This column originally appears in St. Cloud Times, Monday, February 10, 2014. If you watched the Super Bowl commercials, you should be aware of the controversy Coca-Cola stirred up with its new ad titled “It’s Beautiful.” The 60-second ad featured “America, the Beautiful,” sung in seven languages during scenes of Americans of different ethnicities spending time … Continue reading Coke Ad Shows True Beauty of the United States
Advertising
An Introduction to Social Media Marketing
Drastic changes to mass communication approaches over the past 50 years have opened new doors to advertisers to market products and businesses. In the face of rapid technological advancement, the next target is in sight – to empower technology consumers who are now in control of the media messages they are exposed to, and to … Continue reading An Introduction to Social Media Marketing
‘Don’t give them 4. Give them 2+2’
Effective storytelling is among the few units I teach in my first-year composition course. Every semester, I show Andrew Stanton's TED Talk, "The Clues to a Great Story," to the students and ask them to reflect on the traditional methods in storytelling and how they can tweak the ways to make their personal narratives interesting. … Continue reading ‘Don’t give them 4. Give them 2+2’
Heineken Campaign Challenges Routine Lifestyle, Invent Possibilities
Hats off to the brains behind the recent Heineken campaign, where travelers are challenged to drop everything - their planned trips, responsibilities - to take on an unknown route to a mysterious location. The campaign is designed to confront our regular lifestyle - an always-busy, planned, often-stressful, and indifferent lifestyle. The impact of venture comes … Continue reading Heineken Campaign Challenges Routine Lifestyle, Invent Possibilities
Considering Audience, Message, and Action in Social Advertising
Audience theory has been in existence since the emergence of mass communication/media studies. In fact, the best way to measure the success of any message is to gather audience feedback. However, in traditional advertising, the audience is simply the group of individuals that advertisers are interested in speaking to. They can be grouped or segmented … Continue reading Considering Audience, Message, and Action in Social Advertising
Jason Tham, Ph.D. 