Blog #5 Sisley Controversial Ad

http://www.fabsugar.com/Fab-Ad-Sisley-Fashion-Junkie-1-388065

This printing ad is from Sisley, a Paris high-end fashion clothing brand. As seen in the ad, two girls, who are wearing glamorous, are doing “fashion” drug. This advertisement really concerns me when I first saw the campaign. This Sisley “Fashion Junkie” ad not only publicizes on illegal actions but also propagate materialism.

I understand the advertiser wants to advertise on fashion obsession. However, the approach they used is extremely unappreciated. Drug abuse is illegal action, no matter what kind of artistic effect one wants to achieve, it should not be used. Also this ad is advertised on a lifestyle, which is fashion. The main target consumer is young people or even teenagers. I believe their priority should be their school work instead of fashion. This advertising is extremely unethical. The advertiser should and have to realize their ethical responsibility in social society.

I personally think the advertiser change the whole approach. I think the “Fashion Junkie” concept is great, but they do need to change the theme of the advertisement.

Blog #5 Levi's Controversial Ad

source: http://youtu.be/KT16DcHcjRA

This video is Levi’s global ad campaign which tries to describe the life style of youth. The people showed in this video were dressed in Levi’s. They danced, held party, made love, and matched in the streets to against the police.

In my view, the violence scenes like smoke bombs in the street and the mass gathering are not good to the public. It might induce the youths, for example, college students, to act the same way as the youth did in the video. It will lead to crimes and violence in the real life. It has negative social impact about the mass gathering and matching.

The advertisers might say they were trying to describe the image of the young people. These kinds of people are lively and not likely to listen to the elders. It is common to describe the target customers’ life in the ads. But this ad is crossing the line and controversial. Many people post negative comments about this ad. Finally Lev’s announced it temporarily postponed the campaign, but this video is still on the YouTube and has hits of 3 million.

The data told us the ad is popular. The ad is affective, though it is inappropriate to talk about the young rebel period in this way.

Inner smile

When we saw these pictures for the first time, they reminded us about the mysterious smile of Mona Lisa. Although you could barely notice the smile at all in these pictures, the name of this ad offered us a hint. This series of pictures named “Inner smile”, which were designed for FUJIFILM F70 camera, won the golden prize of out of home category of the 2011 Clio Awards.

Life has many inconspicuous scenes, therefore you need to have enough ability to capture the images which will reveal their hidden truths. The ad consists of three photos taken by FUJIFILM F70. By the look of their clothes and their expressions, we could know that they are attending a funeral. Each mourner looks sad and it seems that all of them express deep condolences to the dead, except one person. She also looks sad at the first glance however the little green AF frame exposes her secret. She is not sincere about the death of the decreased. Under her false sadness, she is smiling from the deep inside. The same situation happens in the rest two pictures. People actually smile in the situation which we usually do not smile at all. The second one happens in front of the boarding gate of the air port. The couple holds each other tightly. The man seems to be set out on a long journal. The woman is supposed to be sad for his leaving, however, F70 catch the moment of her “inner smile” again. We also can feel that the male with longer hair is trying his best to contain his “inner smile”. He might hold a hand of good cards and he is fighting back his cheerful emotion. Those pictures do tell us stories.

We think that the ad won the golden prize for the following reasons. At first, it selects the dark side of human nature, which is full of irony, to impress us. Instead of normally using photos of natural scenery to show the performance of cameras, the designer of this ad picks several scenes in the real life. The unique creativity makes the ad stand out and attract people’s attention.  Second, it arouses echo in target customer’s heart. Every photographer and photography enthusiast aspires to shot the best photos. And the prerequisite of an outstanding photo is that the photo can tell us a story. In other words, the photo needs to have a soul. These three pictures obviously succeeded to achieve this. Moreover, the designer use the perspective of photo taker, which implies that you could get pictures as good as these three if you use F70 camera. Thirdly, except the excellence perspectives, these pictures display the splendid performance of the camera. One of the selling points of Fujifilm F70 is its excellent auto focus performance. This ad perfectly highlights this point. Beside, these three high quality photos each focus on one advantage of this camera. The first one throws the background out of focus ideally. The second one indicates that F70 is good at handling light. The last one shows its outstanding color handling. Every photo highlights the advantages of the product appropriately.

Why not me?

Everyone had a dream that could never come true. This commercial told us a sad story about love, dream, and reality, a story about one sentence that we never stop asking ourselves, “why not me”.

The commercial looks like a Middle Age movie at the beginning, then the staffs showed out, it now looks like a documentaries about a successful movie director. The only difference is the director is not a human being but a bear. The hided clue is the bear director is a little strange.  He’s too thin, not like the other cute, plump bear we could usually see on TV. The bear director talked about how his passion about the movie comes from. A lot of movie shooting scenes, the actors, the music, and special effect workers showed in our face. And then the turning point shows, the bear is not a real direct; he is just a piece of carpet who watch CANAL+ every day in someone’s living room.

I believe this commercial won the 2011 Adweek top 10 best commercial reward for 2 reasons. First, the illogical connect between a bear carpet and a movie director shows the magic of CANAL+. Even a piece of carpet could not resist the charming of CANAL+, how about you? Watching movies on CANAL+ is such delightful experience, even a piece of carpet general the passion for movie after watching this cannel for a while. Are you sure you don’t want to try? Second, the commercial is really good at control the audience’s emotion. As said at the beginning, we all have dreams. It’s usually make you feel cheerful, positive and encouraging to see someone’s successful story, if the story is about a bear director it would be even more attractive. But suddenly, the bubble broke out. The cruel reality told you all you have seen was just illusion. How could this bear become a director? He is just a piece of carpet lying in someone’s living room. The whole story went to the climax when the bear sadly said, “why not me”. How happy you are at the beginning, how upset you would feel now. Just this intense emotion comparison made you remember this brand, CANAL+.

A good story telling commercial is always like a movie, this commercial picked the perfect actor and impressive scenario like all the other successful movies. The commercial shows a scene would happen to ordinary people, even our dream would always beat by cruel reality, we could still pray for a miracle. Lucky for us, at least human could fight for their dream much more than a piece of carpet.   

The Sexiest Super Bowl Ad of 2012--Teleflora.com

Every year the Super Bowl attracts numerous audiences. Besides the exciting game, ads shown during the game are also an eye-catching part. Based on the topic “promotion” our group chose before, we want to share our feeling and understanding about the Sexiest Super Bowl Ad of 2012: The Teleflora Super Bowl 2012 Ad.

The Ad begins with a hot scene, a beauty is putting on her stockings slowly, accompanying with teaser music. Then she gets dressed and puts on make-up. It seems like that she is preparing for a date. At the end of commercial she offers advice by saying “Give and you shall receive” with sexy eyesight and voice. After that, “Happy Valentine’s Night” and the iconic flower bottle appear on the screen, followed by the coupon number and the website address.

The target customer of the Ad is obvious: guys who have the intention to buy gifts to girls they love. Valentine’s Day is coming, if you are still scratching your head about the choice of gift, you can just consider ordering a gift from Teleflora. Meanwhile, we can also suggest that some girls who wish to receive wonderful gifts from boys would share this Ad with their boyfriend, implying them to make a purchase through Teleflora.

We were moved by the heroine’s charming smile, voice and hot figure. We believe many male audiences are likely to stop watching TV, visit the website address and make an order as soon as possible.

This Ad delivers sexy delusion to its target customers. Just as what heroine says: “Give and you shall receive”, the Ad intends to imply that if you buy delicate flowers from Teleflora, your wife or girlfriend will be touched and the relationship between you could become much closer.

The whole story is quite perceptual, but in the end, the Ad doesn’t forget propagating its website and holiday coupon. It combines both emotional and reasonable factors perfectly. First, it enlightens customers’ desire and need—yeah, I really need such a gift like that; then it utilizes some promotions to confirm their purchase decision—oh, 20% off, that’s the one I should choose right now without considering other alternative items or other shopping channels.

We believe the Ad communicates its messages effectively. The commercial is showed just at the right time and right place, and it used the right celebrity. Right Time-To an internet flower retailer, Valentine’s Day could bring huge sales. To its target customers, Valentine’s Day’s tradition is to give gift to wife or girlfriend. The commercial was showed just one week before Valentine’s Day. It’s the perfect time to increase the awareness of the firm and satisfy customers’ need. Right Place-The commercial is showed during the Super Bowl, the best platform to covered huge number of potential buyers. Right Celebrity-The charming model, brilliance red dress and her foreign accent in the commercial successfully build a delightful and sexy atmosphere. It makes the girls what to become her, and men want to data a girl like her. And the commercial implies that purchasing flowers from Teleflora.com would make your dream become true.

Teleflora, the name of the store, only appears once by the end of this Ad. According to our text book, it is the right time to present the link of the store. The beautiful young lady, Adriana Lima, attracted audiences’ eye balls at the very beginning. People would get a very deep impression of the link of the store later on for their attentions are all caught by this lady.

Adriana Lima, the celebrity who endorses this brand, is a world-known model. She is sexy and charming. We believe even girls were attracted by her. She hasn’t endorsed many brands. According to her biography, she only endorsed Victoria's Secret and Maybelline. This also made her endorsement of Teleflora becomes valuable and effective.

In a whole, this Ad of Teleflora is perfectly designed and placed at the right time. Their choice of celebrity is very careful and wise. We like this Ad and believe it will bring a big rise of the selling of their products during the period of the coming Valentine’s Day.

Here is the link of the Ad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWrJgFjxlS0

Why "Promotion"?

We did have a long discussion about which topic to choose. In the assignment, we had multiple choices: Personal Selling, Promotion, Public Relations/Publicity, B2B advertising and interactive media. One of our group members, Jane, had a couple years working experience in Personal Selling. She was a sales representative in Pfizer. We discussed about this topic for a while, it’s interesting but we worried about lack of material in this area.

Then Xiaowen suggested we could choose Advertising. She said “We would have tons of material in this area.” The rest of us all agree with this, just worried about there may be too many groups who choose this topic. It may be difficult to stand out.

Public Relations/Publicity, interactive media and Promotion, we went through all the possibility. They are all interesting topics. However, we just could not pick one with the full vote. Until someone asked the question, “The Promotion, it means the coupon and discount, right?” “Wow, It’s more than that”, Katie said, and then she described many different kinds of promotion. “Yes, I remember when the AF brand store opened in Shanghai, they put many half naked American male models in the store, this move attracted many female customers, that was also a kind of Promotion”, said Rebecca with her exciting voice.

The following discussion changed to the topic about those handsome American models. In a group with girls, you just could not avoid this situation. The first time all the members agreed to choose the promotion as our topic for this blog. I guess we just could not resist the charm of those half-naked models. The truth is if the promotion could attract the customers, it could also attract us, so it would work for our blog readers

The basic objective of promotion are to let customer know the products and service, to differentiate them from others and to increase demand. That's exactly what's marketing used for and what the marketing people should do. 
Besides, we think that a promotion mix or a promotion plan could involve elements such as  personal selling, advertising, sales promotion, direct marketin and publicity. Therefore we are also able to learn related knowledge in these areas.

At the end, we decided to dig into the Promotion area. We plan to spend some time on research all kinds of Promotion activity and have fun! And, yes, we will share our great experience with our dear readers too. Please keep an eye on us=^^=