very factual, and it is currently viewable.I will check back later to see if it is still on there.

This is my ad for The memory pill. I decided to use a emotional approach. Using old-looking pictures from the internet, i decided i would call upon people's desire to remember their lives. So the tag line 'remember the good old days' is almost a demand to people looking at the advertisement.I think the people having fun in the pictures will cause people to think about the fun they have had in their lives, and want to buy the pill so they will never forget.

Midterm Part 1

One of the products on the Popular Science website that stood out to me was the pill that was supposed to cement long term memories into your brain, and perhaps unlock the technology that would be able to destroy harmful memories. If the scientists working on this pill are able to perfect it and make sure it is safe for public consumption, I believe there would be a large market for it. I immediately thought of the many possibilities for a product such as that, and the many marketing tools that could be used to sell this to the public.

One approach to selling this so-called memory pill would be the emotional branding technique. This would be a great choice because the benefit of the product is tied in with the emotions of people already. Memories have been romanticized in our culture for many years; the concept of the ‘good old days’ and media portraying the best qualities of past eras has built up in us a love for nostalgia. Creating an emotional appeal to advertisements and marketing campaigns would benefit the company making the pill greatly. Focusing on how great it would feel to remember things from your past vividly, a TV ad wouldn’t have to delve into the scientific workings of the pill. Just a feel good story and an implied promise that you will be happy would be a very strong catalyst to make people buy. Building a culture around opening up the past for people would be a beneficial idea for a company. Everyone has a hazy, mostly positive experience in their mind when trying to remember their ‘heyday’. The thought that one may be able to lock in the fun and meaningful events that they have been through would certainly entice the average person. And an emotional appeal in advertising would speak to their inner reptile (to steal a concept from Clotaire Rapaille) and most likely make them purchase the pill.

Emotional branding could also work if the pill was used for erasing memories. A company could be portrayed as very thoughtful and caring through a campaign, and in this way appeal to people who may have been through something bad in their life. Painting a picture of a sympathetic and compassionate corporate structure, along with advertising showing people being helped and becoming happy could be used to sell this product. A rhetorical approach could also be used to market the memory pill. Maybe even the term memory pill would be too direct and cause apprehension in some people. Something like Glory Days or Memory Miracle would put it into a more positive light and make it seem more appealing. Although used mostly in politics and areas like that, rhetorical choices play a large part in advertising and marketing. Saying a medication’s side affect is moderate nausea is much different from saying it will make your stomach hurt a good deal. Careful word choices and clever terminology would certainly help any product, but I think in the case of a pill like this, it could help a lot. Saying it is a gateway into your past, and a way to remember all of your good times, even into old age. This plays on people’s fear of getting older and their bodies breaking down, but advertising often exploits people’s fears and insecurities. That Is why most people in this country are in debt.

Product placement has been gaining steam for many years, and has sometimes taken a front seat to a TV show or movie’s actually story line (As seen in The Persuaders). If I were trying to market this pill product, I would certainly look into a product placement angle to try to gain exposure. With the amount of crime dramas on TV, there would certainly be a situation where someone would want to take a pill and block out a scaring memory. This would not only expose the product, but actually show it in action. That would be a tremendous tool for marketing. The mind is still a very difficult thing to understand. Men like Freud and other psychologists have been trying to unlock it’s secrets for years. Memories being a very abstract thing, there would be great curiosity garnered from a product like a memory pill. Movies like “The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” and “Momento” have already been written about the issues of memory or the lack thereof. Could a movie be written in which the pill is a major plot point? That is certainly an idea marketers would want to ask.

The concept of cool hunting in the case of the pill, wouldn’t really work. Trying to convince people that the pill is cool would only do so much. I think the real cool hunting would have to be inside of each person thinking of buying the pill. Convincing the public that the pill will help them remember forever the ‘cool’ things that they’ve done and remember vividly back when they were ‘cool’, would have to be the cool hunting approach.

There are many ways a team of marketers and advertisers could persuade and lure people to buy this product. I think I have gone over some of the best ways to do so. Not to mention that by the time this product is ready for market, there will be new mediums and techniques for selling. That is what’s great about the advertising and media world; it is always evolving and so is the human mind. It is a battle or wits that will last a very long time.

Persuaders

1. I am an advertising major, so, in all honesty, I wasn't planning on being surprised by many of the things revealed in this video. I was quite wrong. One of the most surprising things i encountered was the Sex In The City scheme. The fact that Absolute vodka invented a new drink and basically wrote an entire episode of Sex In The City was quite startling. That show was very popular when it was on, and the fact that a business was given so much creative control surprised me very much. I think my shock goes back to what one of the people being interviewed said. He said something long the lines of this: People don't want their entertainment stuff to be tainted by their product stuff. And upon learning about this new fad of trying to weave products into TV shows and movies, I feel that something I watch will just be trying to sell me something.
Another very surprising aspect was the portion on Frank Luntz. I have for a long time realized that politics are very deceptive, just like some advertisements. But learning that it is this man's job to find the perfect way to say something really made me say wow. Whether or not you think he is 'tricking' the public or merely just 'clarifying', what he does works and i had no idea i was subject to someone behind the scenes like that. Seeing this documentary will only make me question what i see and hear even more. I knew before that advertisers are very smart, and would do anything to break through the clutter. But now every time i watch a TV show, i will be trying to pick out products that are extraneous, trying to protect myself from the constant flow of advertising that can often be manipulative.
I also was very surprised and pleased when the man being interviewed spoke up and questioned why white bread would make anyone lonely. I would have done the same thing. I think market research is a good idea and obviously it helps. But sometimes, in the case in the movie, it seems ridiculous. I think the man that questioned the interviewer made a plea for all of consumers when he spoke out against the seemingly unrelated concepts advertisers try to make us feel.

2. I agree wholly with The Persuaders that there is far too much advertisement going on in today's society. I feel that i am exposed to so many ads, where ever i go, that i have started to filter them out. As stated in the movie, there is far too much clutter. Billboards encroach on city streets, blocking out the sun. Fashion magazines are 60% advertisements and 40% content. Web pages have borders of flashing boxes, promising free laptops. TV commercials take up almost 10 minutes of a 30 minute program. And because of all of this, more ads are being produced in smarter ways to sell things in different places then ever before. It is a vicious cycle and i'm not sure where it will end.
I think it would be very interesting to go back in time and live a day or a week and see how much advertising one encountered. Obviously the number would be much smaller. Was that because advertisements were better? or people were more gullible? Or because there was less clutter? I would venture a guess that it would be a combination of the latter two factors. And I don't want to think about the amount of advertising a person could see in a day 20 or 30 years from today. If something doesn't change, there could be a serious problem. It would be interesting to see how and why advertising has progressed to it's current state of affairs. What pushed it to the forefront? It must have something to do with the great number of businesses that exist today. Everyone is striving for a dollar and it is becoming harder and harder to convince the average person to buy.

Myth of Photographic Truth

In this cropped photo, One can see a soldier and a man, who appears to be pointing or doing something else mundane in nature. But as one can see below, this man is actually shooting someone. This very famous photograph taking during the Vietnam war has come to symbolize the harshness of war. But when cropped, the photo completely loses it's meaning. This is a very interesting example of the myth of photographic truth.

Final Collage

This is my second collage attempt. Since I lost the file of my original, I used new things I had learned to create this alternate composition.

Photoshop is the medium

Looking at photoshop through Marshall McLuhan's eyes, You could see it as a medium. As a medium, you could consider it's content as all of the tools used to create and retouch art and pictures. Examples would be the brush tool, the lasso tool, all of the pre-loaded colors, and other such usages available to the photoshop user. But the message of photoshop goes far beyond an eraser and a brush. The invention and wide spread use of this program has changed the culture. Especially since our culture loves to take pictures. It seems that everyone who takes pictures for a living uses photoshop, but the beauty of it is an amateur could use it to. Photoshop has become synonymous with retouching photographs. Whether it is for fun or to make money, the ease and flexibility of photoshop has secured it a place in the 21st century culture.

Collage Changes

One of the questions i was having was about the background. I left mine white, but it may have created a more interesting composition if i changed it. This was both a conceptual and technical issue, as it deals with the collage concept and the uses of photoshop. If I had a bit more knowledge of the layers, i could have done this.

Collage and explaination

The iPhone has been one of the biggest and most mainstream communication breakthroughs in the past couple of years. It's abilities seem to grow every day, and it has had a large influence on culture. Thinking about the iPhone in the mindset of Marshall McLuhan, you can see that it has many kinds of content. The main ones, pictures above, (from left to right): Internet access, music, video, pictures, and games. But the content is certainly not limited to those illustrated above. The iPhone's messages, however, are more complicated. It is certain that the iPhone has had an influence on how people communicate today. Many of the influences are possitive. The first picture under messages is people talking and the iPhone certainly allows you to do this. With phone calls, text messages, emails, and networking sites like Facebook at the user's disposal at all times, it is very easy to stay connected. It shrinks the world by giving the user access to any part of the globe in seconds. It compresses a cell phone, computer, camera, video camera, an iPod, and more into one item. And this is the reason i have a suitcase pictured above. It allows for travel. The user can be on the move and still use all of the content of the iPhone. It opens up even more possibilities and again, this aspect has had a great influence on sciety. But, as with anything, bad comes with the good. I have a rope about to break on my collage because this constant access and ease of information can cause stress. Constant bombardment with emails or phone calls is not good for someone. You should be able to have a break in your day to relax. but people become attached to their iPhone and can never put it down. This is also a cultural problem that can come with technology such as the iPhone.

communication technologies

1. Skype
2. Biometric Technology
3. iPhone