I am really not sure what to do for this entry.  I guess I will start out by saying that I don't mind being part of Generation Y.  I think between 1980 and 1994 was a great time to be born.  We got to grow up through a lot of different phases.  As far as advertising goes, Some of the best ads came out in the 80s and 90s.  For example, that Apple commercial with the runner.  Nobody will ever forget that one because it was a great ad. 

Now advertising is a little different.  It seems that the only thing that they ever try to advertise to us is gadgets and alcohol.  They use jokes to pull us in and grab our attention.  They make a new product look so awesome on tv and then you get one and it has a bunch of problems because they don't work them out before they release them to the public. 

I may be way off on this, but I feel like advertisers might think we are stupid.  As a whole, the people of our age group tend to give them fuel for that fire, but still.  We don't need all the commercials to be dumbed down for us.  Some of the stuff they put out on tv that is aimed at us is just like a huge joke to me.  I think that we could be advertised to at a much higher level.

 Does  advertising influence society or does society influence advertising.  I am going to stick with my gut feelings on this one even after we talked about it in class.  It may seem like the easy way out, but I feel like both statements are true.  I think that neither one of them is fully reliant on the other without the other one relying on it.

Advertising will naturally go and pick out things that are going on in the world and use it in comercial form.  This could be either in a serious way or in a way that mocks the way the world is.  Advertising will always work better if the people you are trying to get attention from can relate to your ad campaign.  And what better way to make sure that people can relate than putting it out there in a way that shows society for how it is.  The most recent example of this would be the Go Daddy Super Bowl ad.  Not the one that they showed on tv, but the one that you had to go online to see because it was too raunchy for tv.  It shows a bunch of "celebrities" getting out of their cars at a red carpet event.  When they get out, there is a certain animal on all of their laps.  This ad is clever because it feeds off of all the tabloid pictures of people such as Britney Spears and Paris Hilton exposing themselves as they get out of the car.  It is funny because people can relate to what they see in the world around them and that helps sell the product.

On the other hand, advertising will also influence society because when you see all these sexy models on tv and in magazines, it makes people think that the only way to be looked at in a good light is to be 100 lbs too skinny and blonde hair and blue eyes.  This is not how everyone needs to look.  If it was how everyone looked, the world would be a very boring place to live.  But because this is all you ever see on advertising these days, people get the idea that they have to change so that they can be super models too.  In a way it is kind of disgusting, but that is how it is.  That is how advertising influences society.

So, as you can see both sides are valid arguments.  I don't think that any one side has an advantage.  Therefore, I can't put this in the same light as the chicken or the egg controversy.  Both statements play off eachother and I feel like they will be doing that for a long time to come.

This week, we have to watch some tv commercials.  We have to watch around 30 minutes of ads and then write about different steriotypes that we see in them.  The following are the best examples I saw throughout the night.  And now, let the tv watching begin.....

Advanced Head and Shoulders:  they start the ad saying "Even men are talking about it" but what is it?  Then they show some men sitting there playing with their hair and saying things like "This is kinda weird because you don't usually hear dudes talking about how soft their hair is".  This may be true, but it makes it sound as though the only people who care about what the look like are women. 

Honda Ridgeline Truck:  The tag-line for this ad is "Tough Meets Classy".  When the ad starts, it is a bunch of what people would think of as WASPs.  Old ladies drinking tea with nice classical music in the background.  Then out of nowhere, Chuck Norris comes out from around a corner in jeans and a black leather vest.  He just looks around with an angry face on and then the tag-line comes up.  That is the whole ad, and I think it is funny, but the people who were being "classy" were all very much the same type of people.

The Comebacks on DVD:  This is clearly a movie aimed toward teen/college age guys.  The movie doesn't look funny at all, however it has many half naked attractive women.  This is what makes me think that that is the demographic that they were aiming at.

2008 Impala:  According to the ad that I saw for the 2008 Chevy Impala, the only people who buy this car are white families.  If you are not married with kids, find another car because the Impala is not for you.

Raw Fan Nation:  There are a bunch of these ads out now, but they only show them during wrestling.  The one that I saw tonight was the one with Leyla Millani.  She is one of the girls from Deal or No Deal.  This ad actually breaks a steriotype which I think is an interesting way to advertise.  When you think wrestling fans, a lot of people think of a redneck, overweight guy with really long side burns.  Well Leyla is a beautiful model and she is talking about how much she loves wrestling.  It is trying to show that a lot of people are into wrestling, not just the steriotype.

This is a link to a website that has all of the Absolut ads that have become so popular over the years.  Just click on a letter at the top to take you to that section of ads.

http://www.absolutads.com/gallery/view.php?letter=0

When you think of advertisements that have been put into magazines all around the world, none have been quite as clever as the Absolut Vodka ads.  They are so simple and yet brilliant from an advertising standpoint.  In every advertisement, there is the shape of a vodka bottle.  From what I just said, you might not get the exact image in your mind.  That is why  the link is above.  It is not actually a vodka bottle, but whatever the scene is will have the bottle shape worked into it.  At the bottom of the picture, there will be a tag-line.  Every ad has "Absolut ________" at the end.  That space is filled by whatever the picture would symbolize.  A good example is "Absolut 24th".  In this ad, you see someone holding a huge amount of Christmas packages and of course, the way the packages are stacked is in the shape of a bottle.  



I believe this to be one of the most clever ad campaigns because it makes people look forward to seeing what kind of pictures they would bring out next.  This leaves people remembering your brand over another.  I would urge you to look at some of the other examples on the earlier mentioned link to get a better idea of this campaign. 

Sadly, I believe that there is a new Absolut Vodka ad campaign coming out now that will probably put an end to this one.  It is the "In An Absolut World" campaign.  Here is a link to see some of the examples from this campaign.

http://www.absolutads.com/

Maybe it will be as effective as the old ads and maybe it won't.  Only time will tell, however I believe that the people who have been buying Absolut for years because of the old ads will continue to buy it.  That is one thing that I have noticed.  If you have a really good ad campaign, it will stick with your company forever and even when it is retired, it will still be helping your product sell.
 

As I stated in class on Monday, I believe that the best advertisements out right now are the Burger King commercials where they took the Whopper away for one day.  In my mind, it is actually one of the best ad campaigns that I have ever seen.  The reason I believe this is not only becaise it made me want a Whopper, but the way they went about doing it.  It was not just another "hey, buy our product" kind of thing.  They took real people and basically played a prank on all of them.  Seeing how real people reacted to the Whopper being taken off of the menu seemed far more affective than just telling us to buy one.  People who have never had a Whopper before are swayed to check it out and see what all the fuss was about.  Why were they all getting so mad about it going away?  To them, it is just another burger, but to a person who knows and loves the Whopper, it is worth freaking out about.  This kind of testimonial just seems to really grab me.  Bravo Burger King, your commercial got me out to buy a Whopper.

This is a blog that will be used for my Advertising class which is why it is named ksd_class_work.  It will be used only for class work and I hope that it works.  This first blog/journal is a test.