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QAnon

I watched the docuseries Q: Into The Storm on HBOMax. It’s about the origin and rise of the QAnon movement, and ultimately suggests who “Q” may be. The QAnon movement is a wide-ranging conspiracy theory that ex-President Trump was fighting Satan-worshipping pedophiles in government, business, and media. It all began from an anonymous user who posted on a 4chan board and signed off as “Q” in 2017. Since there isn’t a consensus on the definition of QAnon itself, the nature of the documentary was more compelling. 

What drew me to watch the series is what I knew about the terrorism of the capital earlier this year and that QAnon had a relationship to it. I also was drawn to the thumbnail of the series with a dizzying Q and a rabbit going down the center of a Q, as if to say “going down the rabbit hole”. I thought that was fascinating and it drew me to it because I wanted to be drawn into something which is exactly what it did. 

Each of the six episodes helped to build suspense by focusing on the ever increasing real-world implications of the QAnon movement, leading to the storming of the United States Capital on January 6, 2021. As described in our lecture, “ The sensation element of perception is the immediate and direct response of the sensory organs to stimuli,” (Wilder, 2021). This was mental sensation in my perception and they were using logos as well to persuade me to watching more - erring on the side of showing how absurd the beliefs were. 

Additionally, the series continuously introduced new theories of who may have been behind Q, often switching back and forth as new information about the main suspects were revealed. This technique kept me guessing and unsure of who Q might be and therefore more invested in the outcome of who it is. 

Sources:

Week 12: Consumer Perception Powerpoint

https://www.hbo.com/q-into-the-storm

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Blog #6

I made a recent purchase of a workout/yoga mat and I’ll be covering my whole experience in the discovery and buying process throughout this post. 

Brand: Italic

Product: 5mm Yoga Mat

I’m a Pilates instructor and have been teaching for the past 6 years as well as taking Pilates and yoga classes for the past 10+ years. Mats for these types of classes need to be cushioned for all the weight bearing exercises performed as well as be non-slip for sweat.  I also do HIIT and weight lifting workouts that require a mat that doesn’t slip on the floor itself when you are jumping or sliding. Needless to say, it’s tough to find the perfect mat! I’ve done a lot of research and the best mats are very expensive - upwards of $90. My client referred me to a membership company called Italic who has high quality products manufactured by the same big brand names but without labels. You pay a membership in order to save (kind of like costco). I’ve had this membership for several months as a yearly free trial and they just released a yoga mat in their fitness offerings. 

From my first encounter with the website a few months ago I really felt drawn to the brand. The website is clean, simple, and elegant. The colors and typography and ease of using the website are really great branding especially for higher end products. For someone like me, who wants high quality products without paying an arm and a leg, I still want to feel like I’m buying something nice. The branding of the site did a good job of making me feel that way. I also really enjoy how they list the brands of the same manufacturer. For this mat it was Alo Yoga. They also list the prices it would be listed at if it were branded by one of those companies. 

Seeing this mat listed for only $35 dollars astounded me and there was no way that I could not try the mat for that price and see if the quality really was on par with the best brands. So I ordered the mat and waited for it to come in the mail.

About 5 days later (the following week) my mat came in the mail. It arrived in a box the shape of the rolled up mat. The box was sleek white and black with the brand's name Italic across it one time. When I opened the box the mat was wrapped nicely with tissue paper and plastic to protect it as well as a small slip with Italic’s warranty/return information. The weight and feel of the mat itself was high quality and as soon as I unrolled it I could feel the grippiness it. 

My first workout with the mat I did a HIIT workout and then Pilates abs to end it. The mat didn’t slide at all while I was doing my ice-skater jump squats and provided enough cushion that my knees (I’ve had 3 knee surgeries) didn’t hurt and felt supported when I landed. When I did my Pilates series my tailbone and spine didn’t hurt at all rolling up and down and my wrists and elbows didn’t hurt either when doing planks. I was so happy!

Summary: Overall, I had a very good experience with buying from Italic and seeing the true high quality of the mat gave me a lot of assurance that their other products are just as high quality. I really enjoy the simplicity of no branding or logo on the item and the sleek black color. Italic does a great job of making you feel you are buying exclusive, high-quality products from them. I will buy more things from them because I had such a good experience!

Critiques

I’m going to use the marketing mix to identify areas where Italic could improve to fulfill their customer’s desires and needs. 

Product: The mat itself is super high quality and I felt like I got exactly what I hoped for. If they were to improve anything I would say they could include directions on how to properly clean the mat since it’s non-slip it absorbs liquid making it difficult to clean normally. The non-brand part is actually more appealing to me because I don’t want to be wearing/surrounding myself with brand names. 

Price: The price is definitely their strong selling point combined with quality of the product. $35 is an amazing price point and when they compare it to competitors prices and tell you you’re essentially getting the same mat it’s hard to not want to try it out.

Place: eCommerce is the only place that Italic sells and I think that is what allows them to do the membership style pricing where they make most of their profit since products are sold almost at cost. If it were a physical store they would have a much, much higher overhead. I think this is also a great business strategy but I would love to be able to touch and see their products before buying. That is one of the challenges they face is getting customers to buy something and see how high quality their products are in order to buy into membership.

Promotion: They could improve here. I have never heard of this brand until my client referred it to me and gave me the free year. It seems to be more of a referral based business since someone probably won't discover the site and pay for a year long membership out of the gate (without even buying anything yet). But if your friend refers you then you can get a free year long one and try it out. They could possibly utilize more web ads and incentives for current members to refer other customers. 

Sources:

https://italic.com/products/yoga-mat?Color=Black&Size=5mm

https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newSTR_94.htm

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Creative Brief Analysis

A creative brief’s purpose is to give the creative team an outline, direction, and expectations for the campaign. 

Quaker Oats Creative Brief

( Creative brief from - https://www.workamajig.com/blog/creative-brief)

After looking at many briefs I landed on this Quaker Oats brief because I really enjoyed the eye-catchiness and visual elements of the brief. 

What I Like

Logo

Bold headings

Addresses challenges and “why”

What I Don’t Like

Chaotic

Loose objective

Schedule

Budget

Analysis

I think that overall the brief is done well and is fairly comprehensive. The visuals are appealing and offer value and insight to what the brief is trying to accomplish. I do think that there could have been less chaos in  the layout of it. It might have been better to do two pages and be more thorough like including timeline/schedule and a budget. These things would be really helpful for the creative team to have so that they can have a better idea of deadlines and how much they are able to spend. 

The objective was also vague and not very clearly defined. When there isn’t a clear objective it makes it much harder to interpret the rest of the brief and for the creative team to know exactly what it is they are trying to do. When it’s vague it gives everyone less focus and having a clear one drives a very focused process and campaign.

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My Creative Process

     Admittedly, I get anxious staring at a blinking cursor before starting a paper. The vast white expanse of the page staring back at me, daring me to even try filling it up with something worthwhile. I put a lot of pressure on myself when creating, some of this pressure is self-inflicted and some of it is from school and the nature of assignments with deadlines. I know this because when I free-write during self-development workshops or in my journal words come much easier to me. When I write cards for birthdays, holidays, I love yous I can express myself freely and easily. It frustrates me to say the least when I have so much trouble writing when there is a deadline and a grade involved. I know I’m not alone in this and so here are some things that I do in order to overcome those anxious feelings. 

     “Scratching” for me includes a multitude of things. Oftentimes it’s doing things that are artistic like practicing my guitar or piano, listening to music that inspires me, knitting, baking...pretty much anything where my hands are involved. I also scratch when I’m in nature like going for a walk, hike, or spending time with animals. When I lean into relaxing, getting present, and noticing the things around me are when my thoughts are unchained and allowed to freely roam. That’s where I find my creativity. 

     Honestly, I’m not in the most creative time of my life thus far right now. In high school I think of myself as being more creative and I also relate that time of my life to being less stressed, having less responsibilities. Reading Twyla Tharp’s scratching chapter inspires me to grab hold of my creativity and practice it, engage it, and truly make it a habit. By being more conscious of how I can take a step back in order to kickstart my creativity I feel more at ease thinking about upcoming assignments and the inevitable blinking cursors I know I’ll be seeing.

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Good Questions

Good questions are essential to getting good information and being able to craft a story. I’m going to write each of the following questions to be open-ended, meaning they require more thought to answer and more detail.

Have you ever sent a text message while driving?

How do you feel about texting and driving?

What do you do while you drive?

Would you say you travel abroad frequently?

Do you enjoy traveling?

How often do you travel?

Do you post a lot of pictures on Instagram?

How do you feel about Instagram?

Do you enjoy using Instagram?

Do you prefer to shop at big boxes or locally owned stores?

Where do you prefer to shop?

What are your thoughts on corporate fashion?

Do you have an iPhone or an Android phone?

What type of phone do you use?

What’s do you love about your phone?

How often do you eat sweets?

What’s your favorite kind of food?

What do you buy when you go grocery shopping?

Do you tend to buy things that are on sale?

What do you look for most when shopping?

How do you know when you’ve bought something of good value when you shop?

Why is it important to ask good questions?

It is crucial to ask good questions because good questions lead to better answers with more detail which gives insight into the respondents thoughts. This is really important in advertising and marketing industries because with better insights (re: my last post) you’re able to target your products and services better to your segments.  

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Fact vs. Insight: The Difference

The difference between fact and insight is a significant one, especially when it comes to communication, advertising and marketing industries. Despite the difference between these two things they can get mixed up quite a bit. 

I’m going to define the two terms before we move on so there is a very clear understanding of what each is. 

Fact (noun): a thing that is known or proved to be true. 

Insight (noun): the capacity to gain an accurate and deep intuitive understanding of a person of thing. (Merriam-Webster)

The two terms work together in order to create meaning and understanding of a situation. Insights and created from inferences based on facts. Facts are essential in that you cannot have inferences or insights alone, but you need facts. Where it gets tricky is when inferences and insights are misconstrued, or mistook, as facts. 

In the communication industries facts and insights are very important to the creation, strategy, and execution of advertising, marketing, and public relation campaigns. Facts and insights tell us relevant, crucial information regarding target audiences and consumers. Facts such as qualitative and quantitative data help industry workers develop insights to try and understand their target audience better and enhance strategy. 

There are even businesses created to help other businesses analyze and look at their data to provide insight, such as this one Hoops Insight. 

We can also see from facts pulled from The New York Public Library demonstrate how facts presented as an issue can be pulled from to create a strategy. “A third of teenagers don’t read books for pleasure anymore” is a fact and is presented as an issue and then with a further fact that “500 million instagram stories are watched every day.” These two facts have to do with the target audience of Gen Z and from that the insight is taken that books should move to a digital platform. The NYPL created a strategy to shift their content digitally to target teenagers. 

It’s clear that facts and insights are very different but very important to the design and implementation of strategies within communication industries.

References:

https://dhenrilawblog.wordpress.com/2016/01/29/oomh-fact-vs-insights-the-difference-is-clear/

http://hoopsinsight.com/

https://www.aaaa.org/index.php?checkfileaccess=/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/GOLD_Mother_NYPL-Taking-the-Library-out-of-the-Library.pdf

https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/how-citizen-action-saved-the-new-york-public-library/

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Super Attractor

      Super Attractor is an app for iOS or Android that is a virtual card deck that goes with the book from author Gabrielle Bernstein. The app has 52 cards that you can sort through, shuffle, and flip. There is a daily inspiration that comes up every time you open the app as well as being able to look through each of the cards as you please. These cards serve as inspirational affirmations for the user. 

      I think that the insight behind the app is to provide people with a product that can help solidify what they’ve learned in her book and also a tool for people who have/have not read her book to provide insight into a feeling, situation, or experience they’re having. 

      Super Attractor resonates with me because I enjoy card decks like these but have never had the option of having one on my phone. I really enjoy the phrases on each card and the artwork is really lovely and calming. The design of the app is super simple and user friendly making it something that isn’t annoying to use but very pleasant. 

      I think the brand’s planning team probably learned that people want something simple and easy to use. They don’t want a bunch of bells and whistles. Here is an interesting read of minimal design trending in the app world. Minimalistic is better and that way the cards really do the speaking for themselves. In this case the Super Attractor cards really do brand themselves with the artwork but the app helps exemplify the great qualities and uses of the cards.

      I definitely think there are people out there who would not want to use this app. One segment would be ones who don’t believe in the use of any type of card and think of it as “woo-woo” or strange. These people in my opinion which is biased since I enjoy the cards, are less open minded and have a smaller view about how and where to seek help with things that come up in their lives. Another segment would be those that do really enjoy cards but that want to have the physical cards in hand and not another app on the phone. These people are a target audience to try and persuade them to use the app and see if they like it instead of physical cards. Although, the main target audience would  be those who like cards, read the book, and love the ease and minimal presence of an app.