Kirk Bouley: Americas Best…

I cannot even tell you about how many shows are on TV these days looking for the best up and coming talent. From finding the next star chef or Americas next top supermodel, apparently reality TV is the best way to go about it. Most of these shows start off with quite a few people or groups and every week one of them is sent home with their tails between their legs. At the end of the show the winner is usually presented with a cash prize and a huge career opportunity in their desired field. I recently saw a new reality show called Americas Next Best Dance Crew. While the show was somewhat entertaining it gave no potential future to the participants. There is not really anywhere to go in the street dancing profession. The show that really started the star search was American Idol. If you look at all of the huge names that came form the show the majority of them were not the winners. Since the winner is forced into a contract, the runner-ups are free to find much better deals. It is truly amazing how many big names have from that show.

Kirk Bouley: The Matrix

I remember watching the first movie in The Matrix trilogy when it came out in 1999. The first time I watched it, being only 11 years old, I loved all of the special effects but the real story passed me by. After watching it again, I picked up on the story beyond all the action. The Matrix soon qualified as my favorite movie and I anxiously waited for the second installment to hit theaters. On opening day lines to see The Matrix Reloaded were seemingly endless. My friend Nick and I stood in line for hours to get tickets. After it was over I had much the same feeling I had when I saw the original for the first time. There were some cool parts but I feel like I missed something. Much like the original I thought that watching the second again would clear up any misunderstanding. But it didn’t. Honestly, to this day, I still don’t completely understand the second matrix. I was so disappointed in the second matrix, I never even made it to see the third and final film. I know its cliché to say that the second movie is never as good as the first, but The Matrix is a perfect example that clichés come from somewhere.

Kirk Bouley: Foreign Ads

I do not know if it is the product of living in nation founded by protestants or an extremely trigger happy FCC, but in comparison to advertising in many foreign countries ours in the US is just boring. I have been to several countries is Europe and South America and since my Dad is in the industry, I like to pay attention to different ideas in advertising. The biggest difference I have notched between the US and elsewhere is that most other countries make a habit of there advertising being far more sexually explicit. One TV spot that caused a lot of backlash was for Chanel and showed Charlize Theron taking off a robe. It was so controversial that it was pulled form the air in the US even though that the commercial cuts off before you see anything more than her lower back. A few months later I was in Argentina and the same add come on TV. Only the Argentinean add did not end when the robe was at her lower back, it ended when she was naked except for high heels walking down a hallway. To be honest the version I saw in Argentina was far more memorable.

Kirk Bouley: Product Placement

A bit different from most standard forms of advertising, product placement can be a very effective form of getting your product name circulating. While some product placement can be seen in TV shows, it is most common in full-length movies. Some of the appeal to featuring products in a movie over a commercial or billboard is simply longevity. If you want exposure from more normal types of advertisements you have to pay for every time you want it aired. With a movie you help pay the production cost of the movie, but from then on your product gets advertised every time someone watches that movie. Sometimes it is pretty obvious that a company paid for a little time in a movie. Whether it’s a conversation in front of a huge Coca Cola sign or someone asking for a pack of Marlboro’s they are not very discrete. On the other hand, there are examples of product placement that are a bit more creative. For example, the movie The Transporter 2 features several action packed chase scenes in an Audi and one high-speed race down a highway in a Lamborghini. What most people down know is that the same company owns both of these car companies. While it may not be as blatant as other forms of advertising, product placement is a great way to get exposure.

Kirk Bouley: Oil Prices

As I am sure you all know oil is at record highs and the price keeps going up almost daily. As you may not have heard the price of crude oil hit an all time record high this week at over $111 per barrels. The causes that we hear about in the news are mainly that oil-producing nations are cutting production and raising prices. Also as countries like China are going through industrialization they are consuming more oil than they ever have before, also driving up prices. While both of these are valid reasons for the recent spike in prices, alone this is not enough to cause such a drastic jump in oil prices. A third and very important reason for the recent prices is American and foreign invertors. Analysts have made predictions showing that if investors were not investing in oil that the price per barrels would be somewhere around $85. To be completely honest it pisses me off that I am paying $3.30 at the pump instead of somewhere around $2.50 just because investors have jumped into the market to make an easy buck.

Kirk Bouley: Weather

I have been trying to keep up with the news for the last few months and two things have been dominating the airwaves. The first is the upcoming presidential election and I have already written plenty about that. The second thing in the news these days is the ever-growing concern about the weather. Many people believe that the last few years’ bizarre weather patterns are the cause of global warming due to the greenhouse effect. And unfortunately I feel like the issue of global warming has become a political party issues instead of a public safety concern. Regardless of your political affiliations it is hard to deny the unusual weather we have been seeing. In the last few years specifically there has been a dramatic increase in the number of sever thunderstorms, tornadoes, and hurricanes in the US. As a result of the growing concern about global warming many companies have changed their business practices to be more environmentally minded. This huge shift has in turn lead to increased news coverage. I think the only sure conclusion we can entirely sure of is that we are going to be hearing a lot more about this in the years to come.

Kirk Bouley: Colors

The reason for this blog is that I heard a very interesting theory and after looking into it, if nothing else, a very cool idea. The theory is that human emotions can be triggered by something as simple as a color that we see. The theory goes on to claim that the colors red and yellow are supposed to trigger the feeling of hunger. At first wrote it off as just one more paranoid conspiracy theory. I put it out of my mind but a few weeks I heard another one of my friends talking about it. Once I started thinking about it some of the theory seemed to make since. My thought was that fast-food companies spend more than just about any other industry on market research so if anyone would know about a correlation between colors and hunger they would. For the next few weeks I found myself looking at every fast-food sign I passed and sure enough every single one had yellow or red somewhere on it. I had always thought that things like logos and sign colors were pretty random. Decided by the founder’s favorite colors or what there kids liked best, but there’s obviously much more to it than that.

Kirk Bouley: Ratings

We have all heard about the nelson rating system that has been around almost as long a TV itself. For a many years people had a really hard time providing accurate data for the company because it required the participants to remember and write down every thing that they are watching and for how long. This became a problem because people were not always honest with there reporting or they simply did not remember correctly to write it down. To try to eliminate these errors nelsons started using a small box that connected to your TV and recorded everything that you watched. But even this accurate data still left something to be desired. While the data collected at home is accurate but that is only a percentage of what you are exposed to. If we realize it or not, we are constantly being bombarded by TV and radio. The most recent evolution of the nelson rating system is a little recording device that you just carry around with you that picks up tones on the radio and on the TV. It records instantly all of the signals that we are around if we even recognize it or not. Now we can keep track of all of the signals attacking us all of the time.

Kirk Bouley: Psychographics

I have always heard a lot about marketing being targeted to a certain demographic but I had never before been introduced to the idea of marketing to psychographics. The idea behind a demographic is that peoples buying characteristics can be determined by certain aspects such as age, gender, or location. Psychographics are also a way to attempt to predict how people will spend their money but is based on values and beliefs. Many people even think that this is a more effective way of predicting spending than demographics. Advertisers use psychographics to determine where every marketing dollar would be best spent. If they know it or not, people choose television shows that on some level reflect there lifestyle. I would like to see a side-by-side comparison to see which method is a more accurate determinant of consumer behavior.

Kirk Bouley: Consumer Behavior

When it comes to spending money we will always put our own needs before that of others. These needs will determine how much we will spend and what we will spend it on. In chapter 4 in the Berger book this behavior is broken down into four different categories. These include need-driven, outer-directed, inner-directed, and integrated. The first, need-driven, is made up of people we are near poverty and find it hard to supply basic needs. Second, outer-directed, makes up the majority of the US population and these consumers will buy item based on how others will respond to it. Third, inner-directed, have a fairly self-explanatory name. They spend their money to meet their inner needs. And the final group know as integrated, are know as “taste opinion leaders”. When I read about these groups I thought about how certain people fit into certain groups and I came up with a perfect example of outer-driven behavior. I went to a private school that was in a pretty rough area. Just down the street from school was the most dilapidated house in the area. In the driveway were two cars, a brand new Escalade and Mercedes S500. Nearly two hundred thousand dollars of cars in front of a house with holes in the roof. It’s amazing!