Post 3: Chapter 6 P211 Question 7

Retrieved from: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/katy-perry-popchips-pics-ad-campaign-366612

Katy Perry endorses popchips, a puffed potato chip snack that does not include any unnatural ingredients, preservatives or trans-fat. Perry's celebrity status elevates the popularity of the snack food, creating a more likable and familiar face to resonate with the popchips brand. Celebrities often acquire "stopping power" which is when the celebrity who endorses a specific product or service influences a consumer's purchase behavior. Celebrities may also affect the consumer by allowing a longer reaction time to the advertisement. For example, Perry is well-liked by a wide demographic of consumers, ranging from young adolescent girls to adults. This demographic segment also matches up with the product, popchips, because they are a snack that targets everyone, especially a market of consumers who are consciously aware of their healthy eating habits. 

McCracken's meaning transfer model starts with the potential issue of the celebrity overshadowing the product (Belch 187). popchips chose an effective celebrity to represent the product without any problems of overshadowing. Despite the sexist undertones of the advertisement, which will be explained below, Perry elevates the brand by maintaining her self-image as a positive influence for her audience. That message transfers to the brand as well, signaling that it has a good reputation.

Overexposure is not a problem for Katy Perry and her agreement to endorse popchips. She has mainly promoted popchips in a series of different ads, as well as her own perfume line, and an endorsement for Proactiv acne treatment. Because Perry appears in a variety of popchips ads, her face is well-known to the brand.

As discussed above, popchips' target audience is any consumer who eats snack foods. popchips specializes their brand by focusing on consumers who care about what they eat. Perry's image is receptive to popchips because of her own target audience: adolescents, teenagers, and adults who like pop music. 

The return on investment will be positive for consumers who relate popchips to "healthy" snack foods. Perry's image projects that meaning onto the popchips brand by her current popular status in the media and music sectors of the world. As Perry's image continues to emerge, her popularity will remain effective in sending the right messages about the popchips brand.

Regarding the prevalence of sexism in today's advertising and promotional world, popchips and Katy Perry create the illusion of "real" being good for the consumer. popchips regards this theme in terms of the natural ingredients involved in making the product, unlike a competitor chip. In the first ad, Perry is dressed in workout clothes and the script under reads: "i curl popchips right to my lips. good thing they don't go straight to my hips." 

In the second ad, two bags of popchips are placed in front of Perry's breasts, symbolizing (and assuming) that her body is also natural. This creates issues about plastic surgery, whether or not it was medical or cosmetic, and the normative roles that women are placed in media. 

While some critics believe that the message popchips and Perry are conveying may be about body-positivity or maintaining a healthy figure, it reinforces the fact that when women celebrities endorse a product, their bodies are somehow incorporated into the ad. This is unnecessary and places more emphasis on where the physical bags of popchips are in the ad instead of what the ad is trying to teach consumers. 

Post 2: Chapter 4 #7

Green advertising involves positive reinforcement through the process of operant conditioning. Operant conditioning is defined as "the individual must actively operate on an aspect of the environment in order for learning to occur" (Belch 130). This process can be developed through the messages each "green" advertisement sends, where the consumer must act on an aspect within the environment in order for learning to sink in and develop the consumer's thinking and future purchase behavior.

In the examples below, green advertising showcases a company that promotes saving the environment, organizations that support the environment by showing the negative impacts of what humans do to it, or simplified versions of what the "environment" means to the average consumer.

Examples of green advertising include:

A Downtown Pittsburgh PNC branch focuses on a green initiative idea by creating a garden wall with its brand name grown on the bottom (http://www.oberholtzer-creative.com/visualculture/).

The World Wildlife Fund encourages consumers to volunteer to their organization by showing the future of a "dying" environment in the visual form of pair of lungs (http://www.urbanlol.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/funny-advertising-ideas-13.jpg). 

A poster advertising global warming's effects on the world (http://blog.uprinting.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/environmental-awareness-posters-01.png). 

Post 1: Chapter 1 Question #3

#3. Discuss how integrated marketing communications differs from traditional advertising and promotion. What are some of the reasons more marketers are taking an IMC perspective to their advertising and promotional programs?

The importance of IMC tactics stems from advertising and promotional strategies becoming more integral in today's "social and economic systems." Due to this reason, more and more consumers are becoming aware of the images, media, and advertising around them and they are paying attention to the messages behind all of it.
Regarding my blogging project, advertising that centers around the negative portrayals of women, women's bodies/minds/etc., can have a negative impact on young and adolescent girls who are exposed to this advertising daily. The interesting part of this advertising is that the target audience for these sexist ads may be older males or another demographic but the message is actually affecting the opposite demographic. Integrated marketing communications focuses on offering various marketing strategies all at once so that the message the product or service is attempting to deliver can be as clear and precise as possible. 
Marketers prefer IMC tactics over traditional strategies because it offers more value to the message behind the product/service. IMC tactics focus primarily on the evolution of technology and the usage of the Internet as a main form of advertising because consumers use that as their primary source of getting information. A new form of marketing called micro-marketing has also developed, wiping out the idea of sending out the message of many just to persuade a few. Now, marketers are focusing on smaller groups of people to get a message across for a product in hopes of incrementally persuading people through media-based advertising.  

blogging project introduction.

Although I am not an advertising major/minor, I have always noticed and commented on advertisements that are deemed sexist or discriminatory towards women within society. For my blogging project this semester, I would like to create a compilation of these advertisements, as well as positive ads that promote women as people whether it be through health, business, education, body-positivity, etc. I think it is important to combat the advertising world with healthy images of the female gender to demolish stereotypes that are most prevalent in the media.