Thursday, January 29, 2009

Word Conscious


Last night as I was browsing the ice cream aisle I was faced with a very hard decision. Generally, I am a health conscious person and so look for the healthier options of food if available. However, I came against three different "healthy" options and had to turn to the nutritional label to make the right decision. The three options included the healthy words of light, frozen yogurt (non-fat), and organic. These words are being used so often that they are beginning to lose their true meaning. Out of the three, the frozen-yogurt option is the most healthy with half the fat and less calories. The organic option is actually the most fattening with four times the amount of fat as the frozen-yogurt. So lesson of the day....don't be fooled by trendy healthy words. Actually look at what you are eating.
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Monday, January 26, 2009

Facebook: Status: Blogging about Marketing


The other day when I was on Facebook, I started to notice advertising everywhere. There were the paid ads on the side of the page from places to sell back your books, different universities, sorority and fraternity companies, and etc. These were all obviously targeted at the generation of people that started to use Facebook. However, recently, other generations have also been joining Facebook from my parents even to my grandparents. Facebook itself has been targeting a new segment for such a wide variety of people to join.

I also observed how convenient Facebook is for word-of-mouth advertising. My uncle is the perfect example; he owns a micro-brewery in downtown Tacoma and used his status as a tool for marketing. His status ran "Pat is laying out the menu for the Super Bowl Smorgasborg. Super Bowl Party Tickets go on sale now at the Hub. $20. call 683-4606". This then shows up on everyone's homepage and people begin to talk about it and even comment back on his page about this status. Just by posting that, my uncle Pat has started a conversation with hundreds of people about an event. I think that he has caught on to something!