GABOR!!!

There are two people that come to mind when I think of  a branded person. The first one is the guy who started Obey. He basically just made the famous Andre the Giant sticker that said "obey" under it and stuck that around toronto, new york, wherever and from people just noticing it, he is now one of the best known artists within the culture scene. The second one that I think of is Salvador Dali, I don't remember the story too well, but I know that he was just an artists and his wife told him that he needs to brand himself in order to be recognized and famous. That is why he has that awesome mustache to give him appeal. 

Basically this class was awesome. It came in handy a couple days ago when I was doing my portfolio review and the mentor who was interviewing me asked me if I had studied any type of social media. I could actually know what I was talking about thanks to this class! 

Hello Moto!

How open and responsive are you to mobile marketing?

• VERY! my cellphone is the most important thing to me. I cannot imagine going one day without it, so if they make me do some crazy !@#$, I'll do it to keep my cell!

I am actually not responsive to the types of ads that are on TV to get a txt of the day or something, I think those are a scam... a HUGE scam, and only write down the numbers so that I can do it on someone else's phone as a joke.. a not so funny joke. Working for Bell and dealing mostly with mobility consumers.. I have a lot of people come in pissed off about those txt msg's and feel bad. Clearly the advertising isn't working if all it's doing is making people mad. NEW APPROACH! 

Can you provide examples of mobile campaigns you have been part

of or have heard about?

• I actually couldn't think of any that rang a bell so I cheated a little and researched a couple but it had one written that I actually remember hearing, and being told. It was one for "Snakes on a Plane"  Users could generated a customized voice call from Samuel L. Jackson. To set it up, they would go online to select the recipient's personal attributes from pull-down menus and submit the necessary phone numbers. As a recipient, it looks like the phone call is coming in from a friend, but when they pick it up, it's Mr. Jackson. WHABAM!  This was phenomenally successful in raising movie buzz, with over 4,000,000 phone calls made during the core promotional period.

What are some interesting branded mobile applications?

• My favorite mobile applications are ones that mostly seem to do with Airplanes. I like how West Jet and Air Canada have an option to have your ticket sent right to your cell phone and how if you are un-happy with your seat you can change it 5 minutes before the flight takes off. I like that HBO is on a lot of cell phones... but I am thinking more BlackBerry right now because obviously Hasbro's Connect Four for the iPhone is my all time favorite application. 

Have you incorporated mobile and devices in past projects?

• DID WE EVER! I remember the first assignment we decided to use it for too, it was for our Bluesfest Assignment in first semester of second year. Since we were going with an art theme for the event we decided to pair up with Rogers and have people take pictures of themselves on their phone and txt it to the Rogers screen so everyone could see it. We thought this put a lot of emphasis on the Rogers screen making it a good promo. I believe that we have done it soooo many more times since then but I cannot remember them all at all. 

I Like Mobile Advertising. I think it is creative and interesting but most importantly effective! 

apparently I love TV and I had no clue?

My Broadband Challenge...

One time Rogers cut off all my services for 5 days. I had no television, Internet or phone.. it was the WORST! Instantly when this happened I made arrangements to borrow a couple of seasons of Desperate Housewives off a friend. I had never seen it before.. and didn't really have the urge to see it, but anything was better than nothing. As for Internet, I tryed to hack my way into wireless ones in the building through my mac and on my iPod... I was unsuccessful (I think I'll stick to advertising). Home phone wasn't a huge problem, I have a cell phone so I just used that, but when it's long distance to call parents, it gets fairly expensive. 

When it was originally cut off, I was more annoyed than inconvenienced... TV isn't that much of my life... or is it? I remember 3 years ago when I moved into my apartment, I decided "Pfft, no way, I'm not paying 5$56/mth for some cable, I have a couple seasons and other than that I will be busy..." boy was I wrong.. maybe like just under 2 weeks and I was on the phone with Rogers sooo fast to hook up TV for me... I am such a sucker. So how long can I go without TV for? A full summer, that may seem like a weird answer after my 2 desperate stories, but over the summer when I went home, I had all the seasons of Gilmore Girls and I watched 7 seasons, with 6 discs per season with 5 one hour episodes per set and I accomplished it. I would go to work, then I would come home have dinner and get ready... depending on the night I would go out with my boyfriend or friends and maybe when I got home at 11p.m I would cram in 3-4 episodes every night and do it all over again. I did not watch one episode of anything other than GG's over that 4 month period. WOW, I'm a real winner. So PVR... I don't actually have it but since I am lucky enough to work at Bell which requires me to say hello to a couple of people and then watch TV, I have the privilege to experience it everyday... AND I LOVE IT! 

Don't get me wrong, I love commercials.. but only when they are new.. I don't like seeing the same one over and over again and with PVR I get to choose which commercial I watch over and over again. They will find a way around this, I'm sure soon enough I will turn on the TV and there will be a red bar at the bottom of my screen just showing logos and slogans.. or all the channels will turn into "Peach tree" where the show plays in the top corner for like 2 minutes while I find out the weather and local news.. they will find a way I'm sure. Unfortunately I have never watched a show online because I hate this room and can't deal with being in here more than I have too... I would rather get 5 episodes behind on The Hills, then deal with room for an extra 2.5 hours.. 

sweet

Branded Utility is sweet. Why not advertise wherever you can? It gives people like us jobs and also, gives us more places to stick a brand logo. I love my mac widgets... so much. My computer is actually 10 times slower because of them I am sure. I have ones from Drum n Bass Arena, obviously Canada 411 for all those people I need to find... and a bunch of google sponsored things of course. My home page is Google, and so is my toolbar, how about that. 

Some missed opportunities... hmm probably the desktop of my computer.. could that be one? How google and Mac are a team sort of... should come with an option for a google desktop? Maybe, I don't know. 

I think that this is a huge opportunity for brands... we will be living like the people in 'idiocracy'. SWEET!

p.s Have you seen that movie? If you haven't, you should! 

i forget why i even go outside?

You know the commercial for some kind of gum that has people frolicking on the beach? I don't remember what the gum is.. or maybe it's for mints? (either way not important) the tag line for this commercial is "the original instant message... make some face time" and I think that even though it's so obvious what they are saying, I like that this ad tells people to do things outside of their home and computer. I use to love going home for a weekend or for christmas break and seeing people I haven't seen in forever, but now with things like facebook and myspace, its pointless... I have nothing to talk to them about anymore becuase I've creeped enough that I just know everything. I thought that it was bad enough when ICQ (which RULED) and MSN came around... people didn't call to make plans anymore.. boyfriends dumped you that way instead of face to face.. social networking is just making people a bunch of cowards. I actually wish that I didn't have facebook. I wish that people couldn't see what I was doing... or i wish people couldn't tag pics of me and I had to worry about cleaning it out so that I can get a job. I hate that it is actually so demanding for school to keep in touch.. but I obv hate that it's so damn addictive. 

I suppose it's hard for me to blame all this on social network sites because I just think it's technology in general. Txt msgs, Blackberry Msger.. this is whack! It actually scares me to think that people are so consumed by technology that if our lives have shifted this much who the hell knows how much more intence it could be. 

There are really SO MANY different social networking sites that I feel like I could just type about them forever. My first experience with this crap was myspace (after ICQ and MSN of course) which I really didn't want to get but my addiction to ebay late at night was getting really expensive so I thought this would be a nice change of pace. I liked MySpace... everyone seems to hate it, but since I am a deisgner, I think it appealed to me because I got to design my own site. After that died off  liek 2 months later I joined a snowboarding version of facebook. It's acutally been forever that I have used it so I don't even remeber the naem of it.. probably something clever like snowboarding.com or somethign haha. The idea of this was the same as facebook. You created a portfolio and uploaded pictures, but most were snowboarding photography that people took, besides the little "snow bunnies" that were signed up to try and pick up "hot boarder dudes" ha ha. After my secoind semster of school I got Facebook.. and have been goign strong since.. and not loving one minute of it!

I have heard of some of the craziest social networking sites like one thats for beautiful people.. apparently you need to apply to join this network with a face and body shot and they decide whether or not you are beautiful enough (by their standards) to talk to the rest of the most beautiful people in the world.. CRAAAZZZYYY!!! 

"yellow pages ads are on target"

When it comes to guerilla advertising, it doesn't take much to impress me. Causing disruptions in peoples lives outside of a magazine and television is awesome. One of my favorite campaigns is the yellow pages target... I only fell across it roughly two weeks ago but I am in love. It was hard to find pictures of it but my favorite one is the target in a table on a restaurants patio. The table is all smashed with this big target in it. I also like this concept because I like the fact that businesses offered (even-though their getting paid) part of their property to help launch this campaign. I have seen some commercials that are also in this campaign and they are sweet too. 

I use to think that guerilla advertising was just spray painting and wheat pasting but its nice to know that a lot more is considered to be guerilla (even though wheat pasting and spray paintingare the originals because they are the definition of cheap). 

I was once a part of a guerilla  scandal. My boyfriend is doing an online magazine and since I am from a small town and we were trying to promote it the easiest thing was to spray paint the web address around town. Unfortunately, since it is a small town with a lot of police, they checked out the site (HORRAY, more hits) and there were some illegal shotgun photos that in the long run got us half in trouble... although we didn't get any PR, it gave us two things to write about... the story itself and how police have way to much time on their hands ha ha.

So the target campaign is sweet... it looks really cool but like I said, it's still seems relativelyexpensive to be considered true guerilla.  

jsdfhgljf blogs!

hjdgfjhfg – i am really not a huge fan of blogs so therefore i don't normally follow them. i think that i ranted somewhere in my "about me" section about how i am not a fan? not sure though. i mean, i think blogs are for people who have no one to listen to them... people who just need to natter about the craziest things and if it wasn't for my last semester class, stevie's HONEST TO BLOG? would never exist.. (although i am stoked about the name, thanks Juno!). i followed the only blogs that i can really stand – TMZ.com (i think thats a blog, cause its kinda like perez...right?) and postsecret. i do love postsecrets, i have all the books but i didn't comment on any of those posts because i just think thats completly inapropriate.

the biggest thing that i have come to realize about blogging is the fact that i love that you can make money from google ads (don't be afraid to click by the way) but at the same time i hate the ads. in one of my previous blogs i wrote about how much i hate P&G because they test on animals and just because i had mentioned P&G in my blog, the ad at the bottom was "how to get a job at P&G". 

i believe that a blog is a good way to brand yourself if you are not able to design a website etc. it allows people to understand the type of person you are. i also believe that blogging is a great way for businesses to advertise.. except for when someone happens like on my blog site. 

people are attracted to advertising, no matter what. look how crowded perez hiltons page is, but, even through all the clutter, its the advertising that stands out. 

so long blog short, i am not a fan of blogging, but i am not totally against it, just google :)