HCRHS Media Lit

"A new ad campaign warning of the dangers of anorexia produced these evocative photos of what a real woman would look like if the sketches were representative of real life. The models themselves are Photoshopped but nonetheless are a reminder of the dangers posed by unrealistic expectations of beauty promoted throughout our culture"

"Ponder this fact for a moment: the human brain hasn't changed for more than 100,000 years. Yet its exposure to information - especially screen-based communication - is growing at an unprecedented rate. Researchers at Nielsen NeuroFocus have been using brainwave measurements to actually quantify how all this multi-platform messaging is affecting subconscious responses. One of their observations is the effect on "filtering." Through filtering, the prefrontal cortex of the brain continuously coordinates and prioritizes incoming stimuli, deciding what is essential and what can be ignored or "filed away" for later. More stimuli requires more filtering. Our multi-device world has caused the brain to kick into overdrive, making prioritization more important than ever. Our multi-device world has caused the brain to kick into overdrive, making prioritization more important than ever. How on earth can marketers get through this "filtering" when the brain is screening megabytes of data every milliseconds? These neurological best practices may help you grab the attention of your online audiences' collective subconscious quickly."

"You may encounter media today from any number of sources, from traditional news sources to social media to email. How do you know what to trust? Ask these six questions and they will unlock whether something is trustworthy. It's easier than you think. They will make you a more critical thinker and save you from being misled. (These come the book "Blur: How to Know What to Believe in the Age of Information Overload" by myself and Bill Kovach)."

"The marketing research company One Poll looked into female body confidence for the online clothing line New Look by surveying 2,000 women ages 18 to 65 in the UK. 15% of 18 to 24 year olds said they thought that models in magazines actually looked like their photos when walking around every day, which is to say nothing of the people who subconsciously think that and don't even realize it. Other stats:"

"In fact, it's a common occurrence. In a recent example, Advertising Benchmark Index, a researcher that grades ad on 14 key performance indicators including awareness, message and call-to-action, found that although Kmart's "Ship My Pants" ad was a viral hit, relatively few consumers knew it was a Kmart ad. Gary Getto, ABX's president, says that similarly, when consumers see a white cat in an ad, they assume it's for Fancy Feast, the cat food brand, which uses a white cat as a mascot."

"Once a mark of rebellion, tattoos are fast becoming one of corporate America's favorite branding tools. This spring, Red Bull and the British e-tailer ASOS also set up pop-up tattoo parlors (at Miami Music Week and SXSW, respectively), and Sailor Jerry rum hosted a SXSW party where attendees were offered free tattoos of anchors and other brand-related designs. Last year, HBO gave away Game of Thrones tats, and this August free tattoos will be offered at a VIP Lollapalooza event hosted by Chicago's Hard Rock Hotel. For today's marketers, tattoos are just another gimmick-a sort of permanent promotional T-shirt. "Who needs a food truck at your party when you can do a tattoo truck?" says Bruce Starr, a partner at BMF Media, the agency behind the Hard Rock and ASOS events."

"We, as human beings, think that through social networks, we've somehow become more social creatures. The problem with this theory is, the more we "connect" online, the less actual human interactions we have, making us actually fairly unsocial. A new video breaks down exactly how the social aspects of human beings have evolved and transformed, showing how we've regressed from a social standpoint."

Blog for a course at Ringling College of Art & Design. Has links to student blogs as well.

"Kmart's "Jingle Bells" ad has become the most viral of the early holiday season and is already among the biggest hits of 2013. So what's a rival retailer to do? For JC Penney, a lighthearted exchange on Twitter over the mildly risqué ad seems to have done the trick. The brand trolled Twitter on Nov. 16, and a humorous exchange ensued:"

" Last year's list had seven spots that earned 1.2 million shares or more. This year's list has 14 such spots. But the top ad here earned 4.24 millions shares across Facebook, Twitter and the blogosphere, versus more than 10 million shares for last year's chart-topping Kony video."

"This latest Advertising Age Research Report, Social Media Advertising, looks at what's worked and what hasn't when it comes to paid social-media advertising, and what marketers should be trying as they experiment on emerging platforms like Instagram and Pinterest."

"A collection of talks, lessons and other digital resources for 21st century learners."

"This is a stupendously awesome commercial from a toy company called GoldieBlox, which has developed a set of interactive books and games to "disrupt the pink aisle and inspire the future generation of female engineers." The CEO, Debbie Sterling, studied engineering at Stanford, where she was dismayed by the lack of women in her program"

"Chipotle's latest ad campaign, a rich, animated short film coupled with an online video game, rails against industrial farming and 'Big Food.' The new Chipotle campaign takes a page directly from the 'marketing to Millennials' handbook. "

"ABOUT halfway through Dave Eggers's bestselling dystopian satire on Silicon Valley, "The Circle", the reader meets Stewart, a bald, silent, stooped 60-year-old who has "been filming, recording, every moment of his life now for five years". Stewart is the first of the novel's characters to make all his actions visible to anyone with a computer who cares to look-the first "transparent man". Cathal Gurrin, a computer scientist at Dublin City University, is not quite that transparent. But to those with access to his archive he is pretty see-through. Mr Gurrin is a "life logger", someone who thinks that if, as Socrates claimed, the unexamined life is not worth living, the life which is digitally recorded with an eye to potentially endless re-examination will have much to recommend it. Patterns in their data, they hope, will reveal opportunities to be healthier, happier and more effective. To this end Mr Gurrin wears a wide-angle camera around his neck which snaps several pictures of his field of view every minute, recording its location and orientation each time it does so. He has been using such devices for more than seven years. "

"The existence of female competition may seem obvious to anyone who has been in a high-school cafeteria or a singles bar, but analyzing it has been difficult because it tends be more subtle and indirect (and a lot less violent) than the male variety. Now that researchers have been looking more closely, they say that this "intrasexual competition" is the most important factor explaining the pressures that young women feel to meet standards of sexual conduct and physical appearance."

"Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfactions, our ego satisfactions, in consumption. The measure of social status, of social acceptance, of prestige, is now to be found in our consumptive patterns. The very meaning and significance of our lives today expressed in consumptive terms. The greater the pressures upon the individual to conform to safe and accepted social standards, the more does he tend to express his aspirations and his individuality in terms of what he wears, drives, eats- his home, his car, his pattern of food serving, his hobbies. These commodities and services must be offered to the consumer with a special urgency. We require not only "forced draft" consumption, but "expensive" consumption as well. We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at an ever increasing pace. We need to have people eat, drink, dress, ride, live, with ever more complicated and, therefore, constantly more expensive consumption. The home power tools and the whole "do-it-yourself" movement are excellent examples of "expensive" consumption."

"You know the phrase, "When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping"? There just may be some wisdom in that. A survey conducted by TNS Global on behalf of Ebates.com found that more than half of Americans (52%, including 64% of women and 40% of men) admit to engaging in "retail therapy"-the act of shopping and spending to improve one's mood. This echoes a previous study, published in the Journal of Psychology and Marketing, that revealed 62% of shoppers had purchased something to cheer themselves up, and another 28% had purchased as a form of celebration."