Advertising & Blogs: Steal my Ideas!

With the way people are responding to the latest Gillette ad, anyone would think “toxic masculinity” was a new term coined to shame men.   Gillette isn’t the first men’s brand to redefine its image, a process that actually started months before  the world went crazy this week over the shaving company’s new ad . from news.com.au  - ( https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/beauty/for-men/why-mens-brands-tackling-toxic-masculinity-is-nothing-new/news-story/5ffadfa7859513b18883a2b09cc46f20 ) Coming from the perspective of Advertising & Branding, one of the basics in profiling your target market in a creative brief, is to define their demographic points to make assumptions. One critical factor is Gender. We see it in the marketplace display all the time, black & sporty designs for men, pink and floral miniatures for women. taken from packagingstrategies.com The industrial revolution created mass production of the same items, first, packaging was designed with ...

THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP (From Royce's Footnotes) I have had the fruitful opportunity to receive a lecture on the technicalities of sleep, sponsored by my company, Tropicana Corporation Berhad. The speaker is also known as a sleep doctor, or sleep specialist, which can also be your GP or Ear, Nose & Throat specialist. There is also the American Board of Sleep Medicine - http://absm.org/  to understand a collective of Sleep scholars. R.E.M - Rapid Eye Movement There are 5 stages of REM sleep and we begin our sleep by entering heavier, uninterrupted sleep at the start and progress into longer alternating intervals of light REM sleep and Deep (Non-REM sleep). TOOLS OF THE TRADE (PSG) http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/guide/polysomnogram EEG   (electroencephalogram) to measure and record  brain  wave activity EMG  (electromyogram) to record muscle activity such as face  twitches ,  teeth  grinding, and leg movements; i...

Hey guys, After 6 months out in the wild wild world, I've finally found a proper outlet to funnel most of my research and ideas into. I remember researching the ideas of small networks taking over large monolithic top-down message structures, the trend of how niche markets will eventually be the aim for advertisers rather than mainstream marketing. We are moving away from 'how many' are watching our advertisements and have already entered the 'which groups' are watching them. Based on the idea of creating a subject where others can gravitate towards, 8 partners and myself have started a company called CLUMFF. CLUMFF is targeted at the Pan-Asian community within Melbourne. The industry we're tapping into is the entertainment industry. The idea of linking the subject to both an interest and a geographical location would seem to be contrasting points. From what I remember, Clay Shirky argued that by giving the tools to web-surfers, we essentially let everyo...

Things have changed quite a bit and now I've begun on the production of my new project Basically, the presentations in class helped me get a better picture of my project outline The problem I'm investigating is essentially the age old advertising problem, which is getting the product to the audience. Under that problem is the subcategory of how advertising methods will be integrated into the webscape. How will it deal with the collapsing of categories and traditional hierarchy of roles. So I created a persona/character to be her own PR manager, advertiser and content generator. This is one of her sites that leads to all connected social networking platforms. http://ladylavidaloca.blogspot.com My project has definitely changed alot since the first term. After realizing that time constraints and partnership planning will take too long, I decided to change the project subject and product. Even though this has changed, I think the core investigation of how brand and identity can be...

I love the title of the book I'm reading now." BlogWild!" by Andy Wibbels. A guide for small business blogging. I totally agree with the authors view on how beneficial a blog is. I should redouble my efforts onto this blog. Here are some gleanings from my readings: Notable blogospheres www.blogdex.net www.icerocket.com www.blogpulse.com www.technorati.com To search specific topics within the blogosphere, there are these search engines: www.blogwise.com www.blogarama.com www.globeofblogs.com I think my project has shifted towards a marketing perspective since I last looked at it carefully. it currently looks like a project with the title "How to standout from other small businesses using a blog platform." except, the title would be a lot shorter and catchier. Since trying to organize and timeline my whole project, I realise I'm not too bad a planner, but I'm not a good follower of plans. I like to to handle tasks randomly, as I get the motivation for it....

For purposes of seeking a supervisor, I shall now attempt to organize my project description in a cohesive manner. My initial topic to explore was Advertising in the Web 2.0, however, this would be irrelevant if there were no context to visualize it in. Therefore, it is fortunate that I have a group who wish to start a small business of their own, which would consequently become my honours project. The project would be a fashion retail store set up within the blogosphere. The main target market that my 'partners' wish to use are middle to upper class female university students, or of ages 16- 25. My job would be helping them out with the branding, and advertising of this blogshop. The concept of this blogshop would be based on my research of Advertising and social trends of the Web 2.0. I have already begun drafting some ideas at this point. My outcome would most likely be the website where the blogshop resides; and some viral ads for the blogshop. These are some rough sketches...

2/4/09 Workshop with Adrian Miles This week, We analyzed our own strengths and weaknesses in regards to the project process. After plotting a graph of our likes and dislikes of each process, we came to better understand our approach towards the aspects of research, readings, production, editing and so on. As for my own strengths, I would term myself as a Big Idea Person, the type of person I call the "Telescope" able to see the big picture and core concepts easily. Therefore, making the production process appealing to me as it is hands on and going towards a general direction. The trouble with a "Telescope" ability type is the weakness towards noticing details. This group of people, I would call the Microscopes. Able to organize details, make good lists, and itemized time line. People like Rika and Sandy. which I should work closely with in order to maximize our efficiency. I still have a lot of catching up to do. OMG!

Things cleared up alot after speaking to Adrian. My project is much more focused now. It will be about Advertising in the Web 3.0, or if found to be more useful. I might work on Advertising in the virtual world. After thinking about it. I think this direction is definitely useful to my future career path. Adrian has helped me with thinking about the execution of my theory. Which could be just describing a fictional future of the adscape and how Advertising works in that framework. I personally think a master at this is acclaimed author - Neil Gaiman. I loved his ability to describe fictional postulations in the book Smoke & Mirrors Most of you will know Neil Gaiman only as the author of Stardust As Adrian,my course coordinator was saying, "imagine a virtual world where viral ads could actually infect users' avatar." This got my head rolling into the possibilities of that area. My task would be to dream up an advertising arsenal of communicative weapons for the futu...

Once again, The year starts off with a new name - 2009. The economy is doomed. Everyone's losing their job. A black man finally becomes the president of America... and Royce starts his Honours in Advertising. Even though it says 'graduated with distinction ' on the Advertising degree that I received last year, I still feel I've gotten into something way over my head. Enrolling into Honours is not my first option; and phrases such as "harder than Masters or PH.D" don't help either. Transported here from Malaysia ( located above Singapore for the clueless) a year and a half before, I've learnt that I have a knack for presentations and group work. Therefore you can understand how Honours seems like such a OMG-daunting-as-hell one year research project. Having said that, I do look forward to self-discovery whilst completing this. Hopefully the year's work will seem like a roadmap, where I would've subconsciously mapped out the landmarks of my bein...