Kellogg Center Chocolate Party

Over the weekend I attended the 23rd annual MSU Museum Chocolate Party Benefit at the Kellogg Center. What is basically was, was a bunch of businesses and students displaying their chocolate creations. Although this isn't directly related to advertising, there definitely was a lot of advertising present. Most of the advertising I saw was signs for businesses that make chocolate related goods such as bakeries and sweets stores. The event lasted two hours and I don't think I've ever been so full. The main event of the afternoon was a contest to see which business or student had the best chocolate creation. This really got names of businesses out there and is a great form of advertising. Also, the entire event was for a good cause because all of the proceeds went to the MSU Museum's.

Advertising Interview

I was not able to schedule an interview with a person who works in the advertising businesses this week. The person I contacted could not schedule a time to meet this week but agreed to a later interview. Since I could not conduct the interview, I assembled a list of questions that I would've asked.

1. How do you start your writing process?
2. How did you decide to go into advertising?
3. How long did it take to get to where you are?
4. What do you have to write?
5 Could you describe your writing process?
6. Do you like your job?
7. If you were back in college, would you still choose to be an advertising major?

I'll be interviewing this person later this week and I will put the results in an open blog post.

Oscar Pistorius

Oscar Pistorius had both of his legs amputated when he was eleven months old. He is world famous for running in the 2012 Olympic Games in London with two prosthetic legs. He is South African and runs the 400 m. He has a very inspirational story and also had a key role in Nike's advertisings campaigns. There is a poster ad of Pistorius that says "I am the bullet in the chamber". This refers to him shooting out of the starting blocks like a gun. There was also a television ad ran in 2008 featuring him lining up at the starting blocks. While he is lining up, there are sounds playing of a gun being loaded. The point of the commercial was to say that your body is a weapon. As of today, these ads are in very bad taste.
Oscar Pistorius was arrested today for the murder of his girlfriend. The girlfriend was killed with a gun. Pistorius is the only suspect as of now and he has been linked to domestic violence before. Nike cannot help but be embarrassed and regretful that they ran two ads featuring Pistorius that both had gun related themes. Obviously they couldn't have predicted this but it surely is an odd coincidence.

Is Cartoon Character Advertising Making American Kids Fat?

I found an article written back in 2008 by a man named Roosevelt Pitt. He writes about advertising in relation to food. In this article he writes about how cartoon characters often advertise food that is unhealthy for kids.
 He explains how children love cartoons and are attracted to flashy colors and animation. This makes them want the food that their favorite character is advertising. Very often though, this food is unhealthy. Pitt's audience in this article is the parents of children who eat these unhealthy foods and also advertisers that run these ads with the cartoons. He claims that this is a major part of childhood obesity and that both parties should stop giving this unhealthy food to children. The purpose of this article is to inform the public about this trend of childhood obesity and one of its causes. It is a rather short article that mostly emphasizes on healthy diets for children.
His delivery was very hard-hitting in this article because he shows the seriousness of childhood obesity and implores parents to buy healthier food. The style of his writing was very elegant with educated word choice and very good sentence structure.

http://www.naturalnews.com/024398_child_children_advertising.html

Gangnam Style Baby

This week I looked very hard to learn something new about advertising. While I was looking I stumbled across an ad that has been running in the United Kingdom. This ad was very funny and clever and it caught my eye immediately.
The ad was for electronic cigarettes. These cigarettes are supposed to replace the regular harmful cigarettes. The ad starts off with a family gathering and there is a very young baby accompanied by many adults. One of the adults leaves to smoke a regular cigarette and they miss something amazing. While the adult is gone, the baby suddenly learns to walk and dance as it does the internationally famous gangnam style dance. The whole family is stunned and speechless as the baby stops dancing. Just at the same moment, the adult who was smoking the cigarette reenters the room. He notices every mouth in the room agape and asks "What did I miss?".
The point of the ad was to show all the things you could miss by smoking cigarettes regularly. Instead they offer electronic cigarettes which are less harmful and you can smoke indoors. This was an amazing commercial and I'm very glad I found it. Coming from a family with a number of smokers in it, I could really relate to this ad.


Link to the ad ------> http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=lrSavppUj1k

Questions About Advertising

1.What is the definition of advertising?
2. What degree is necessary for an advertising major?
3. What is a good starting job for an ad major?
4. What would be the starting pay of that job?
5. Do you always work with big firms?
6. What are the departments in an ad agency?
7. Who was a main innovator of modern advertising?
8. When was the first television ad?
9. How old is advertising?
10. How big is the industry?

The textbook I found was "Advertising: Principles and Practice". It only answered a few of my questions but its still an informative textbook. The first tv ad was in 1941. There are hints about advertising in the old testament. The definition of advertising is the activity or profession of producing ads for commercial products or services.
These are the only answers I could find in the online version of the text. It was a very informative textbook and maybe I will use it in my time here at MSU.