"The Persuaders" Questions/Responses

What in "The Persuaders" surprised you (or not)? Name one new thing you learned about marketing or politics from watching the film. Name one new thing you learned about yourself from watching the film, or one thing that the film reiterated about yourself.

To be quite honest, a lot surprised me from “The Persuaders.” Being new to the world of marketing and advertising, I am only aware of the obvious methods of advertising like commercials and billboards and magazine ads. I knew that product placement existed as well, but I was surprised to hear that advertising companies go so far as to scope out movies and TV shows before they are even developed. The “Sex and the City” example that showed how “Absolut” had HBO create an entire episode that revolved around an advertising scheme. It is incredible how “Absolut” did not only plan to advertise their product on the hit TV series, but they planned to create an episode for this product. That, to me, was surprising and genius. It works out for both parties in the deal, so how can they afford to say no? Moving to another point, I think that companies that try to surround their product and/or brand with a certain culture and attitude are on the right track. However, I also believe that, especially in the case of Delta Airlines’s branch called “Song,” companies focus too much on creating that spirit and forget about the simple advertisement. In this instance, the advertisements for “Song” directed the consumers’ attention to how the company was harmonious and could relate to women’s needs and forgot to mention what exactly they were advertising – an airline. The man that was talking to a representative at a “Song” information store had no idea what the company was exactly. Isn’t the whole purpose of advertising/marketing to tell the consumer not only why they should buy the product, but also what the product is they are buying?

If there was one thing I learned from this documentary on marketing techniques of the modern age, it is how susceptible I am to the advertising schemes in society. This response, for me, kind of also flows into the next question, so see that answer as well. But basically, advertising is all around me and sometimes I am not even aware that I am falling into an advertising trap. The diversity and abundance of methods of marketing have become so integrated into society that sometimes only our subconscious is noticing them, which is not a bad thing because then we end up buying the product due to the fact that it was still instilled in our minds.

"The Persuaders" begins by questioning the increase in the amount of advertising we typically encounter in our daily lives. How would you assess the amount of advertising you see? Too much? Too little? Just right? In your view, what difference does it make to know that people today see much more advertising in their daily lives than people 20 or 30 years ago?

I agree that advertising is literally everywhere, even though we may not be aware of it. We are even being advertised to in our own home. Companies will do almost anything to get us to think about their product. If evaluating the amount of advertising we see in our everyday lives, I would definitely not say it is too little. Many people would say that there is too much advertising today solely because there is much more than there was 20 or 30 years ago. However, I think that companies are just trying to keep up with the technology and the new opportunities they are given. This does not necessarily mean that there is not too much of it though. Let’s just say that I lie somewhere between too much and just right. Society does not oppose or prohibit the amount of advertising going on today; in fact we succumb to it. The high exposure that we have to advertising really does have an influence on the way that we see a product or a brand. I do not think that the fact that we have more marketing techniques and are being exposed to many more ads everyday than the people were of 20 or 30 years ago really makes much of a difference. Like I said, companies are trying to not fall behind in terms of the technological opportunities they have today. Advertisers of 20 or 30 years ago did not have the chance to advertise on websites or Facebook. I think that advertising has just progressed along with technology.

Digital Nation (part II)

These segments of Digital Nation showed aspects of technology that I did not know even existed. What was most surprising to me was the "Second Life" program that could have the potential of being integrated into the business world.
The program is basically a grown-up version of the “Sims” gaming series. The avatars in the “Second Life” program allow business companies to cut the cost of flying their employees to, say, Beijing for a business meeting or negotiation. It is astonishing that someone from Hong Kong can have a formal-attire business meeting with an employee from Australia, England, India, and the United States all from the comfort of his/her own home while sitting in the kitchen in his/her pajamas. I can see why this would be very beneficial to the companies as well as their employees, and I think that it is great that big companies like IBM are finding creative ways to utilize the technology that is available to them. It just came as such a shock to me that technology has really come this far. I think that this part of the video was a sort of reality shock for me because I had never actually took the time become aware of all the different technologies are involved in my everyday life that was not here say 50 or so years ago – TV, internet, cell phone, iPod, GPS, computer games, video games, etc. If I had realized that I as an individual was so in tune with technology, maybe I could have imagined what was available to big companies like IBM and seen something like this coming. It is unfortunate that employee teamwork may no longer be face-to-face and that people at a business meeting may never actually meet the others, but this does not mean that this form of technology is bad. This “Second Life” program may have the opportunity to revolutionize the business world, and its impacts will be great.

Another point I wanted to make concerned the segment about teaching through technology. I believe that teachers hit the nail on the head when they recognize that students today do not learn in the same manner as kids did a decade or two or three ago. It is not that our generation is a dumb generation, but rather that we have been introduced to new potential distractions need to be lured to learning with a method of teaching other than just the traditional lecture. I agree with Katie Salen (from the video) when she says that video games can have the same potential as books when used correctly. The internet is a great thing, and I fully support integrating it into the school curricula more than it has been in the past. I think that people stigmatize the technology of the internet and video games because they are afraid that we will not be able to control it. That should not be a concern if we add technology education and utilization of educational video games to the curriculum from the very beginning of one’s education. For now, I side myself with those who believe that the internet and video games and other forms of technology have a positive effect on society.

Group Work (in class)

1. Today many TV shows and advertisements try to look amateurish or "homegrown" to emulate what is often seen on the Web. Do you think professional production values will continue to drop, or do you think amateur user-generated content will get better over time? WHY??

We don't think media production will stoop down to individual productions. There will always be movies that have this strategy such as (Paranormal Activity, Blare Witch or Clover Field), however, it will never take over all media. It will never be the main way of making movies. We believe it's just another way to convince the audience to buy a product or service, as well as intriguing people to watch movies and television.

2.
Find a news article and write down tags you would use to define what the article is about. Now goto Digg or another tagging site and see how others have tagged it. What did you learn from the differences or similarities in tagging?
New York Times article
Live Analysis; United States versus Canada

Tags: Olympics, Hockey, Sports, Canadian Upset, US, Canada, Sport's Media, Men's Hockey
Digg: Canada, Czech Republic, Finland, hockey, Jaromir Jagr, Men's hockey, Mike Babcock, ron wilson, Russia, Sidney Crosby, Sweden, United States.

The Digg website consisted of more specific details than our tags. We focused more on the sport and the different aspects of hockey, instead of the Olympics in general.

3.Why is transparency such an important concept in the Social Media world? Is it MORE or LESS important in the offline world? Why?

It is important for transparency to be involved in the Social Media world because its what sustain the whole social media or user generated world. If people weren't ready to expose themselves on Facebook or Twitter, than those types of social media would be non-existent. Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Youtube rely on people to express themselves and their opinions. If people slowly stopped being transparent then the social media would feel the "domino effect" and eventually fail. As a group, we believe that is just as important to be transparent online as well as offline. Being transparent online allows you to express and connect yourself to multiple people at a time. However, having transparency offline allows more personal interaction as well as creates a more personal relationship. Overall, we think that people have a tendency to be more transparent online than offline. However, we think that there is no distinct reason for transparency to be more important than one another.

Digital Nation (part 1)

Being the first generation to truly be brought up surrounded by innovative technology, we hear about problems like internet addiction and distraction due to the influence of the media. Throughout our schooling we have been told to keep our cell phones away and stay off the internet. In our homes, our parents are constantly getting frustrated with us because of our constant texting and talking on Skype or Oovoo or even on the phone. Our generation tends to be attracted to the idea of being constantly distracted by social networking devices. The video that we viewed in class takes on the task of trying to raise awareness of the damaging affect that this technology and new way of life even is having on society and on our health.

The question is though what types of addictions and distractions are seen in everyday life. Online video games. This phenomenon has become a sensational hobby among many teenagers, especially in males. The concept of online video games is fun all in itself because it is interactive and thoroughly engaging. People could argue that other hobbies are just as addictive, but internet games draw people in with their variety. There are adventure games, puzzles, multiplayer, sports, arcade, and shooting games. The list hardly ends there! The internet video game obsession is spreading, taking up hours and hours of peoples' days. It can get in the way of school work or even a social life. Some gamers ditch the real-world life for the social world that they find on these internet games. I think that that is what the video was trying to warn us about.

My collage describes the web 2.0 concept of cell phones. In the lower left-hand corner there are two "ancient" cell phones, in the upper-right hand corner there are two cell phones that are still around today, and in the center there are two phones that are the most innovative of our time. These three divisions show how this technology has evolved from being solely a telephone to a device that contains the ability to call, text, access the web, calendar, calculator, music, video clips, GPS, etc. This technology has changed how society chooses to communicate with one another.

web 2.0 terms/definitions

user-generated content: (AKA consumer-generated media) web content created or uploaded by the general public; this blog is an example of user-generated content

long tail: selling a product that is plentiful in smaller quantities at a time in order to sell more; also not selling as many popular products in large quantities

web operating services: (AKA webOS) describes network services for large scale distributed computing

folksonomy: (AKA collaborative content) system of classification involving collaboratively creating and managing tags to annotate and categorize content

web syndication: making website content available and updated on other/multiple sites

mass collaboration: form of collective action that occurs when large numbers of people work on an individual project

computer-supported collaboration: research of technology that affects groups, organizations, communities, societies, etc.

social software: range of softwares that allow users to interact with one another and share data

hosted services: allows individuals and organizations to create and publish their own website to the world wide web

web application: application accessed via a web browser

video-sharing sites: websites where users can upload and distribute their video clips

wiki: website that allows for easy creation and editing of multiple interlinked web pages via a web browser

blog: type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other content such as graphics or video that users can follow

mashups: web page or application that combines data or functionality from two or more external sources to create a new service


*wikipedia was used for information about each term*