Sub-culture ad follow-up on my observation

As promised in a previous post, this ad proves that marketers are still stereotyping consumers who could be potential buyers. In this Levi's commercial, a "straight" man pulls his jeans up, and a phone booth comes up with a woman in it. They walk away together. This ad is shown on "public" television and not the other version. I will prove marketers stereotype with another follow-up ad which is similar.

American Specialty Cars knows manufacturing

2007 Chevrolet Silverado 427 Concept

The SEMA Show is the premier automotive specialty products trade event in the world (THE SEMA SHOW IS NOT OPEN TO THE GENERAL PUBLIC). It draws the industry’s brightest minds and hottest products to one place, the Las Vegas Convention Center. As part of the AAIW, the SEMA Show attracts more than 120,000 industry leaders from over 100 countries for unlimited profit opportunities in the automotive, truck and SUV, and RV markets.
General Motors flexes american muscle at SEMA with all-new pickups and SUVs, celebrity cars and hot new accessories. Enthusiasts seeking the perfect vehicle to personalize will hit the jackpot with this year’s GM portfolio at the Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) Show, which features all-new, full-size pickups, SUVs, crossovers and cars tricked out for the streets to the slopes and every conceivable surface in between. They include a one-of-a-kind Chevy Silverado off-road concept designed in conjunction with NASCAR star Dale Earnhardt Jr. – a successor to Junior’s “Big Red” Silverado – and a low-riding Orange County Choppers Silverado hauler concept inspired by the styling cues of the famous bike-building Teutul family.

President Obama

I knew you cared about the kittens....You Voted Smart.....President Barack Obama is now the 44th President of the United States. Change is good....This song's for you President Obama.

And the Winner Is........

If the wrong person wins, you might as well have voted for Patrick.  Then we'd all be living under a huge rock and our best friend would be a yellow sponge.  Think of the kitten, Vote smart.

Detroit takes sharper aim in Marketing Cars to Women

The days are fast disappearing when car-makers appealed to women primarily as housewives who influenced their husbands in the family’s choice of a new car. As more women achieve financial independence, Detroit is increasingly targeting its messages to them as consumers in their own right.

"More and more ads are coming out targeting women," says Cynthia Marshall, media supervisor at Chisholm-Mingo Group in Detroit, which places ads for General Motors. "Women now support themselves and have discretionary income. Most ads highlight women without any men in the picture at all." 

Much of this change is recent, reflecting the increasing voice women have in buying cars. Women make half the car purchases in the U.S., and more and more women are buying cars for their own personal use as well as for family use. The recent trend for auto advertisers is to treat women the way they used to treat men, targeting to their unique needs in a car rather than to their gender.

Customer service is the new marketing

There’s a lot of buzz these days about the value of customer experiences. The gist of it is that your brand is not what you tell consumers it is. Your brand is made up of all the millions of micro-experiences customers have with your brand. The implication is that companies not only need to attract new customers and make sales, they have to be aware of what existing customers are saying to them or about them, and be able to respond quickly, in a personalized manner. This has the potential for creating positive experiences, which contribute to brand health. One effective way companies are doing this is by providing great customer service.
There is no end to the stories about angry, unhappy, dissatisfied customers (that blog about it) distressed about not receiving the support they need from customer service. And there’s nothing like bad service to damage a company’s brand. However, companies that surprise and delight customers with authentic human interactions, satisfying real or perceived needs, become beacons for best practices in customer support. Satisfied customers will communicate with their friends and loved ones, or broadcast across multiple online communities their satisfaction with a product or service, becoming brand evangelists. The flip side is that dissatisfied customers can and will widely broadcast their unhappiness with your brand, and they have the tools to do it quickly and easily.”

Deceit and Marketing

“Yelling with gusto used to be the best way to advertise your wares. There was plenty of media and if you had plenty of money, you were set. Today, of course, yelling doesn’t work so well” Seth Godin, best selling author of Permission Marketing.
Marketing as a function has run through the range of communication options that have been available through the ages—from yelling, advertising on walls, print, radio, television, direct selling, Internet… and then coming back a full circle to sell the old engine on a new body. That's why, looking back from time to time is a good way of moving forward. And recounting the marketing story through ads and the four Ps of marketing (product, price, promotion and placement) is a good check.