#armishrhe

The idea for this final project started off as being a gum brand and advertisement. This thought was prompted by reading for an advertising class about advertising clutter. There are simply too many options out there for consumers, and it’s an advertiser’s job to persuade the consumer to choose their product amongst all these choices. This led to wanting to create a gum brand that was different, something that people hadn’t seen before. So, a sugar free and natural gum seemed like a good direction, since that’s not really a prevalent option these days. It would be something that sticks out from the clutter and convinces youth to buy this healthier gum, since there are just too many other options.

Then, a project for another class ended up being far too similar to this one, so this one had to be changed. This brought on the realization that there is the exact same problem in the product area of vitamins. Everything on the shelf either seems like its for children, or for adults. There did not seem to be anything in the store or even online that is specifically for this target audience. Another valid point is that many younger people prefer gummy vitamins to tablets. This leaves a nice market gap that is sort of a niche market, so the product decided on is a new gummy vitamin that is all natural and sugar free, and would appeal to a young adult audience. Niche markets are a good place for a new brand, because once a brand is created in a niche market, there isn't any competition because it isn't profitable for another company to create a brand in the same niche market.

The new brand is called VIM and it stands for vitality, invigoration and motivation. It is marketed towards active consumers that are around the ages of 15-24. The brand name reflects the concept of “vim” or being enthusiastic and having energy, to attract active consumers. The name is simple as it is only one syllable, so it is easily remembered. The name is distinctive as there are no other products with this name or anything similar, so it stands out. The name is also direct and inoffensive, so it is appropriate for consumers. The words that the letters stand for (vitality, invigoration and motivation) are meant to make the consumer feel inspired and strong.

The packaging is quite minimalistic and it is a bright color, so it stands out on the shelf, which is primarily just white or black bottles. The packaging is is a bright orange color, which studies have shown is a color that young people respond to well because it has a sense of impulsiveness to it. It also promotes physical confidence which makes it appealing to active people and adventure seekers, who are the target audience. Orange represents optimism, vitality, spontaneity, enthusiasm and risk taking, which the brand represents. It also rejuvenates the spirit which goes hand in hand with vitamins rejuvenating the body. Impulse shoppers also respond better to orange, so if the consumer is making this decision on the spot, the color of the packaging makes it more likely that they will buy this product.

The arrow at the bottom represents movement, which again fits in with the concept of being active and moving in the right direction. The silhouettes make the consumer want to be active as they are active, and they are not specific to any sport so they don't single anyone out.

Mulvey talks about how minorities are forced to look at things through a mainstream point of view. That greatly applies these days because most of the time, products are gendered, and women’s products are not “acceptable” unless they are frilly or feminine in someway, as companies are forced to create products based on the patriarchal view of society, where women are supposed to be more fragile and flowery. To oppose this view, this product is gender neutral which is not common these days, so theoretically it should stand out. The silhouettes on the packaging and in the ad are both male and female, so the product appeals to both genders. This also creates a bigger market, which means more profit, reaching the ultimate goal in advertising.

Thinking about Benjamin and the concept of how easy it is to reproduce now, marketers think that the way to get people to listen to their message is to make more messages, but in fact that just makes people annoyed active avoid ads. There is no longer the same aura around an advertisement. The way to make a message stand out is to make it different, not more more of it. So, taking this in to account, the ad for v.i.m. is minimalistic which makes it stand out from other ads. The visuals catch attention as there is a contrast between the orange and the silhouettes. There is also a lot of empty space in the ad, so it does not feel cluttered, yet there is still a balance to the image that is pleasing to the eye. The product is showcased in the corner of the ad, but it is not the main focus of the image.  The slogan “chews wisely” is in the middle of the arrow, so eyes go to it as the orange text stands out from the black arrow. The slogan is serious sounding but is also witty to speak to the younger consumers. The tagline “multi-vitamins to unleash the potential within” challenges the consumer to be more active, and encourages them by letting them know that they have potential within themselves. The font of the name is a sans serif and is very bold and simple to reflect the simplicity of the brand itself. However, the tag line is in lowercase font to be more friendly and approachable. This ad would be placed in health magazines or on health websites, to appeal to the target audience of young, active consumers.

To complete the brand, a Facebook page was created and linked to using a QR code on the ad, and hypothetically on the back of the bottle. The QR code helps it to appeal to the target audience as it connects the brand to social media, which is how the target audience socializes and communicates. It also gives the brand more authenticity and credibility. The QR code also brings in the concept of hypermediacy as discussed by Bolter and Grusin, as the print ad or bottle leads to the Facebook page which may link to a twitter account, or a website, which in turn could lead the consumer to an array of medias.

The above also ties in with Warner’s concepts of publics. A brand creates a public when it is released. Publics are created with reflexivity, which hypermediacy creates as the content is passed around through multiple methods, and people also pass the information about the product on through word of mouth or social media. This not only creates a bigger public but also creates a brand aura. According to both Benjamin and Berger, aura is crucial, and every brand needs a positive aura, so the goal of the brand is to create a good social media presence to aid in the creation of this aura over time.

In order to add to the positive brand aura and appeal to the youth market, an app would also be created for this product, combining the viral aspect of a game such as Temple Run, with the usefulness of a fitness app in relation to this product. This app would be called “VIM Vigor” as vigor fits in with the theme of action and health, and sounds catchy to the ears. The app would have three sections, “fitness,” “fun,” and “friends.” The “fitness” section of the app would be an area where the consumer could track weight, exercise, calories etc, but also where they can set goals for themselves. If a consumer reaches their monthly or weekly goal, they are rewarded with either in app prizes to redeem in the “fun” section, or real life incentives such as coupons or deals for the VIM product line. This would appeal to younger customers as many in that age group would be motivated by rewards. The “fun” section would be a game similar to Temple Run, where the consumer can customize an avatar and play various levels of a game. The avatars would gender neutral in an attempt to keep consistent with the un gendered product, but also to appeal to youth that prefer not to attach a label to themselves, which is more and more youth these days. The games would be fitness related where the player can choose to run/bike/swim etc indefinitely until they hit an obstacle, with the aim to get as many points as possible. The rewards from the fitness section could be redeemed as avatar upgrades, or special boots to use in the game. This leads to the “friends” section, where the consumer can see what their friends are up to by connected the app to Facebook, or they can share their goals and high scores with their friends. Many youth are motivated by what their peers think of them so this section of the app would be a good way to motivate them to reach their goals and get high scores so they can share it with their friends.

In terms of peer review, the one that Caroline did is not completely applicable anymore as the project was changed, but the one thing that helped from the feedback was changing the font of the name brand. She also mentioned that she couldn't tell what exactly the product was from just reading the ad, so the tagline was added, which mentions that the product is a multivitamin, just to make it clear to the consumer.

Besides looking up color psychology, most of the information to create this project came from the readings we did in class or was general information from an advertising class. Time was also spent looking at vitamin bottles to create something that was similar enough to fit in to the product category, but different enough to stand out. Both the bottle and the ad concepts were created in Photoshop.

Works Referenced:

Benjamin, Walter. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." Marxists Internet Archive. UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, n.d. Web. 15 Feb. 2015.

Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. London: British Broadcasting, 1973. Print.

Bolter, Jay David, and Richard A. Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1999. Print.

Campbell, June. "The Psychology of Color in Marketing." The Psychology of Color in Marketing. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Apr. 2015.

"Color Wheel Pro - See Color Theory in Action." Color Meaning. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Mar. 2015.

Mulvey, Laura. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." Screen 16, no. 4 (1975): 6-18.

"The Color Orange." Empowered By Color. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Apr. 2015.

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For this week, I wanna draw attention to outdoor advertising.

I think that this is definitely an underrated form of visual persuasion, because its hard to come up with an idea that you can convey in a just a quick glance. The above ad is a great example of using the environment to catch people’s attention and get the message of the ad across very effectively. Its something that makes you look and do a double take because its so unusual and hilarious, and if I was ever in need for nose hair trimmers I would know where to go!

In creating my final project, I had to consider who my target audience was, and I decided that for once I wanted there to be a practical product that was not gendered. Sometimes it gets kind of ridiculous:

Like what the hell world, get it together!!

This clearly shows that Mulvey’s assessment that hegemony forces the minorities to view things through the mainstream point of view. Sadly, in this case, the minority is women. I think that it is horrifying that these kinds of products are seen as acceptable. Objects that men and women use exactly the same way, but they have to be gendered because the world needs women to stay pink and frilly and out of the way so they can’t threaten the patriarchy. 

All this does is teach little girls to conform to society, and to think of themselves as innocent and fragile. 

Thanks patriarchy. 

So, since we were talking about comic sans and its credibility in class, I found this collage of logos with comic sans font instead of their own. I think this definitely goes to show how font impacts how we view the brand. 

For the cases like Atari and Kodak, the logos don't honestly look that different at first glance, so it doesn't really change my view of the brand. 

But then, if you look at the LV one, you can see the dramatic difference font makes. LV’s whole brand is based off of their LV logo, which has its distinctive font. Changing that font changes the brand entirely, and takes it from a high class brand, to a joke. 

Its kind of crazy how much of an impact font makes on how we view things. 

With this font, FedEx’s logo looks super un credible, Microsoft looks super ghetto and amateur, Harley looks like a childs project and mcdonalds looks like me using paint when I was 12.

So since we’re talking about Ferguson this week, I thought I might talk about this episode of scandal. Some context: a lot of people think that Scandal doesn't do its part in addressing race issues even though it is focused on a very strong African American woman with a lot of power. I think that this episode which aired only a few weeks ago was meant to fulfill their quota for race issues. 

In the episode, a white police officer shoots a african american teenager in the street and the teenager’s father shows up with a shotgun and a chair and sits over his son’s body still they get a legitimate person to investigate. Olivia is called in by the police to fix the situation and stop protests from happening. She instead stays to find out the truth, as the police officer claims that the kid had a knife, when the father said he never carried a knife. 

It is laster found out that the kid was reaching for a receipt to prove he had paid for what the officer had claimed he had stolen and the officer had planted a knife on him to cover it up. 

When the Olivia finds out and confronts the officer, he goes on the above rant about how he wasn't respected. I feel like this gives a good example of the mentality of these kind of white cops who shoot unarmed black men and think that they are some kind of god. The officer said that they weren't taught to respect hum, but that just reminded me of the words in the Dred Scott case where they said that black men had “no rights which the white man was bound to respect”

In the end, they let the dad off with out being arrested and the police officer gets charged, which just goes to show that the show glosses over reality and goes for a neat ending, which would never happen in real life. So good job talking about race Scandal, but don't bother if you're not going to be accurate about what really happens in life. 

So since we were talking about Mulvey and the messed up reality of women in film these days, I thought I would do my blog post on this interview. 

This interviewer dude literally asks ScarJo if she was wearing underwear under her Black Widow outfit, and then laughs it off when she finds this offensive. I was so shocked when I watched this, because when did it become socially acceptable to ask BS questions like this, but then I realized that its always been that way. 

Mulvey pointed out how women are just seen as objects of the male gaze in film, that they're just there to stare at and be objects of fantasy, but that even translates over to real life. Even outside of film, women are not considered 3 dimensional even though THEY ARE REAL FREAKING HUMAN BEINGS. 

It’s always the men that get the deep questions about how this impacts their life and what they think of the characters that they play, yet women are consistently being asked about how they got in to shape, their diets, what they're wearing, what their nails look like, etc. 

Here's a link to it since the quality is really crappy

So this is my mind map for Warner, maybe I went a little overboard? Idk. I really think it helped me understand the concepts a little better though, and it finally made sense that everything was connected. Making this also really helped me get that you can't always read things in a linear manner. 

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In light of the recent bomb threats in West Campus against muslim associations and the shootings in Chapel Hill a while ago, I decided hey why don't I look at how the media is manipulating the story with BS lies this time. And lo and behold I found this article, in the freaking Washington Post of all places, which is supposed to be a reputable news source ffs. 

This kind of stuff makes me so angry because when the victims are of color and the murderer is not, the media always tries to portray the murderer as some sort of person not in their right mind, as he is described as a "troublemaker" and later in the article, someone says this may have been a result of mental illness. Of course this wasn't a hate crime. Of course it was all about some bogus as hell parking situation as the police are trying to make it all about. By putting this so directly in the title it is obvious that they are trying to make excuses for more murders at the hands of a white male.

And yea I'm not religious but my family is muslim and sometimes I wonder if maybe i'm or they're next because of the color of our skin or our religion, just because of the way the media portrays us. And part of this is because the public for these kind of BS articles just eats this crap up as legitimate because of course they're not racist, he's just crazy. And so they keep reporting this because no one wants to get out of their comfort zone and actually change anything. 

The media and the public is willing to pin the deaths of three innocent people with bright futures ahead of them on a parking issue because it'll help them sleep better at night.