Media Cultures - Case Study - Doritos (Hotel 626)

Hotel 626 was an immersive website launched by Doritos to bring back two retired Doritos flavours. In their attempt, they had succeeded in increasing sales with over 4 million people from 136 different countries viewing the website. All this was done without ever showing the product.

This is an example of using a variety of media to promote a brand successfully.

With the use of mobile technology webcams, microphones, and cellphones, an alternate reality world which at its time blended reality and fantasy was born.

What this campaign did right was knowing their target audience. Doritos is stereotypically assigned to gamers which as such, creating an online game caught the attention of many gamers. In order to truly catch their attention, they had begun to use various extensions of a desktop. For example, players would use their microphones to sing a lullaby ensuring that a baby (in truth was a demon) would stay asleep.

To the question at hand, this campaign would disagree and that the use of various media would not dilute its effectiveness.

References

1. Macleod, D. (2009). Doritos Hotel 626 - The Inspiration Room. [online] The Inspiration Room. Available at: http://theinspirationroom.com/daily/2009/doritos-hotel-626/ [Accessed 25 Jun. 2017].

Media Cultures - Regarding - Question (Part 2)

Deciding on question 5 as my research, here is the question once more.

Explore a variety of media used within the context of branding or transmedia storytelling. Does variety dilute the effectiveness of an advertising campaign or story?

In bold are the keywords or focus of the question.

From my understanding:

Variety of media, is essentially platforms of delivering to the masses. Advertisement, Mail, Newspaper and more. It encompasses both digital and physical forms of mass media.

A Brand is a name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller’s good or service as distinct from those of other sellers. Branding is the process of giving a meaning to specific products by creating and shaping a brand in consumers’ minds. It is a strategy to help people to quickly identify products and organization, and give them a reason to choose their products over the competition’s.

Transmedia Storytelling is to tell a story across multiple media and preferably, with the collaboration, interaction or participation of the audience.

With all this in mind, does the use of various media platforms weaken an advertising campaign or story?

My hypothesis for this would be, no, or more aptly put, it depends. Personally the use of various media platforms would likely enhance the campaign or story, in the right place.

So the plan for research would be to:

1. Research the effectiveness of media platforms
2. Locate cases of successful or failed campaigns and stories.  
3. Find solutions and theories to improve

References
 

1. Andrivet, M. (2015). What Is Branding?. [online] The Branding Journal. Available at: http://www.thebrandingjournal.com/2015/10/what-is-branding-definition/ [Accessed 20 Jun. 2017]. 
2. Kotler, P. and Keller, K. (2014). Marketing management. 15th ed. Minneapolis: Pearson Education, Inc.
3. Pratten, R. (2015). Getting started with transmedia storytelling. 2nd ed. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.
4. Pratten, R. and Ossikine, A. (2010). Types of Transmedia – Transmedia Storyteller. [online] Tstoryteller.com. Available at: http://www.tstoryteller.com/types-of-transmedia [Accessed 20 Jun. 2017].

Media Cultures - Regarding - Questions (Part 1)

A fresh start to a new semester! Let’s start off with a breakdown of these questions!

1.Critically review a local art/ design exhibition in-depth. Discuss it in terms of its curatorial goals and exhibition design with related research.

Looking at this question, let's begin by understanding what are a curator’s goals. In America, the Curators Committee had developed a document called the A Code of Ethics for Curators. It describes the fundamental principles, core beliefs and critical responsibilities and provides guidelines for ethical conduct. In this document it mentions that their curatorial work should serve the public good, the institution and the museum profession. From here it would be say to say that the curatorial goals of an exhibition is to contribute to and promote learning, inquiry, and dialogue, and by making the depth and breadth of human knowledge available to the public.  

Now let's, look at the objectives of the National Museum:

• Conduct museum activities such as research, collect, record and publish all the heritage of the country's history
• Exhibit and enhance the country's historical heritage artifacts for the purposes of public education towards national identity and nation-building and;
• Ensure the museum as one of the country's tourism product.

As we can see above, it seems to be similar to those of the goals in the document.

While I have yet to begin looking into local art exhibitions, here are some that I am will be looking into if I were to so choose this question as my topic of research:

• Petronas Art Gallery
• Valette Gallery
• Artemis Art Gallery

2.Compare and contrast the relationship of celebrities with their fans in two different creative communities. Which one is relatively more healthy in their connections?

Regarding this question, well first and foremost, what is a healthy connection? Is it based on how often they meet with their fans? Or maybe it's by how one's fans are towards the general public? I suppose in some sense, we would have to take all of that into account as we further delve into this topic.

Next is, what are creative communities? Sarah Stanton from the Conscious Magazine believes that a creative community is “when your ideas, thoughts, opinions and passions are shared, received and reciprocated in a positive way”

This question seems fairly vague as the scale of a creative community by definition, is rather massive. Are we limited to actors, artists and songwriters? Does a youtuber like Pewdiepie count as such a celebrity? I am rather on the fence with this question as I have not the slightest idea on how to really go about this question.

3.  Examine the issue of cultural appropriation within a domain of beauty, fashion or music industry. Why are some communities cautious of, or against this practice?

Regarding this question, earlier today, there was an issue regarding a Watson Ad which has a prince haunted in his dreams by a sweet and alluring voice. To find that voice he holds an audition to find said voice. Many “pretty” faces come and try but none can really sing till a veiled woman who has the same voice as the prince’s dream appears only to unveil to find the woman with pitch black skin, later in the video she washes her face to show her beauty.

To say the least, the ad received a vicious backlash from the community for the use of blackface which implied that black is ugly. The ad was then taken down hours later.

Cultural appropriation is defined as the adoption or use of the elements of one culture by members of another culture and blackface is a form of theatrical makeup used predominantly by non-black performers to represent a black person.

So about this question, my initial impression, especially with the recent ad, as to why some communities would be cautious of this practice, is that it is rather difficult to represent one’s culture in a proper manner without stepping on anyone's toes.

4. What are some issues and best practices for design in multilingual communities? Write from the perspective of either a graphic designer or interactive designer.

Well as someone who can only speak one language, I can see a number of issues. For example, the obvious language barrier. That in itself causes more issues than one, miscommunication, less job opportunities and more.

As I think about this question now, one of the best practices for designing for a multilingual community would be the consideration of culture and language.

Right, a multilingual community is one where the community speaks many languages, for example Malaysia, the four most used languages are, Chinese, English, Malay and Tamil.

I would need more time to think and research about this one to fully write up a proper report so this will stop here for now.

5. Explore a variety of media used within the context of branding or transmedia storytelling.   Does variety dilute the effectiveness of an advertising campaign or story.

If I understand this correctly, the question is about if the use of various platforms to promote a campaign or story weakens its effectiveness.

This question is still rather vague to me so Ill leave this alone for now.

Well with that said and done. My current choices for deeper exploration are questions 1,2,4 and 5.

1 would be interesting to explore.

2 would be something fun to discuss.

4 would hit home for me.

and 5 feels familiar but is currently far too vague to consider.

Internet Cultures - Summarizing - Mobile Devices and the Internet

While there is still much more research to be done, one clear fact is that mobile devices has really changed the way we use the internet.

Initially having contemplate between 4 questions to choose from, the decision was made, out of interest the effects said device has done. From here it would be wise to narrow down the topic to a specific profession or industry, which in this case, I would like it to be about the gaming industry.

Previous posts have shown how much time is spent on apps and how easy it is to fall out of interest. Making the gaming industry especially volatile. What I hope to achieve from this is to understand how gaming industries can keep themselves in the loop. A previous post has already shown that new content within a game has the potential to bring back users who left the app.

But is that really enough?

Internet Cultures - Focus - Changing the way we use the internet

Let's take a step back for a moment and look at how mobile devices changed he way we use our internet.

Comparing what we have now to back then, there are certainly changes. With 3.2 billion people now on the internet, it has become almost impossible to not live without a mobile device.

A survey conducted by the Bank of America, shows how important said devices are, with 91% of the of the participants saying smartphones are very important. But it is because of this, that we have come to an age where app development has become one of the highest demanding jobs in the technology industry.

That being said, has it really changed the way the way we use the internet? Without a doubt. With everything on our fingertips, the internet has become much more accessible and  has created a market for app developers.

That's it for now regarding this, more to come at a later time.

References

Hartley, D. (2016). These are the most in-demand jobs for 2016. [online] Advice.careerbuilder.com. Available at: http://advice.careerbuilder.com/posts/these-are-the-most-indemand-jobs-for-2016 [Accessed 20 Dec. 2016].

Moxie. (2016). 7 Ways Mobile Devices Changed eCommerce - Moxie. [online] Available at: http://www.gomoxie.com/blog/7-ways-mobile-devices-changed-ecommerce [Accessed 20 Dec. 2016].

TestObject. (2016). How Smartphones and Mobile Internet Have Changed Our Lives – TestObject. [online] Available at: https://testobject.com/blog/2016/01/smartphones-mobile-internet-changed-our-life.html [Accessed 20 Dec. 2016].

Internet Cultures - Mobile Usage - Our Time on Devices

This is somewhat a continuation of the previous post, found here,
http://xinternetculturesy.blogspot.my/2016/12/tidbits-mobile-app-usage.html

This is an in-depth discussion about the time spent on mobile devices.

As suggested by said post, many users spend 90% of the time on mobile apps. So the first question one should ask is, what apps? The statistics was gathered from an annual report by the Flurry, in the 2nd quarter of 2015, the majority of the time spent were on Facebook, Entertainment (Youtube, etc) and Gaming. Now while Facebook was considered a separate category, one can also consider it a Messaging/Social app.

Now that we are aware that essentially most of the time spent is on Social apps, what are users using it for? A study done by Millward Brown Digital suggests that is it used for consuming media. Consuming media means to create content designed for today’s digital media ecosystem. This content is designed to ‘find’ targeted users inline with their specific content consumption behaviors, engage them and allow them to easily ‘share’ with other interested users.

To conclude, based of the statistics, when it comes to mobile app productions, it seems to heavily suggest that content has become one of the most important selling points to grab users attentions.

References

Shaun Moores (1993). Interpreting audiences : the ethnography of media consumption. London: Sage.

Sullivan, W. (2016). Trends on Tuesday: Content is King for Mobile Apps. [online] DigitalGov. Available at: https://www.digitalgov.gov/2015/09/22/trends-on-tuesday-content-is-king-for-mobile-apps/ [Accessed 17 Dec. 2016].

Yahoo Developer Network. (2016). Seven Years Into The Mobile Revolution: Content is King… Again. [online] Available at: https://yahoodevelopers.tumblr.com/post/127636051988/seven-years-into-the-mobile-revolution-content-is [Accessed 17 Dec. 2016].

Internet Cultures - Tidbits - Mobile App Usage

In my search for general statistics regarding mobile apps over the recent years, I've come across an interesting piece showing the stats of mobile app usage.
Within this article, 3 points piqued my interest:

1. Users spend 90% of their time in apps compared to the mobile Web.

2. Of those who stop using apps, 30% would use an app again if offered a discount, and 24% would reuse an app if offered exclusive or bonus content. 

3. 78% of companies use paid media to drive app downloads. 

To summarize, most users spend their time on mobile apps over the mobile web, but mobile apps themselves generally have a short lifespan and only so many would come back if offered new content. The last point drives home how companies use paid media promote their apps. Paid media essentially being, advertising, pay per click, social media ads and the like.

The rest of the article has some insight to mobile apps and will be covered more on the next post.

References

Binisti, O. and @, F. (2016). 10 Interesting Mobile App Usage Stats | Digital Marketing Blog. [online] Digital Marketing Blog. Available at: https://blogs.adobe.com/digitaleurope/mobile-marketing/10-interesting-mobile-app-usage-stats/ [Accessed 17 Dec. 2016].