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Contradictions in marketing campaigns

A nice marketing campaign where I’d like to write something about is ‘the Dove campaign for real beauty’, a Unilever campaign which is really innovative. Instead of using perfect looking models, Dove choose for a different approach. The campaign showed how fake all the ads are and how dangerous it is to influence young girls with images that are not realistic. The message is clear: ‘’All the cosmetic ads are dangerous and it should be different’’. Check this short ‘film’ to see what I mean. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ei6JvK0W60I

I think the approach of Unilever in the campaign is good, but I doubt their intentions.

Because if you look at this Axe campaign, also a Unilever brand, you see the exact opposite image concerning ‘real beauty’. Check this movie to see what I mean.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9tWZB7OUSU

And then you’ll know…

It’s all about making more money and the ‘good intentions’ are just a way to distinguish a brand.

Money..money..money...

My solution...

Time for a new blog :)

I was thinking where a should write something about this time and I’ll write about an idea I have for a new software application. It is inspired by the problems I see at the university when it comes to computers.

Always when I go to school and I don’t take my laptop with me, I have to look for a computer and always it takes me way too long. This is a problem I’ve seen at almost every high school or university. I am not the only one with this problem, especially on the HBO schools in Holland you always see people wandering around in search for a computer.

Now…my solution...

An application which is connected to all the computers on a campus/school or company. When you arrive at school and you need a computer, you simply go the one of the main administration computers and you immediately see if there is a free computer somewhere on the campus. You register yourself to that computer and it will be locked for 10 minutes, then you have ten minutes to go to the computer and log in on your account. No more wandering through the campus all day in search for a computer. Problem solved.

Social media

Social media

There are different forms of social media. There are micro blogs, network sites, weblogs and video sites like youtube and the dutch dumpert.nl. Who hasn’t got a facebook or hyves account these days? Social media is more popular then ever and there is an online society for everything. The companies behind the websites make a lot of money. How do they make that money?? Advertising!

These days social media marketing is very popular and even a must for companies and their marketing strategies. One of the success factors of social media and marketing is that the target group is differed in many different subgroups. If you, for instance, like the Bacardi Mojito, you can link yourself to the Mojito hyve. Bacardi can advertise for their new mojitos on that hyve. But maybe the amount of members of the Bacardi Mojito hyve is the best way to create (free) exposure.

At the moment there is one group of people that are using social media a lot to achieve their goals and that group is the politicians. These days there are elections in Holland and the politicians are showing up everywhere. The dutch prime minister; Jan Peter Balkenende has is own hyve: http://jpb.hyves.nl/ and off course Twitter: http://twitter.com/JPdeMP. The success of these ways to connect to your targetgroup is that it feels very personal. If Balkenende is your friend on hyves, this feels really personal.

In political campains Social media is the key factor to success. Obama probably won the elections because of social media. He understood the importance of Social media and used it perfectly. The interresting thing is that the U.S. elections in 2004 where very different and social media didn’t play such a big role. That shows that Social media became very important in only 4 years. Check out this video about Social media and polics: