In today's technological age, it is easy to get swept up in the internet. With so many features targeting so many various demographics, anyone is susceptible. The young, gullible users, however, are far more apt to spend the majority of their free time indulging in online services. The problem with this is that these kids don't separate the online world from the real world. Their online excursions become an extension of their own identity to which they become absorbed and addicted.
Myspace capitalizes on this with a minor invasion of privacy. On these online social networking sites, users can highlight their interests and hobbies on the internet. While able to find other people with similar interests, they also leave themselves open to various advertisements and emails. These seem miniscule, but they don't realize how marketers are viewing their profile at all times, ready to pounce on them with ads for individual products similar to their interests. On my facebook page, I have my allegiance to the Jets listed, and not surprisingly, I have ads for nflshop.com consistently appearing when I log in.
Another danger in Myspace is how people feel defended behind their online facade. At Morristown HS, two girls got into a verbal altercation on the networking site. They consistently retorted each other's comments, bashing each other with posts on each other's pages, but never confronted each other verbally in school. Kids in the school would intently follow the argument, wondering how much this could possibly escalate. Without any face-to-face confrontation, the insults became larger and larger, so the first meeting between this girls ended up being a brawl in the cafeteria of the school. The monitor defense allowed this fight to grow far past where it should have, and these girls were almost expelled as a result.
In schools, we are taught to learn persuasive tactics in order to successfully portray our ideas, beliefs, or anything else that would take some convincing. In high school, we learn the art of persuasive essays- using subjective phrasing backed by objective facts. At the college level, public relations and marketing classes are available to enhance the influence that pictures and catchy tag lines have. Both of these are applicable to the modern and new-age style of advertising which is ever-present in today's media.
One of the newest tactics in modern advertising is the process of "Cool Hunting." Utilized by the proclaimed "Merchants of Cool," this encompasses the trials of hired professionals interviewing random people and focus groups for the purpose of feeding companies information about what is "cool" in the modern society. They plunge into the depths of the contemporary minds and discover what the turn-ons and turn-offs are that drive consumers toward or away from products or ideas. These analysts return to the companies that pay them, a fee which is generally around several hundred dollars, and divulge the information to the advertising branch of said company. Considering the amount of money that is to be made from this information, the cost is miniscule.
Product placement has been around for a long time now, but is becoming evermore prevalent in cinema and television. Product placement is when companies pay movie or television producers to incorporate their product into a certain number of scenes. In "Back to the Future", starring Christopher Lloyd and Michael J. Fox, Pepsi paid a substantial amount of money so that when Marty McFly (Fox) goes to the diner, he specifically orders a Pepsi instead of a soda, and he receives a bottle full of the beverage, with the patented Pepsi logo in plain view. In HBO's hit series "Sex in the City," an entire episode is centered around a billboard for Absolut Vodka. The Absolut company paid HBO Studios to have a conjoined project, and Absolut's sales increased by roughly 40 percent. It may some like nothing, considering how aware we are of these products, but when we see the protagonist of a great movie or a group of women would try to embody endorsing a certain product in their everyday lives, we subconsciously do the same.
The art of narrowcasting is a newer feature of the advertising market, but it is becoming increasingly more effective. Narrowcasting is when marketers gear their advertisements toward a specific demographic, as opposed to the general population of consumers. This concentrated marketing minimizes costs and increases awareness amongst users of a general product for their company's product. Even more specific is the tactic known as branding, in which companies associate their product with this group of people. In the case of Coors Light, they have labeled football fans as beer drinkers. To show the correlation of football and beer, they have taken coaches interviews and sideline antics and incorporated it to moments of Coors Light prowess, as in this video featuring ex-Ravens coach Brian Billick. This is a prime example of a marriage between product and demographic.
These tactics, new or old, are sure to continue for as long as they are successful, or at least until a slightly more intrusive, yet effective form comes along to take their places. It's amazing to think about how much our lives are infected with advertisements, yet we don't even realize it. Somebody is doing their job very well.
1) CWN stands for Community Wireless Network. The CWNs allow for wide open, non-proprietary, and freely accessible systems funded by the government, so these networks are paid for with taxes. This allows would-be consumers of profit-driven internet providers a chance to save money and resources with community-provided wireless bandwidth. This greatly assists the bridging of the "Digital Divide" between resource-rich and resource-poor areas because in the case of CWNs, the resources are equal. The poorer areas are receiving the same signal as the richer areas, eliminating a large portion of internet segregation. CWNs are the Civil Rights Acts of wireless internet.
2) Unfortunately, the phrase "The customer is always right" doesn't cover a notion that companies should "Always do right by the customer."In attempts to maintain their control over technology markets, corporations go to some remarkable extremes. As shown to us from our books, the merger between Cingular and AT&T should have been beneficial to the consumer, but instead it put them back. Instead of increasing service, the "New AT&T" pays Sprint a fee to share their network and muddles the line between services, causing confusion amongst the users. With shared networks, consumers can't determine which networks are better and find no reason to switch providers. Bundling is another huge issue in regards to corporations throwing clients under the bus to preserve their success. Companies such as Intel market their Centrino technology, which is a combination of chips that are supposed to enhance their products. However, they overpay for this convenience when the purchasing of separate, less expensive chips would do the job more efficiently. Meinrath informs us of the bundles of the Centrino notebooks, and how it ends up sticking it to the consumer.
3) Corporate consolidation (Cingular/AT&T) and the early buying of technologies make the technology market seem more like the Venezuelan economy- 1% of the population owns 99% of the wealth. The merger between the aforementioned companies caused them to become the largest wireless company at 47 million users. Now that that market has been cornered, they set their sites to new projects. When smaller companies fabricate ideas for new technologies, big companies will swoop in to buy the rights to these products, and since they are generally unproven and untested, they are purchased at a discounted price. Instead of a new company to flourish with the success of their new products, the already-established corporations have increased their product lines, taking more of the wealth.
