IMC Hawks Blog

Category: Media Ethics/Censorship

  • An “Augmented” Look Into the Future of Advertising

    Last week Google unveiled Project Glass, their latest developmental project set out to design and build augmented reality eyeglasses. Google upload a video to YouTube entitled “Project Glass: One day…”, which shows viewers what Project Glass could potentially look like. Project Glass would allow you to communicate with friends, schedule appointments, get directions, take pictures, and even hold video conferences all by using the augmented reality interface and voice commands. While this technology is in the earliest stages of development, Project Glass has the potential to be a realistic and marketable product in the future.

    While the announcement of Project Glass is only a week old, there is already concern about user privacy and advertisements. Google already uses search terms to customize advertisements, and are even beginning to push ads based on your location, so just how far would Project Glass go? Would advertisements pop-up in front of you if you are close enough to a store? Could marketers use where you go and what you look at throughout the day to better understand what type of consumer you are? The parody video below shows how pop-up ads with Project Glass might look if they were implemented:

    While this idea of “forced advertising” seems a bit extreme, it’s already happening with several other projects. Twitter now adds Promoted Tweets to your timeline, which are sponsored announcements from businesses that merge together with the other tweets from people you follow. Pop-up ads are common with free Android and iPhone apps, and some applications even send ads as a notification. Amazon sells discounted Kindle e-Readers with “special offer” advertisements that appear on your screen. It seems that with every new piece of technology, the first idea that is addressed is how to advertise on it. With Project Glass, the possibilities for customized advertising are much more personal. How will marketers adapt to changing technology? Will consumers be willing to sacrifice their privacy and accept interruptive advertisements in order to use Project Glass? Only the future will tell.

    -Hunter Wilson, Joshua Vester, Ashley Oliver, Molly Jacques

  • Censored

    I know that I am not the only nerd out there in the world because there are so many people today on “World Of Warcraft” (W.o.W.). This game is known for being addictive and hard to get your significant other off of. W.o.W. has been around since November of 2004; it impressed game critics and got quite a following when it first arrived on the scene. The game is set in a world named Azeroth and it has heroes, villains, monsters, and anything else that you can imagine in the realm of the era of medieval magic.  Now this game has many series that go all the way back to 1994, so it has had time to obtain its millions of gamers; 10.3 million to be exact since September 2011. Like all game companies out there, Blizzard Entertainment is always looking for more gamers to buy the game so that they can earn more money. One of the ways the company has achieved its goals is with its many expansion packs; three in total: The Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, and Cataclysm. The last expansion was released in 2010, but to keep the game selling they released multiple short commercials using a lot of famous actors: Ozzy Osbourne, Shatman, Mr. T, Aubrey Plaza, and Chuck Norris just to name a few.

    The game is rated T for teen by Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB), meaning that the game is suitable for children 13 and older. In accordance to ESRB, the game may contain more intense violence, suggestive themes, crude humor, low to no blood, simulated gambling, and/or infrequent use of strong language. The game upkeep personal has done a very good job of censoring people who use too much strong language in the game and on the discussion boards. So why is it that they slipped up in two of their commercials? The two little 30 second commercials with Ozzy and Aubrey both have parts that are censored out because these actors used foul language. The company seems to want to have a friendly game environment as we see from their vigilance with language in the game; so why did they have it in the commercials for the game? Now one can reason that the commercials were censored, so you don’t actually hear the profanities. According to the Media Awareness Network, the thing to keep in mind is that the public has to find the content relevant, tasteful, and entertaining. The public audience that W.o.W. is targeted towards is young teenagers, who need their parents to buy the game. And if a parent sees those commercials, they might not want their children playing the game because of the thought of the profanities used by the actors might lead them to believe the game uses those profanities as well. So we see that companies need to keep in mind that the commercials they show are possibly the first contact the perspective customer has with the product. If there is not a true representation of your game in that commercial then you may be losing more business then wanted.

    – Dorothy Conley, Christina Stevenson, Mollie Berthold, Laura Simmons