Brand diary

Getting up/going to class 6:00~8:00am

During Class 8:00~10:30

After class 10:30~12:00pm

During chemistry lab 12:00~3:00pm

After class 3:00~6:00

Club activities 6:00~10:00pm

Before bead 10:00~12:00am

It is overwhelming to see all the brands I have been using throughout the day. I’m pretty sure I have much more brands that I came across today. The brands listed are just some of the brands that I use the most. The brands that I use are chosen mostly because of my own personal favor, because I have a trust in most of the brands listed. Brands like Samsung and Texas Instruments are one of my favorites, because even though I didn’t start using them because of their ads, but because of someone’s advice, the products from these companies satisfy me. Thus, I personally would not buy a product because of marketer’s ads, but I would chose a product by using them and see if they give me satisfaction and preference over other advertised products. Some people like Apple maniacs use only apple products, as for me, since I have trusted some of these brands all my life, I feel I have fidelity for my favorite brands as well.

Response to the discussion about Buzz Maketing

I could see some people with the viewpoint that marketing is bad that it deceives people to make profit, but I would say marketing is not bad but it just inherently comes with the products we utilize. Especially, I feel the Buzz marketing is a very natural form of advertising a product. For example, when I buy a product, like an iPhone, eventually I will talk about it with my family or friends, showing the features and actually advertising Apple and the phone unintentionally in an ordinary conversation. Therefore, in my opinion, when we talk about anything and no matter how we talk about it, we still advertise it. For instance if I give a critique about the iPhone that it is likely break easy if I drop it, and my friend doesn’t care about fragility but just likes it after just seeing its features, he’s still going to be interested about the iPhone and probably consider buying it later on.

While there are innumerous ways of Buzz marketing, I believe that the trend in the society is the Buzz marketing itself. As humans, we like to follow others and improve ourselves to be better than each other to not feel left out. When someone gets something interesting and attracts attention so he/she becomes “cool”, we tend to emulate or strive to become even better. When I was a child, I always had to have what others had. For instance, if my friend had a Game Boy, I had to have it too and even more games than my friend did or else I wouldn’t even talk to my parents. Therefore, Buzz marketing exists in the nature of mankind and it doesn’t seem to be a bad thing at all but helps us improve our lives.

In the reading “Unmarketable”, Moore tells that the Free market allows the consumers to choose what is the best for them. I believe his assertion is true because the society choose from the products that try to appeal from ads and win in the competition among the similar goods in the market. But in the end, only the chosen products survive. In final consideration, I believe that Buzz marketing is the main source of the ads causing the competition of products in the market.

Carrots or Coke?

If I had carrots or a can of Coke that I have to choose between, I would defintely choose the carrots. As a person who doesn’t drink sodas, I individually consider carrots to be a better tradeoff between a can of Coke and carrots. Although Coke seems more convenient and attracting because advertisers advertise the Coke with fascinating ads using different methods, carrots are much better than a Coke in several ways that they are much healthier, consumable in different ways of cooking, etc. But most of our classmates chose Coke over carrots. Why? It is because that people tend to like sweet and cool Coke rather than tasteless carrots. And since people like Coke much better than carrots, the demand is higher for Coke. Therefore advertisers work on improving ads on Coke and creating ease of access to supplies of Coke. If carrots were to have more demands than Coke, will the advertisers still work on advertising Coke rather than carrots? Hence, I believe marketers will always promote on selling what the society yearns rather than what the society needs.

When we say the market value is low, but the value in society is high, what does that mean? I would say it means that a service or product we consume has a low value in the market, but the value produced to society is substantial. Moreover, I believe this statement has connections with carrots and Coke. Carrots have low market value in the market, but it has a considerable value in the society. Whereas Coke has a high market value, but its value in society is unimportant. Therefore, it seems that market value and society value oppose each other. A better of example of this statement would be rice. As Koreans, our family considers a meal a meal when we have rice and dishes. Although having a little market value, rice is essential to Korean society to provide a meal. Also, an inexpensive material like a roll of toilet paper has low market value but a great value in society. Thus, everything in the market are necessary, and they all have different values and demands, but it’s just that marketers tend to advertise and acknowledge more on the things that have more value in the market.

The “Black Box”

In Henry Jenkins’ writing “Worship at the Altar of Convergence,” He claims that the union of media is not the technology itself but the culture. However, I believe his “black box fallacy” is possible. As time passed, technology has grown exponentially around the universe. Well, I think today’s consumers and producers try to make the “black box” because that is what our society desires. Therefore, I believe Jenkins’ fallacy is possible up to a certain point.

In my opinion, I would say the 3G phones like Blackberry and iPhone would be the predecessors of the emerging “black box” in the future. In today’s society these phones allows people to call, take pictures, surf the web, watch TVs, and etc. Especially for the iPhone it allows the people to create new applications which they want or need. Also, it is a perfect example of convergence of technology of a phone and an iTouch that was created by Apple few years ago. What surprises me is that the cutting edge technology has come to a point where we could even use the internet with a mobile phone considering that the internet was invented less than two decades ago. Now, the technology “evolves” in our hands into something that we can’t even imagine.

Considering the improvement of technology and although the convergence of media and the invention of the “black box” seem imminent, I don’t think it would be that simple creating a “perfect” device. Even though the society always crave for convenience and mobility, there will always be conservative people who will not accept the new media, or those who can’t keep up with technology due to lack of skills and knowledge. Just like my grandparents who prefer non-electronic things like mails rather than e-mails, some people wouldn’t be able to follow the improvement of the technology. Thus, People wouldn’t be able to agree to a point for a single “black box” but rather several universal devices customized to each individual’s usage.

As a citizen of Korea, where cutting edge technology is omnipresent around the city, I have always anticipated for new products and new capabilities of machines. I believe that the culture forms the technology and vice versa. Society would always need better technology and the technology will help us better our lives. Consequently, we will make our lives better and make this global world a better place with improving technology.

Blog Post #1

Hafa! My name is Yong C. I was born and raised in Korea till 3rd grade and move back and forth from Guam and Thailand. Anyways, I will say I'm from Guam. My major is Aerospace Engineering, because I thought it would be the most interesting area to study for me. And so far, I find my major interesting after hearing some stories about Aerospace Engineering for upperclassmen. Right now I'm involved in the SFC(StudentForChirst) group, which is actually a Korean christian fellowship.

Although selling information about users to advertisers and others might be somehow dangerous, I personally don't really care whether Facebook or Myspace or any social networking sites sell my information to advertisers and users. So far, I don’t remember getting any harm from the social networking sites for exposing my information to anyone. I notice there are lots of ads on the sides or the top & bottom of the window, but I never paid close attention to the ads. This is probably because it's already deeply rooted in me ever since I was young when my dad used to tell me that the ads are actually viruses so I shouldn’t click on them, and as a matter of fact, most of the ads on the Internet are negligible. The ads start to bother me when they start to suddenly pop up out of nowhere and make annoying noises. Even though spam mails about some weird advertisements irritate me, ads are actually necessary for social networking businesses to function and allow me to contact my friends and family. Because I have moved around different countries and it’s difficult to keep in touch with out them, social networking sites’ existence is crucial for me as the only medium to keep in touch with others. Well, I would say it’s worth it to get disturbed by some spam mails and advertisements. Sometimes, random people with some similarities add me as a friend or me adding some mutual friends and getting to know others easily on the web is actually interesting. Therefore, I am cool with these sites selling my info.