Only in America

Only in America would a fast food mascot be a national icon. Jack from Jack In the Box has grown vastly in popularity. When the fast food company decided to set out commercials about Jack being hit by a bus and being in a concussion, not only were there complaints about it being too unethical and offensive to broadcast, (one direct quote was "This commercial is sick and offensive") but there were those who thought it was real. Until Jack came out of the concussion people were actually sending him flowers and running help Jack campaigns. A web site was created in dedication to him. It kept an updated status check on him and showed clips of him in the hospital... which were merely the commercials. The way America responded to this new way of advertising led others in confusion. Was the character who plays Jack really hit? Finally they brought him out of it, and a lot of people felt stupid about their previous thoughts. Except those who love Jack of course. I assume Jack In the Box, is happy with the result, they received infinite publicity especially since the first commercial aired during the super bowl! (picture form commercial aired during Super Bowl)

Progressive

The girl named "Flo" from the Progressive auto insurance commercials is really making a name for herself. I enjoy these commercials because she is such a character. The imagination behind the commercials is not very broad, but like I've said before simple can go a long way. The commercials are set in a progressive insurance store and Flo plays the sales clerk.cashier. Each commercial is pretty humorous. Seems like the most entertaining commercials now-a-days are the insurance ones. I wonder who is going to make the next big thing. The commercials everyone is talking about. Any ideas?

Myspace/Facebook

Simple seems to always be best. Yes you want your Myspace to be super cool and what not, but I personally stopped using Myspace because of the way people "advertise" themselves. If you want to go to some one's Myspace page today be ready to wait too long for every unnecessary picture of random objects and busy backgrounds that distract the eye from the actual content of the page. People say it's better at being able to express themselves. Personally I don't care who your favorite rap artist, If we're good enough friends I should already know. Also the music put on Myspace, I don't want to hear your favorite songs, because they're not mine... Facebook allows you to talk, with words, about yourself while not annoying the reader. Kids today like to do their school projects the way they do their Myspace's. For example, in my BIMM (Business Image Management) class we are building websites. Well, half of the class puts loud backgrounds with font that clashes and the corollary of that is it upsets the teacher. She has told us numerous times that your content should be readable, naturally. So, they receive poor grades. If I could grade people's Myspace's there would be few A's.

Location

I lived in Uzbekistan for 2.5 years and as young as I was I will always remember the commercials and their advertising (as weird as it may sound). One commercial in particular, It was for a soup called "Maggie". It is the same as Ramen noodles, just produced in Asia. There was an Indian woman and her daughter. The little girl spoke in Indian I assume "mama, (Indian dialect)?" Then her mom responded "2 minute!" What I got from it all was that it takes two minutes to cook Maggie soup. Combining their language with English was a smart idea. I mean we bought the noodles! They were able to reach out to local Americans and natives as themselves. Good marketing strategy or just luck, who knows but it worked.

Web Design

I have picked my favorite top twenty rules/guidelines to good web design and added a few good websites to look at that display the rules. (the website after a rule is a site that displays that rule best)

1) Simple - No one wants to spend too much time searching for exactly what they’re looking for. Keep things simple and easy and not too crammed and clutter-y
http://www.sharpened.com/web/about/rules.html (this is actually a web design rules site where I got some of mine from)

2) Design - Make a good first impression make sure your design is unique.

3) Navigation - Make all your topics and information in your website easy to find. Like a side bar that say “dogs” “cats” etc, and they are links to that information

4) Consistency - People don’t like change with site mainly because they had to figure out where things were once and they don’t want to have to do it again.

5) Content - If your site design is amazing so should your information

6) Be up to date - Keep your site and the information in it updated as often as possible or it will not be a successful website

7) Feed back - Take advantage of user feedback and comments. They are the people you are trying to keep coming to your site so they are your customer and the customer is always right.

8) Check the site for errors. - Make sure you go through your own finished site and check for mistakes in spelling, alignments, colors, etc. If there is no spell-checker, copy and past your text into word to double check, also make sure you don't have a mistaken word ex: wish instead of which. Spell check can't fix that for you. Re-read your information.

9) Don't Center big paragraphs - It makes the site look amateurish; it is difficult to follow through and very difficult to read. You want your site to be easy to read to keep your visitors interested. http://byzantinesacredart.com/blog/2006/06/good-web-design.html (also a web design site where I got a few from)

10) Color - Colors shouldn't’t clash and should not make a rainbow and be a sight for sore eyes. White backgrounds with black fonts are present on some of the best web sites

11) White Space - Leave enough room for each element on your page to “breathe”. White space is web designer's prime assistant: it helps her organize the content and make it visually appealing and pleasant. http://www.infoplease.com/

12) Subtlety - Make things subtle and not as “loud” and make a few certain things bold and bright/emphasized. http://www.foxnews.com/

13) Separate Apples and Oranges - Text should never be an image. Logo is the only exception. Images cannot give you any decent placement in search engines. Also people with visual disabilities, who rely on screen readers to use Internet, are virtually barred from sites where text is converted to images.

14) Group - like a scrap book you put all of the pictures from one event together. Do the same with you web site. http://www.dog.com/

15) Prioritize - Make the point of your site visible; don’t emphasize things that are not as important. Make your topic your priority

16) Fonts - For web sites use fonts, like Georgia, Verdana or the most popular, Arial font.

17) Be Square - Don’t be bold and frustrate people and make them have to scroll horizontally rather than vertically

18) Easy to find - If you use the word that your information is about frequently, the more likely it is to show up on a search engine.

19) Easy to read - Make sure that the spacing and font and design all mesh well so the information in the text is easy to read Quick to download - You need to make sure that you don’t have a bunch of extra things on there that take forever to load or maybe don’t ever end up loading like a picture. This only frustrates the user.

20) Quick to download - You need to make sure that you don’t have a bunch of extra things on there that take forever to load or maybe don’t ever end up loading like a picture. This only frustrates the user.

Photography

Photography is a cool way to advertise. Some people are really good with cameras (or just photoshop) but either way if you can advertise yourself, or company with a cool picture, that sticks in someones mind, (which is the main goal of advertising) then you are succeeding in spreading yourself and/or business successfully. Photography can bring out the best in a product. You've seen pizza ads when the cheese looks so gooey and delicious, well more than likely they mixed a little glue in the cheese to get the final effect. Also when you see some fruit that looks fresh and clean more than likely the fruit is carved out of wood and sprinkled with a little baby oil to make it look a little wet and fresh. Although these photography techniques may not be a 100% accurate description of the product, they sell.

There are some types of advertising that I really do not like. I do not like Internet ads. There are some Internet ads I'll see on the sides of the face book site that really tempt me to click on. Most of the time they are just spam ads, not even real ads, fishing for your cell phone number so they can text you non stop. I don't understand why people make those ads or why face book even allows them to post there. Sometimes you'll catch one that is real but with all the annoying spam one floating around, I don't bother to click them. The real companies will eventually realize that they will loose business this way. Until then don't click ads on facebook!