Wednesday, February 25, 2015

The Sport's Illustrated Swimsuit Issue Vs Decoding Victoria's Secret : The Three Assumptions

The secret of any great advertising is to appeal to people's emotions in order to achieve colossal sales. Victoria Secret in that regard has been able to achieve great success in marketing for his targeted audience. VS like the diamond's giant DeBeers before it took a product that was common and not overtly publicized and made it turned it into a gold mine by marketing in peculiar ways. Soon enough other success stories such as The Sport's Illustrated Swimsuit Issue followed on the footstep of VS and perpetrated its thriving techniques.

What is it about VS that revolutionize the way people shop at his store? Three assumptions, as described by Professor Marie D. Smith; the first one being that a beautiful female body is marketable and can sell any product, the second being that a woman struggles to get or to hold onto the right man i order to give meaning to her life and the third being that a woman's self image is largely determined by a male perception of female beauty. VS and the Sport's Illustrated Swimsuit Issue capitalized on these assumptions to lure their audience into buying their product, henceforth creating a faithful customer base. Whenever a man walks in front of a stand and perceive a post of a beautiful woman (i.e. flashy breast, thin waist and curvy booty) his attention is caught on the spot, he is intrigued not by the content of the magazine, but by the connection his mind makes of what perfection ought to be. Once emotionally captured by this image, he is compelled to act not on logic but by impulse. The attention is not geared towards what;s inside the magazine but more towards a fantasy that he has nurtured within from preconceived idea of what beauty is suppose to be.

Monday, February 23, 2015

From clothing to behavior, popular culture is predominant in every aspects of our lives and we cannot escape it's influence. It has become more and more recurrent to see little clones of superstars we see on our television show in every street corner. Girls want mohave curves like Nicky Minaj, Kim Kardashians or Beyonce and obviously want to dress like their role models too. Boys want to appear as masculine as the models they see on lifestyle magazine, spending hours at the gym to get ripped and lean muscles especially six packs (killer abs). There is such a pressure coming from the media and other channels alike to compel people to conform to societal standards of living. It will not be surprising to have a new hairstyle or fashion trends after the stars will parade on the red carpet of the Oscars.

In his excerpts Sulking with Lisa Loeb on the Ice Planet Hoth and This Emo (from Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs) Chuck Klosterman points out how popular the Star Wars saga became to a certain generation and how people are influenced by the dating life of fictional characters on TV from such an early age. Disney movies and other big blog busters that reflect upon lives of people that set the trends on how romance or fashion ought to be. Young men for instance will try to imitate "Tony Stark" who is a playboy billionaire in the "iron Man movie" as role model for dating or to any other notorious popular culture figure in order to live their lives because it seems to be cool to do so.

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

The Internet: "Everything Bad Is Good For You" & Sulking with Lisa Loeb on the Ice Planet of Hoth

In his excerpt  Sulking with Lisa Loeb on the Ice Planet of Hoth Chuck Klosterman attempts to reveal what binds an entire generation together. Although, he focusses primarily on the generation X, he opens the doors of our imagination to try to understand other generations as well. The generation that I try to grasp as a result of Klosterman's analysis is the Millennial generation (formerly known as the Generation Y). Klosterman demonstrates how an entire generation was characterized by traits of fictional characters that they grew up admiring and identifying themselves to. Similarly Steven Johnson in his excerpt The Internet: "Everything Bad Is Good For You" take us into a journey of transitioning world of information from newspaper, via Television to the Internet by emphasizing on the good and the bad of the internet. The link between Klosterman's reading and Johnson lies in the fact that Johnson's essay is more of a logical sequence to Klosterman's essay. Johnson's writing is more of a revelatory factor of what binds the Millennial generation together. Both writing harmoniously juxtapose each other in a way that the reader is comforted to find answer for the Generations Klosterman talks about in Johnson's writing.  

Monday, February 9, 2015

What Characterizes The Millennial Generation

Being from the Millennial Generation myself, it was really hard to identify the traits and characteristics of my own generation. Beyond anything I could think of to properly epitomize a connection between a pop culture and the Millennial Generation like Chuck Klosterman Generation Y Star Wars' analogy. I believe that the Dotcom boom of the nineties and subsequently social medial particularly Facebook and Instagram are the biggest pop trends that characterize the Millennial Generation.

In fact, the vulgarization of social media gave a voice to millions of people who sought after the freedom to be themselves. More than ever, people from my generations became independent, activists and confident free-thinkers. Social media led to uprising "Arab spring" in the Middle East. In the Sub-Saharan region in Africa musicians teamed up to inspire youngster to oust out of power Blaise Compaoré who was a dictator running Burkina-Faso for over 27 years. The drawback of social media is that it has made people less sociable and selfish. Family time has been replaced by time in front of one's computer. I recall some of my dates where instead of enjoying a delicious meal and a great wine, we were enjoying posts on Facebook and liking pictures on Instagram instead. Social media as a pop culture has introduced a new form of bullying. In this era bullies are some teenagers who may hurt more than they heal without even being physically present with their victims. 

Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Synthetic and Natural Happiness

Natural Happiness is according to Dan Gilbert professor at Harvard University who centered his career on the study of happiness; a state of mind when we get what we want, or more elaborately how our brain's chemicals react when we get what we crave for. However, Gilbert also argues that Synthetic Happiness is our reaction of what we make when we get what we don't want.
More on the subject including his explanation of the Impact bias can be found on this link: "http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy"

Having Gilbert conception of happiness in mind we explore what Malcolm Gladwell a Canadian writer who worked for the New York Times explained how Howard Moscowitz would change the course of the food industry. For so long the American consumers have been eating their spaghetti with sauces they just settled for. They were happy with what they had, made the most out of it because they did not have any other alternative although they crave for something else like extra chunky spaghetti sauce. This is a perfect example of Synthetic happiness.

Natural happiness, is the reaction of Prego's consumer line to the arrival of the extra chunky spaghetti sauce. People finally get what they wanted, something different from what they have always been offered and that was denoted in a rise in sale to the order of $600 Million in revenue. The same applies to coffee, how our own choice of coffee can make us drastically happy. According to Gladwell true happiness is derived from obtaining what we want.
Reference of the Malcolm video can be found on this link: "http://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauce"