Some definitions...

Advertising: Composed, non personal and professional form of communication that is pais and aimed at persuading about the product.
Marketing: Organizational function and set of processes that create communication, deliver value and manage customer relationships, all for the benefit of the company.
Clutter: When too many marketing messages are sent at the same time; this create confusion in the mind of the consumer and a misidentification of the product.
Stimulus Codability: It is when a stimulus is used to interpret a marketing message, or used to encode a marketing message.
Corporate Logo: A corporate logo is a symbol that is used to identify the brand from other brands. It conveys the corporate message.
Salience: When the customer is aware of the brand, has it in his consideration set, buys it, has positive feelings about it and talks about it to his friends and relatives.
Brand Equity: Some attributes that are adding value to the product in the mind of a specific portion of the consumers.
Market Segmentation: Defining which part of the population we would be directing our marketing efforts toward because it would be more profitable.
Behaviorgraphics: Study of the behavior of the consumer relying on past purchase experiences and online search for products.
VALS Segmentation: Defined as the values, lifestyles and attributes of a particular group of the population. It is based on the resources and the level of motivation of the persons concerned.
Positioning: It is setting in the mind of the consumers how the brand should be perceived.
Positioning Statement: It is a statement claiming what the product stands for in the consumer's mind and delivers consistency through the MARCOM process.
Over-positioning: With over-positioning, the other attributes of the product might be hidden by the over-exposure and over-promotion of one attributes.
Under-positioning: The consumer may not really know what the product stands for and therefore won't have a clear idea about it.
CPM: The responses of a customer to the MARCOM efforts are seen as being rational, logical, systematic.
HEM: The responses of a customer to MARCOM efforts are seen as being driven by emotions, feelings, pleasure and fun.
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs: Safety needs- love and belonging needs- esteem needs- self actualization.
Hierarchy of MARCOM Effects: Unawareness- awareness- expectations- trial- belief and attitudes- reinforcement of beliefs and attitudes-loyalty.
Iconoclastic names: They are linked to icons, such as Apple.
Conceptual names: They are linked to a concept, that does not give reaaly what a business is doing.

The Proliferation of the Viral Marketing

The first thing we have to do is defining viral advertising because at my point the term is somehow confusing. We can differentiate viral marketing from the other forms of marketing in the sense that it promotes information or products that other customers are compelled to give to other friends, family or colleagues ( Mastermind.sysop.com ). Therefore, a viral ad can be so uncommon or so attention-grabbing that it will lead the viewers to talk about it, without having any specific attribute of a conventional marketing campaign. My own experience with viral marketing is derived mainly from Facebook where the members launch a lot of unusual videos about products or services. These videos spread rapidly and they are completed by the comments of the members that are adding value to it. It becomes something more personal and adapted to us and our world. There is a promising future for viral marketing because now people refuse to be the slaves of marketing and of direct messages that order them to buy things. With the viral marketing, the message is really implicit and it is more about having fun than ordering someone to do something. The three reasons why viral marketing should be done in Morocco is first because in this country the word-of-mouth has a primordial place. Therefore, we can count on the Moroccans to spread the word as far as they can. The second reason is due to the fact that viral marketing create controversy most of the time, and Moroccan loves controversy. It makes them active and talkative, so it leads to a positive reaction from them. The third reason would be a social one because talking about these marketing types creates a social networking. So maybe viral marketing is the marketing of the third millennium?

The Essence of Benetton

It is obvious that the sender of the message contained in this video, which is Benetton, wanted to achieve one major goal: create awarness about its product and sell to many consumers as possible. But they used an intelligent way in conveying the message and making the watchers become consumers of this perfume. We are asked to study this message in the light of the four general targeting characteristics: demographics, geodemographics, psychographics, and behaviorgraphics. First of all, we can see that Benetton selected a target market that is relatively young, demographically speaking, that is to say between 15 and 22 years old. This is noticeable from the characters that are used in the ad, two young people around 18 years old, and it is because Benetton knew that the perfume is more adapted to this category of age than to any other one. However, both of them seem to be WASP, meaning there is no will of involving the ethnicity in the demographic choices of the company. Second, we have the geodemographic component that is not really taken into consideration in here. Indeed, we can not tell from the ad to which region of the world it is directed, except the fact that the ad is in english, but this does not tell us much. The third part is the psychographic one and it defines to which VALS category the target market belongs. In this case, the members of the target market are mostly Strivers in the sense that they are fun loving, favorise stylish products and seek desperatly the approval of others. At my point, these two young people that are having fun ( sexual appeal) are looking for more fun and more acceptance from the society, and this can be brought by their use of the Benetton perfume. The last component, behaviorgraphic, defines the behavior of the target market. Here, people that may use this perfume will look for fashion things, they love to be noiced and to be differentiated from the mass, but they also enjoy life to its maximum. This is in general the profile of young people who start taking advantage from each part of their lives as soon as possible, and who are not afraid of trying new things and being distinct from others.

United Colors of Benetton changed the face of advertising

This is the link to my video :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHTMcOojXd0

Apple changed 1984 !

We are first hit by a group og people walking in a military and very strict way, controlled by armed forces; this is to show the state in which the society was at that time. That is to say we were are slaves of something, probabaly of the TV and all kind of screens in specific and the technology in general. They were endoctrinating us and making some propaganda through the launch of programs and technological products. We also notice an automatization of the humans and the uniformization of their actions to show they submission to the screen. To extend more, this is seen as being their God and all of them are its believer; this si only valid in a western context. The contrast is made by the woman who is running in the middle of the scene, wearing warm colors, whereas all of them are in the dark tones. The woman represents the ones that are beraking the rules because she is literally breaking the screen with her hammer, and after each berak, we will have an innovation. This innovation is shown by the little paragraph written that is annoucing the introduction of a new Macintosh that will revolutionarize the future of the technology and that will change the status quo of so many people that were enslaved by the archaic way of technological change.

"Come Home to the Simpsons"

The first thing I noticed about this ad is that it is exactly copying the opening credits of the cartoon "The Simpsons". They did the same except they replaced the cartoons by real characters. The idea is a genuine one since no one had ever thought of using the characters of "The Simpsons" as a mascot for a particular product. Moreover, these characters are very famous not only among teens but also in the adults sphere since they represent the typical american family living in a suburb, with its financial, social and familial problems. The sucess of the cartoon is due to the ability of its creators to give to the drama in which this family lives a funny dimension. Therefore, anything associated with "The Simpsons" is undeniably odd and comical. By linking them with the product, we give this latter a light but a sure value, and this is a positive thing because we send a advertising message to the customers in a soft way. The only objection I can make is that the British environment does not really get the whole meaning of the cartoon since this cartoon takes its whole sense only within the american context. In other words, we may think that the British customer won't understanding why the advertisers had used "The Simpsons" in this ad and what is the message they wanted to convey by using it.