IMC Hawks Blog

Category: Entertainment

  • The Galaxy S4

    What could be better than Siri you ask? Apple better watch out because they may have recently developed a new top competitor. Samsung’s newest phone the Galaxy S4 is soon to be released at the end of April 2013. The Galaxy S4’s, or GS4, dimensions and weight are slightly larger than the iPhone5, but so is the screen size for those who like to see a bigger picture.

    image

    The GS4 processing speed is 1 .9GHz with the Android 4.2.2 operating system, which is considerably faster, than iPhone5’s processing speed of 1 GHz on the iOS operating system. To see a table of more comparisons, click this link. When it comes to the camera, GS4’s Super AMOLED panel at 441 pixels per inch is significantly denser than iPhone5’s 326 pixels per inch. The GS4 camera also has crazy new features such as the recording of front and back cameras at the same time.

    So what new technological features does the Galaxy S4 have that could really disperse the iPhone fanatics? When choosing between the Galaxy S4 and the iPhone5 the design, display, apps, and processing system are all based on individual preference, but the Galaxy S4 interface is just on a completely new level. PC mag.com states, “Android features a much more customizable interface for advanced users, which lets you configure your phone exactly how you want it.” The interface has a feature called Air Gestures, which includes motion sensors of hand movements to control the display with out even touching the screen. They have Smart Stay, which tracks your eyes to tell if you are looking at the screen. If you are watching a video, Smart Pause will automatically pause the video for you when you look away. Smart Scroll will check when you are reading a scroll up and down when you tilt the device.

    image    image

    This April we will all be able to see for ourselves if the iPhone has a real competitor; and if Samsung’s new features using hand and eye sensors are handy to use on a day-to-day basis or just plain creepy!

    -Kelsey Raskob

  • Keep Calm and Party On?

    When I tell most people what my plans are for my 21st birthday, the first thing out of their mouth is: “are you serious?” I don’t plan to be with my friends getting wasted, I plan to be with my family. For any other birthday, this wouldn’t be odd. The 21st birthday, however, no longer belongs to the family. It belongs to friends, alcohol, and the bathroom floor.  21andover

    Movies like The Hangover, Project X, and Superbad have become household names… especially in a college town on a Friday or Saturday night. The newest contender trying to add its name to the list is “21 and Over.” While I was watching the trailer, I couldn’t help but roll my eyes a little bit. Albeit the movie looks hilarious, the cultural stereotypes it perpetuates are getting a little old.

    The three main characters are a set of best friends. One happens to be turning 21 and has been forbidden to party by his father. The other two boys convince him to disobey his father and celebrate in true, over-exaggerated, Hollywood fashion. During the trailer one of the boys exclaims “As his best friends on Earth, we have a moral obligation to get him drunk as f***.” That statement sums up what upsets me the most about this particular genre of movies. The message these movies are sending is that the most important thing in life is getting wasted, partying, and dodging responsibilities. Rather than creating a culture centered on harvesting the potential within an indalcoholividual, Hollywood is creating a culture centered on the effect drugs can have. These movies add to the multitude of pressure young adults are already facing in regards to alcohol, drug use, and partying.

    As educated consumers and college students, these movies present a difficult challenge. It is one thing to watch the movie, it is another to allow the cultural expectations it perpetuates to dictate how you spend your free time. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with letting loose every once in a while but we don’t have to prioritize partying over everything.

    – Alexandra Huss

  • Get Your Vote On!

    From commercials to infomercials, advertising and marketing in this day and age has become a completely different game than in the past. Lately, between the Super Bowl and Valentine’s Day, many Americans have been overwhelmed with advertisements and promotions that are attempting to make their company stand out from the competition. Whether it was simply trying to convince you to buy their soft drink or attempting to convince you to buy your girlfriend’s engagement ring from their jewelry store, sometimes it seems a little too forced.

    http://www.stikkymedia.com/blog/pepsis-20-million-dollar-social-media-campaign

    In response to this tension,  marketers are always looking for innovative new ways to involve consumers in the production, promotion and selection of the product itself. This method has been used effectively before and proved quite fruitful for certain companies. In 2007, Mountain Dew began their “DewMocracy” promotion where customers get the chance to vote on new flavors, graphics, colors and names. To this day, Mountain Dew continues to create opportunity for customer interaction in their promotions and advertisements.

    Interactive promotional campaigns are ideally designed to benefit both the customer and the company. Lays potato chips are the most recent corporation to take this creative strategy and run with it. Lays has put together a multi-step process for establishing their newest flavor of chip. Originally, Lays invited consumers to submit their flavor ideas and let the public vote on these flavors on Facebook. At this point, the public has voted and Lays has narrowed the competition down to the top 3 public favorites. These flavors have actually been produced and are available for purchase for a limited time. While these flavors are available the voting will continue on Facebook and eventually one will be voted in and named the newest member of the Lays family.

    http://www.wtsp.com/news/article/297982/81/You-get-to-pick-the-new-Lays-potato-chip-flavor

    Taking a step back and evaluating this marketing strategy utilized by Lays, Mountain Dew and many other large corporations, it is clear that it is effective not only as a result of the customer interaction, but in a handful of other ways. Obviously if voting and discussion is taking place on social media, this is driving a ton of Internet traffic to each of the respective websites. Also, the customer involvement builds a relationship with the consumers and gives them the feeling that they are a part of the company and making important decisions. Finally, specifically for Lays and other promotions that offer the product for a limited time, this strategy causes a boom in sales with everyone trying the new product.

    Now that this promotion idea of customer involvement has been tried and proven many large companies are adopting these campaigns. Doritos, along with a few other companies, ran campaigns before the Super Bowl to have the consumers make and vote for which commercial would be shown during the big game. So despite the fact that we are still being consistently and constantly advertised to (and that’s not likely to change any time soon!) the benefits of running these promotions are clearly beyond the obvious boost in sales, this is relationship building at its finest!

    – Zach Abramo, Callie Fenlon, Lauren Habig,  Alexandra Huss, Michael Nunes, Daniel Schaefer, Dann Williams

  • The Old and The Reckless

    The commercials from last Sunday’s Super Bowl have been flooding social media sites as they get passed around by friends. The Taco Bell “Viva Young” commercial has been  particularly popular with over two million views on YouTube. The commercial starts with a nurse at a retirement home putting an older man to bed. Then the old man sneaks off with friends to acquire the life of the young and, of course, “Fourth Meal” at Taco Bell.  This unusual group of pranksters are seen pool hopping, lighting firecrackers and even getting down in the clubs. The group building up a hunger ends their night at the Taco Bell Parking lot, and walking back to the retirement home as the sun rises. The song “We Are Young” by Fun, is played in Spanish (of course)to maintain brand continuity. Interestingly, that particular song became popular during last year’s Super Bowl; when it appeared in a Chevy commercial.

    While watching the game, a friend said “talking babies and crazy old people always make the best commercials”. It is interesting to me that the most entertaining commercials are based on events that do not happen often (or at all!) The concept of “old folks” having partying hard and reliving their youth is entertaining and hilarious. This idea has been used before; the artist Modestep released a music video for their song “Sunlight”. This video was posted on YouTube on July 3, 2011 and has over twenty-two million views. The Modestep video has the same idea as the commercial but is not censored by the FCC. The Taco Bell commercial is a “clean” version of this music video as much of the material is not suitable for U.S. television. It Is remarkable to see music culture influencing the types of commercials we see.

    The stylistic features of the commercial and music video are similar. Certain aspects, such as the shot angle and exposures, are close to the same. The idea of the older people going crazy and partying hard that Taco Bell portrays take you by surprise, particularly while considering that most of the commercials promoting their unique concept of “Fourth Meal” have been targeted to their younger consumers (who are more likely to be up late). This commercial appears to actively debunk the stereotype that elderly people are typically in bed by nine. It is interesting to see the commercial feature a group of people who may or may not consume Taco Bell given the primary target audience of most Super Bowl ads. Is this an opportunity for Taco Bell to expand to more mature (or not-so-mature) markets or just another opportunity to entertain the younger population at the expense of the older one? Regardless it is a reminder to “Live Mas” and while doing so, fill your hunger with Taco Bell.

    – Zach Abramo, Callie Fenlon, Lauren Habig,  Alexandra Huss, Michael Nunes, Daniel Schaefer, Dann Williams

  • The Super Bowl of Advertising

    You know what they say – “the best part about the Super Bowl is the commercials”. From the Budweiser frogs, to the GEICO Gecko and even Maxwell (the little piggy who cried “whee whee whee” all the way home) we are constantly receiving messages through creative entertainment. Whether or not you tune in for the game or the ads on Super Bowl Sunday  it’s inarguable that there are only a handful of other events that have the capacity to attract this much attention from such a large audience. Football fan or not, Super Bowl Sunday is all about packing into a room full of friends and family and eating Doritos, Dominos or wings from Buffalo Wild Wings while drinking a nice cold Budweiser. The circumstances surrounding this iconic American tradition combine to create an ideal environment for marketers trying to sell their products. Millions of diverse viewers will tune in and inevitably be bombarded with advertisements targeted to all ages and demographics; an opportunity that advertisers eagerly await all year.

    That being said, it is pretty obvious that many big-name brands would benefit by planning huge advertising campaigns strictly designed to run during the Super Bowl. In the past it was imperative that these commercials were kept a secret until their grand unveiling during the big game. However, with the recent explosion in popularity of social media and internet video viewing platforms, things have taken a slight shift. Many of the advertisers supporting this year’s Super Bowl are now releasing “teasers” designed to increase anticipation of the full ad, as if these commercials were full-length feature films… and it doesn’t stop there. Some of the companies released the full edition of their Super Bowl commercial as early as three days before The Big Game. Well… that doesn’t make it much of a Super Bowl commercial, does it?

    So now that these companies are releasing their special campaigns pre-Super Bowl, viewers will have the pleasure of seeing ‘Super Bowl’ advertisements running up to a week early. Some of the main sponsors created interactive campaigns in order to pre-determine which of their advertisements would resonate best with viewers. Doritos ran a “Crash the Super Bowl” contest where viewers voted for their favorite fan-submitted video to “win” and be played during the game. Similarly, Coca Cola varied from this strategy by releasing a teaser but letting the fans vote on the ending.

    Doritos-goat

    At the end of the day, there are successes and failures in the Super Bowl advertising process. From a marketing standpoint these ideas are pure genius. Directly involving the audience, either through voting or asking for audience submissions, builds the brand’s relationship with its consumers and brings more attention to their product. So for those of you with a pre-game tradition, you might want to begin by preparing yourselves for the commercial invasion that America likes to call the Super Bowl.

    – Michael Nunes, Alexandra Huss, Zach Abramo, Callie Fenlon, Dann Williams, Daniel Schaefer Lauren Habig

  • What’s That Doing There?

    After a long day of work or school most of us like to sit down and shut off the batteries. Some people (including myself) do this by
    enjoying a nice beverage and turning on the Netflix. The appeal of a service like
    Netflix is, of course, the elimination of the commercials that disrupt our viewing
    pleasure on live T.V. One night, I sat down and turned on The Office, I was
    instantly bombarded with company logos and products. As the actors go about
    their typical work day, the camera conveniently focuses on the Cisco Systems
    Telephone on Dwight’s desk and the HP logo on the computer that Pam uses as she
    hides behind her desk. These logos are not in the frame by coincidence, but
    rather they have been carefully positioned by the show’s producers. This discreet
    advertising strategy is known as product placement.

    Business dictionary defines product placement as “an advertising technique used by companies to subtly promote their products through a non-traditional advertising technique, usually through appearances in film, television, or other media.” This form of advertising is initiated through an agreement between a product manufacturer and whichever media company owns the program featuring the product. In the vast majority of product placement agreements the media company receives economic benefit as the manufacturers often pay a fee to have their product (or brand name) used, mentioned, or significantly featured in a program.

    Product placement is everywhere. A few notable shows that are known proponents of this technique are American Idol (Coca-Cola cups for all judges), It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (Coors Light consumption and signs prominently placed in the bar), and 30 Rock (which features multiple Apple products.) This form of advertising has been around for years and will continue to thrive as long as people keep consuming media. In this way, companies continue to ensure that viewers have plenty of exposure to their product, even if certain audience members have learned to maneuver around those pesky commercials.

     

    – Michael Nunes, Daniel Schaefer, Lexie Huss, Zach Abramo, Callie Fenlon, Dann Williams, Lauren Habig

  • Freakers the New Coozie?

    Established in 2011 and proudly located in Wilmington, NC we introduce to you….the Freaker! It’s the new cool coozie that is the ultimate one size fits all. Starting in Wilmington, NC this company started from a local start-up business with a vision to command and conquer and now has become a global product that is creating a high demand. In just one year it has grown exponentially into a money-making machine. How did they do it? Well first and foremost it is a very handy product that is way more interesting than any coozie we’ve ever had and can fit on any drink possible keeping it insulated and your hand protected. Secondly they have a clear-cut brand personality that is all about being unique to yourself and having as much fun as possible and they love to show it. They also have a unique way of marketing the Freaker from a truck that they turned into a home and drove around the country having grilled cheese parties at various trade shows coupled with various marketing videos on their website that show off their brand. They have approximately 200 stores across the nation with global distributors in Canada and Japan. It also helps that all Freakers are made in the USA helping local businesses and having a monopoly on it doesn’t hurt either because they have a patent on the product as well.

    If you watched the video the guy is Zach Crain the founder of Freakers, and as you can see he is a highly eccentric individual with a weird sense of humor. He is obviously very confident about his personality and has branded his product with it. The show “Shark Tank” allows business owners to pitch their ideas to billionaire entrepreneurs and get a large investment in return for a percentage of the business. Zach fails to grab any of the investors because they aren’t sure that he will be able to return on their investment. However, he was able to impress the potential investors with his impressive sales record of over 300,000 dollars in 13 months. So, one thing is clear: Zach Crain and Freaker USA have no where to go but up!

    Lauren Habig, Ally Walton, Hannah Eure, Gene Lee, Erin Kiffmeyer