Lessons of the day...

There were some really great points we touched on in todays class. First of all I really enjoyed this weeks article on "Hard-to-reach" groups. It made so much sense and I appreciated the fact that it put the blame on the researchers. I think labeling a group as "hard-to-reach" is a perfect excuse for researchers, program implementers, etc. to not be innovative in their communication tactics. I feel its so valuable to now have this new perspective that there is no "hard to reach" groups but rather "we" are doing a good job of reaching them. On the opposite side of the spectrum are those that are trying desperately and innovatively to get at their target audience. Case in point Sprite, MTV, Nike, etc. I couldn't help but feel that no matter how they market their products for teenagers teens are still made out to be suckers. Companys try to say in their ads that we care about you, and what you think. But lets face it all they care about is how can they make you believe all that even though they just want your money. Or in the case of teenagers, their parents money. Despite my pessimistic view on the marketing tactics seen in the video we watched I do see the silver lining; get to know your audience so you can best communicate reciprocally between you and them. Which brings me to last great lesson of the day, that is to follow top industries to see what they are doing in terms of marketing and apply that to health promotion campaigns. Again, as with the article it makes perfect sense and without this class I don't think I would have thought of that or at least thought that it could work in health promotion.

Yay to segmentation by sushi!

I too agree that this is the best class yet!! Even my husband who hears me talk about my project and course discussions thinks this is a really interesting class. So kudos to the course for actually getting him to listen to me when I go on about what I learned today. The segmentation by sushi was a great way to visual each element of segmentation. After reading the article on segmentation in the reader the concept still wasn't very clear. But actually trying to segment our class and then come up with on the spot interventions really made it clear! The best part was taking it to that second step and coming up with possible campaign messages and interventions. It really puts theory into practice, and there is no better learning than that. On another note I took the VALS survey and found that it was totally way off on one of my traits and totally correct on the secondary trait. Which made me wonder how accurate is this test and similar profiling tests?

Is a "skinny" drink offensive?

So I come home from class thinking about how segmentation works and how to tailor messages to people based on segmentation characteristics. I see this story on msn which makes me wonder did Starbucks do their homework or are the people they aren't targeting the most upset. They claim their "skinny" latte is for health conscious people. As a health conscious person I don't think calling a drink skinny to denote its low fat would work on me. Take a look and see if it would work on you or if you're just offended.

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/Extra/AreStarbucksSkinnyDrinksOffensive.aspx

Spilling your guts & Storytelling.

Unfortunately, I was unable to attend class this week. Apparently I missed out on some interesting topics. I did however do the spill your guts assignment and look over the story telling video and articles. These served as my lessons for the week. The two people I got to "spill their guts" were my hairdresser and a beauty product rep. at Target. A few things that surprised me were that I have had several encounters with these people, but I would never really say I know who they are, at least not until now. After a while of conversing I was able to get them to talk about themselves more personally. Which was weird, because when I travel I strike up conversations with people very often and right away get at those basic questions of who you are. But these two people that I have had frequent conversations with it was a bit harder to segway into a conversation we should've probably had when we first met. This assignment also made me realize that in our day to day (at least in mine) its getting so much harder to interact with people, especially have a conversation. At the bank we can use drive throughs, at the supermarket we can do self-checkout, on the public transportation people are either on their cell phones or are listening to music through earphones. No wonder conversations between people (in whatever context) have to offer more, like a story. Stories have a way of capturing peoples attention and creating this common ground between people. I really found the weblinks and video on storytelling useful and interesting.

Sex ed. in the 21st century.

http://midwestteensexshow.com/

"Breaking through the clutter"-reflections

"Breaking through the clutter" definitely helped put into a better perspective what advertisers want to accomplish when putting together their ad campaigns. Most of the time I watch commercials and either think they stink or they are funny. Rarely do I get the sense that I really understand what the ad is trying to convey. But after watching this video I feel compelled to ask myself what do advertisers want me to Think/feel/do after being exposed to their ads. I also now wonder how many advertisers spend the time to do quality formative research on their target audience; so many times I see ads that seem to play up a stereotype of a target audience. I found it interesting that one of the advertisers felt uneasy about people opening up to the researcher. He was uncomfortable by this because he wasn’t sure if it was right to have people share more than they were asked to in order for advertisers to understand their customers. I think it was more a question of how are we using this information and is it ethical. This is what I ultimately got from watching this video; how are we using formative research? And for whose benefit?