Gift giving

During the whole year one of the most wonderful times is Christmas. It is a time of celebration when family and friends have enough time to sit and talk. Christmas is the time of fantasy and magical atmosphere. The smell of the turkey cooking the lights on the Christmas tree and though of what Santa Clause may bring - gifts. This brings the same problem every year, what to buy. Ii is hard to interpret the dreams of family and friends, and many people are unaware that we follow the hint giving by marketing special thru the media. Present may be:

functional – utilitarian,

symbolic – status symbols

and hedonistic – for fun.

Gershoff (University of Michigan) claims that personal preferences may cause a problem, because the more we like something can influence a conduct during buying a gift.
"This difference leads us to make more exaggerated predictions that people like the same things we do, compared to predictions that people will dislike the same things that we dislike” said Gershoff.

Peoples shopping habits have changed considerably in recent years. One of the most dramatic changes has been purchasing the goods via the internet. This is now the second most important venue for giftware shopping.

Danziger (2004) claims that:
-Gift giving is about emotionally connecting giver and recipient
-Emotional shopping – the goal is to achieve a special feeling
-The gift communicates a message
-Problems can occur when the giver and the recipient’s values differ.

In conclusion every single gift is proof of an affection to the gifted person. The value of the present is irrelevant compared to the act of giving.

Heuristics memory and nostalgia

The main subject was how to trick people out of their buying habits for example the purchase of everyday items are often tied to a known brand and with no thought to looking for a different brand due to the fact that the product satisfied all needs.








Low to high involvement as shown above indicates more thought and investigation. Is carried out when purchasing irregular large items. Price is sometimes an important factor.

Fast and frugal heuristics – making quick decisions when there is a lot of choice (Williams 2001).

This process starts with a search for info i.e. cost and suitability arriving at a decision to purchase. These are heuristics mental shortcuts.
We discussed Fast and Frugal heuristics of which there are 4 kinds:
• Recognition (you are more likely to buy the one you know than a new model) Branding
• Minimalist (recognition plus one random criteria – works for low involvement e.g. recognition plus nice label) Advertising
• Take the Last (uses the last criteria applied to a similar situation) Habit
• Take the Best (assesses the options in order of perceived importance of criteria – still only uses one reason) Branding/USP

Now I am going to show there are two main learning theories.
Behaviourist Approach – approaching a problem without any previous conceptions - stimulus response connections
• Classical conditioning (Pavlov)
• Operant conditioning (Skinner)
Cognitive Learning – a process of listening, watching, touching or experiencing – consumers as complex problem solvers
• Latent Learning
• Observational Learning

We also talked about nostalgia which is strongly associated with memory.

"A wistful desire to return in thought or in fact to a former time in one's life, to one's home or homeland, or to one's family and friends; a sentimental yearning for the happiness of a former place or time: a nostalgia for his college days". (dictionary.com)

An example of nostalgia is a song by Wham - Last Christmas which is repeated every year during the Christmas period and invokes happy memories. This promotes nostalgia.

http://pl.youtube.com/watch?v=3354flS1KJs

In the lesson two more ads were watched relating to nostalgia.
1. Marks & Spencers ad. This was an associated with nostalgia by going back to 1960s.
2. Another Marks & Spencers ad. Uses a group of women meeting in the afternoon. This reminds women on how afternoons used to be spent.

In conclusion this lesson raised some important aspects of adverting. The idea is often to trick a person in to accepting new ideas/products. This is often related to nostalgia. Sometimes with romantic overtones which tend to take peoples memories back through time.

Vive la difference

The lesson was about charity advertising associated with gender response to direct mail. There were 3 charity ads.
Number one was an ad for Dr. Bernardo’s charity, number two was for a cancer research and number three was an ad about giving blood.

The first is about small lonely girl, which showed a small girl with sad eyes which obviously played on individual emotions. Coupled with the voice over this portrayed a little girl lost without a future.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blWd3iixIJc


The Cancer Research UK charity was structured in an such a way to show happy people who were previous cancer sufferers, followed by a happy event in the girls life which was showing her emotions at the thought of her mother who was absent due to affect of cancer. The words used “My mum should be here” showed the emotions she was experiencing during her most important day during her life. I consider that ad was most touching of the ads we reviewed.


http://pl.youtube.com/watch?v=RMwt28P_xSQ


The last ad was based on “Do something amazing, give blood”. Once again showing people giving gratitude for the fact anonymous people had possibly been touched by the advert to give blood thereby saving someone’s life. It is known fact that many people give blood regularly. This advert is designed to encourage even more people to give blood on a regular basis.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tijSx_fwoM0&feature=related



These ads are made in a such a way to appeal to peoples minds, and shock their feelings in to action.

http://pl.youtube.com/watch?v=m4NtYHKGRQ0

Adverts are designed to impact on peoples feelings, and as such are made with dramatic events which when viewed cause uproar and sometimes result in the ad being banned. This still made people discuss and take action so achieved the original aim of generating funds for the charities.

The best way to understand the charity advertising sector is to work within a charity and gain experience of producing a dramatic eye-catching ad with as small amount of expenditure.

The second part of our task was to observe a picture taking in as many details as possible. This showed that males and females have a different approach to how they perceive an advert. Males are responsive to ads that show psychical strength and portray ambition. Women respond better to softer ads that stress, beauty and youth.

In conclusion, the biggest challenge for advertisers is to produce a charity ad at the lowest possible price at the same time using all the tricks available so that it grabs the most media attention, appealing to both genders to gain most attention.

Enterprise week

During Enterprise Week we had opportunity to attend speeches which were about advertising and business.I attended two events. I will talk about first because I found it more interesting and under present conditions the subject of the talk was about recession. Behind the table representing the event were seated eight successful working and business industry people

Ivor Peters - Managing Director of Primal PR,

Jamie Matthews - Managing Director of Initials Marketing,

Andrew Canter - Founder of Contentworx,

Don Cowley - Panel Chairman,

Steve Cox - UK Marketing Director for Titan Outdoor UK,

Allan Rich - Founder of MediaCom and now a Non-Executive Director of the Cello Group,

Jayne Barr - Runs Creative Consulting,

Rob Laurence - Marketing and new Product Development Director at TGI.

The main subject of the speech was: WHAT’S NEXT? What the future will bring for advertising, marketing and PR industry? How marketing may influence the environment? What is the impact of the recession in industry? Green marketing issue.

Speech of Allan Rich was very interesting and stayed in my mind for long time. He loves the job which he does and he is so passionate about it. Full of enthusiasm a person like Allan is a great example of how you can do something that you love and at the same time you can make a profit from it.Now I feel more optimistic about my plans and what I want to do in business industry in the future.I managed to remember one of the great expressions about business during the recession period:

“Every business which is run well will survive the recession”. (Allan Rich)

Allan Rich also mentions agencies interests. They have to remember that money which they are using is not theirs but the customers, and the agencies have to invest it in a reasonable fashion.Partnership between customers and agencies has a huge meaning in every industry and we have to always remember that.

I never thought that the event would be such a valuable experience for me. Before attending I was thinking it will be another boring presentation about business, but I was in 100% wrong. Everything that they were talking about was very interesting and so real. I was listening very carefully to their stories and learnt from them as much I could. Their speeches gave me motivation to work even harder and helped me to make a decision as to what I want to do in the very near future. We all have to do what we LOVE, and what is the most important ENJOY IT.

Gender differences in advertising

Today's topic was very interesting and funny too. We talked about gender differences in advertising. Ruth showed us some slides with many different adverts on. When the slides had finished she ask us to write down as many adverts we possible could remember. Most recognizable adverts were famous one such as Nike, Gillette, Armani and Sarah Jessica Parker fragrance.

Boys could remember those adverts which represented cars, sport, alcohol, nudity, beautiful women, humour etc.




Woman in turn to man remembered ad with perfumes, kids, celebrities, handsome man, etc.

"Men and women process information differently because of differences in a portion of the brain called the splenium, which is much larger in women than in men, and has more brain-wave activity" (Ibid).


"The human brain, like the human body, is sexed, and differences in the sex-specific human brain condition a wide range of behaviors that we typically associate with maleness or femaleness" (Nadeau, p. 330)


Bright colours, famous brands and celebrities, fun, happiness, straight message, contrast there are some of reasons why we pay attention to those adverts.

Women are complex beings. They tend to be emotionally expressive, laugh, gaze, and smile more, at the same time they are empathetic and sensitive to others feelings. Women express their feelings without constraint, except for the emotion of anger and express more love, fear, and sadness. They pay more attention to body language, tend to more obsessed with having children. They are better at judging emotions from nonverbal communication and anticipate negative consequences for expressing anger and aggression.

Men tend to express more anger quickly, in certain situations they have the ability to control their feelings, and also exercise restraint from expressing their feelings. This suggest men are sometimes stoic. Men are overwhelmed by women's expressions of emotion, but will frequently show emotions to communicate dominance. In some cases men can show as much sensitivity as women.

Personality

Personality can be defined as a "dynamic and organized set of characteristics possessed by a person that uniquely influences his or her cognition's, motivations, and behaviours in various situations" (Ryckman, 2004).

“Self-concept: the beliefs a person holds about his or her own attributes & how he or she evaluates those qualities” (Solomon, 1999)

The five core dimensions and their facets are:

SINCERITY (down to earth, honest, wholesome,cheerful)

EXCITEMENT (daring, spirited, imaginative, up-to-date)

COMPETENCE (reliable, intelligent, successful)

SOPHISTICATION (upper dass, charming)

RUGGEDNESS (outdoorsy, tough)

Beginning of the lesson was unusual because Ruth asked us to draw a pig on a empty peace of the paper. After a drew we were asked about some details like: where we drew a pig was a top, middle or bottom of the paper, how long was a tail, how big was a nose etc. all the details were associated with distinct feature. Lots of different personalities questionnaires we can find on a Internet. one of that questionnaires we had fill out before a lecture and it was:
Which Simpson’s character are you aligned with? After fell out the questionnaire result was I am aligned with Mr Burns which means I am strategist.

Strenght - not threatened by conflict or criticism. Able to leave relationships which should be ended.

Weakness - May be insensitive at times. Tendency to be unwilling or unable to accept blame.

Next part of lesson was talk about Freud's theory. He proposed that the psyche could be divided into three parts: id, ego and super-ego.

The id is the only component of personality that is present from birth. This aspect of personality is entirely unconscious and includes of the instinctive and primitive behaviors.
The ego is the component of personality that is responsible for dealing with reality. According to Freud, the ego develops from the id and ensures that the impulses of the id can be expressed in a manner acceptable in the real world. The ego functions in both the conscious, preconscious, and unconscious mind.
The superego is the aspect of personality that holds all of our internalized moral standards and ideals that we acquire from both parents and society--our sense of right and wrong. The superego and provides guidelines for making judgments.

Last part of lecture was about three images which are:
self-image, ideal-self, self-esteem.
Self-image says how people see themselves. Who am I? Ideal-self says what would you like to be? And the last one self-esteem says how much do you like yourself?

Making a good adverts advertisers should use ideal-self, because they can give example to people and help them to make good decision who they want to be and feel them good with that.

Segmentation

What is segmentation?

Segmentation "the subdividing of a market into homogeneous (or similar) subsets of customers, where any subset may conceivably be selected as a target market to be reached with a distinct marketing mix" (Kotler, 2000),

“Segmentation is based on the observation of evolution of demand and represents a more precise and rational adaptation of the product and the marketing effort to meet customer or user demands” (Smith, 1957),

or finding out what different groups of people want!

The STP Marketing Process

Segmenting dividing up the market into distinctive group
↓
Targeting
selecting a specific segment to target
↓
Positioning
developing a marketing strategy which positions the product in relation to rivals in order to appeal to target segments.

On this lesson we talk about profiling. Profiling is a really good source and helps to get information about customers. That information is very valuable for many companies because it helps to try understand the needs of purchaser and sometimes what they want. Good example companies who use profiling are Boots and Tesco. They have Boots and Tesco cards to keep in their database the most important information about clients such as: what they like to buy, how often, how many or how much? From my experience i have been asked couple of times in a shop about my post code - that is profiling too, because we as a customers we giving information what type of people we are and what kind of particular products we purchasing. http://www.upmystreet.com/ is one of the websites where you can find lots of information about your area of living.

Advertising agencies know what ads should look like. Also they know there is loads of different types of people. Some of them are for man some of them are for woman.


http://pl.youtube.com/watch?v=0g8H1FcFAOw


That ad is for man.


http://pl.youtube.com/watch?v=_VGW7vX629I




That ad is for woman


Have you ever think about how many different kinds of shampoo is on a market? The answer is simply an amount is huge. There are for long hair, for blond, for men, for damaged hair etc.
Have you think what will happen when you wash you hair shampoo for long hair and your hair are short? Answer: nothing, because the difference is not the shampoo but the packing. Everything is about how you see the product not what is inside. How much would be a cost of a shampoo if there were only one for all the types of hair, for long AND short AND blond AND damage AND etc. It would be very cheap. We pay more for some of the products because we think they are better but the truth is they are this same but adverts and marketing makes that products look different.


That is the reason why advertising is important and plays one of the main roles in our lifestyle.

Perception

On this lesson we had to presented our experiments. One of the experiment was about chocolate and about the question is the quality good as the price? There were 5 different chocolate bars. We had to taste them and try to guess which one was the cheapest and witch one the most expensive. Nobody could guess but everybody agreed that the taste one of that chocolate was horrible. On the end of the experiment we find out that horrible chocolate was second most expensive. After that everybody confirm: good quality not always goes with a expensive price.

Me and my group done experiment about package of perfume. we asked female and male from 3 groups of people what they think about the colour, pictures on the boxes, bottles etc., and how they should look like. First one was teenagers, second was student and adults and the third elderly people. after collect all the information we could say elderly people like not much complicated shapes of bottles and boxes, the colour must be not to bright and not to dark. teenagers like very bright colours and the package have to be eye-catching lots of pictures on boxes and unusual shapes. men like dark colours as black, blue or grey and women completely opposite. pink yellow orange are woman's colour. both group said the package is not very important have to has simply look. main thought of those experiments is perception and everything what is going with is very important in a branch of advertising and marketing. we are surrounded by adverts everywhere. Daily we encounter about 3000 different ads. adverts should be simple, easy to understand and unique so the customers can quickly associate ad with a product and product with a ad.


The individual develops a persistent & deep rooted way of perceiving, thinking & believing (Vernon 1955) “we get set in our ways”


Second part of the lecture was very interesting because we talked about Gestalt's Psychology. Is a theory of mind and brain that proposes that the operational principle of the brain is holistic, parallel, and analog, with self-organizing tendencies.

Looking on this picture not many people could find young woman and a man with a stick. most of them seen just the bald head of old man.

There are two main theories of Gestalt. The first one is grouping( proximity and similarity). We tend to group together objects that share similar physical characteristics – hence health and beauty brands sticking to certain colours and bottle shapes. Proximity is a very useful and effective form of expression in almost every medium of artistic and graphic communication. Whether it be clever in advertisement or poorly communicated through over stimulation its importance should not be ignored. Just as all of the principles discussed in this theory, the better understanding we as designers have of them, the more effective and well communicated our messages will be. Similarity between concepts is a function of the distance between the concepts in space. Concepts represented by points that are near to each other are more psychologically similar than are points that are conceptually distant.

Next theory is closure. We tend to see an incomplete picture as complete – we need to fill in the gaps – we do it automatically.

On this picture we can see either a man who is playing on horn and a face of young woman.

The last theory we talked about is stimulus ambiguity. A stimulus is said to be ambiguous when it does not correspond to an immediately recognisable shape or form. We need to find a context in order to interpret it.

Perception

What is perception?

“Perception is the process of sensing, selecting & interpreting consumer stimuli in the external world” (Wilkie 1994)

“… is how we see the world around us” (Schiffman & Kanuk 2003)


Today we talk about perception and how people understand the things. Everybody is different and their minds perceive differently then others.



Reference:
http://tutor2u.net/business/marketing/buying_stimulus_model.asp


In the above model marketing and the others stimuli put the customers in the middle and produce certain responses. Marketing management must try figure out what is going on in the customers minds. The first stage of understanding buyer behaviour is to focus on the factors that determine the buyer characteristic in the middle. These can be showed as follows:







Reference: http://www.marketingteacher.com/Lessons/lesson_consumer_buying_behaviour.htm

The second part of the lecture was discussion about five senses which are: touching, smelling, seeing, hearing and taste. We had a couple of experiments. on a first one the shown to us ad and we had to guess who are the receivers and why? Second experiment was association with a pictures on a books' covers and the third shown how much is important the music in a advertising. i will show you my favourite ad where the music is great. Enjoy!

http://pl.youtube.com/watch?v=7F2DF6W7qsw

Those experiments were very interesting because we find out what kind of ads are passed to males and females.

Men prefer clear, straight ads with dark colours - they doesn't like to think about it to much, women in turn to men like bright colours, something have to be in a background and they need time to analyse and find out the meaning of the advert.

Women and men as a potential client have to make some steps before they decide if they want to buy a product or not. To show what kind of steps they use i will use a scheme:

Reference: http://tutor2u.net/business/marketing/buying_decision_process.asp

Next week will be even more interesting because we have to do own experiment and represent to the group.

We are what we have

Today we had the first day with Ruth Hickmott and she teach us how to understand customer and everything around us. Beginning of the lecture was very interesting because we had a guest which nobody knew and had to say about her the most important things such as: where she lives, is she married, does she work, what is her favourite show, etc. It was really good fun because we guessed most of this things. Our next activity was even better everybody from a group brought their favourite thing and we had to guess who that thing belongs to. Every human have some goods or things which likes and is missing them when they lost or stolen.

“…Possessions are an important component of sense of self. The most direct form of evidence is found in the nature of self-perceptions. Additional, especially striking evidence is found in the diminished sense of self when possessions are unintentionally lost or stolen. More evidence in the role of possessions in sense of self comes from anthropological studies of the way possessions are treated ritually and after death.” - Russell W Belk

My impression is really positive after the first lesson. The most important is communicate and understand not just the clients and the customers but all the people because without that we cant act and live. Subject is really interesting and I'm sure that from lesson to lesson a will enjoy more and more.