Kevin Kelly Video

After viewing the video, I really became intimidated as to what the future actually holds for "Web 3.0". Kelly stresses the importance of being open to all possibilities within the future of the web. As Kelly stated, 5,000 days ago the perception of what the web would be today would not even be close to the actual capabilities people have online. Everyday, people become connected more and more to the internet. As seen in Web 2.0, user interaction through social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter prove that the web is really user operated. Within the future, Kelly believes that not only will Web 3.0 have a stronger hold on humans, but can actually be considered an extension of humans.

Kelly tells the importance of being open to this belief. Although intimidating, it could help prepare individuals for the capabilities that can exist within the future. Although futuristic, the same internet we encounter today was seen as impossible in the past. A growing dependence on the web can seem very scary for some, however I actually feel that it is beneficial to the human race. Not only do I feel more connected to the world throughout the day due to my Blackberry and various internet connections, but I feel I am also more educated and individualized due to it. While Kelly argues that within the future, the artificial intelligence of the internet will surpass human thinking and can actually be compared to 6 billion human brains, I feel that humans will always be benefited overall by the web. It makes the world a "smaller" place as it is easy for humans to communicate within seconds across the globe. While intimidating, I still feel the future is very promising and beneficial to humans in terms of the internet.

Web 3.0

With the amount of user integration and people being "plugged" into the internet from morning to night, Web 3.0 can be frightening to think about. In my opinion, with the integration of Web 3.0 people around the world will be constantly connected to the internet. According to Wikipedia, Web 3.0 will also be the return of experts to the internet. This will reduce the amount of user added information on user interfaces and once again make information on the internet respectable and trustworthy.

I also believe that the amount of information of users on the web will increase drastically. This can make the web more personable and directed towards specific users. For example, the internet's knowledge of users can select the perfect vacation package for someone searching for this type of information. However, this can also be negative for users in Web 3.0. Privacy for users will decrease drastically as marketers are sure to increase their knowledge of user activity. Wikipedia also depicts that most of the information on the web will be computer generated through artificial intelligence. This is a very futuristic belief, and can be frightening to think about.

For my Illustrator Project, I chose to make a logo for the innovative product the Cooper Cooler. I wanted to keep the logo simple and rather professional to be more realistic. I used various fonts and effects such as the Crystallize and Wrinkle tool for the lettering. I also input a picture of the Cooper Cooler itself. I transformed the photo by changing the colors to match the lettering. I also inverted the picture to make it more appealing to the eye.

Midterm Visual Component Proposal

After completing the first part of the project by writing an essay about possible newly used marketing techniques for the Cooper Cooler, I will now begin the visual component part of the project. For this part, I would like to create a logo for the for the Cooper Cooler product. After searching the company's website, it seems they lack a basic logo for their product.

For desiging the logo, I plan to use both Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. In Photoshop, I will edit and change possible images that I will want to use for my logo. In illustrator, I will be using the basic shape transforming tools, text, and various effects that could make my logo more appealing to the eye.

I envision my completed digital illustration to be rather simple, since it seems this type of design would fit the company and product image. However, I will utilize the Adobe programs to make the logo look professional, clean, and eye-catching.

Cooper Cooler Essay

With an increased desire in the marketplace today for more innovative products, many companies are beginning to find that it is a necessity to continuously incorporate new marketing techniques to appeal to their target market. Revolutionary Cooling Systems, founded in 1996, has developed an innovative, technologically advanced beverage cooling system known as the Cooper Cooler. By implementing various marketing techniques including narrowcasting, emotional branding and product placement, Revolutionary Cooling Systems can help the Cooper Cooler become an everyday household device.

Located in Hyde Park, New York, designer Greg Loibl preaches the Cooper Coolers’ six main technological advantages over other products. These competitive advantages include speed, reliability, versatility, space efficiency, ease of use, and innovation. By simply adding ice, the electronic cooling system can chill a can of soda forty times faster than the typical freezer and a bottle of wine ten times faster than the freezer. Not only does this allow people to enjoy colder beverages in a shorter amount of time, but it also takes away the need to pre-plan or worry about the refrigeration of products before parties. Revolutionary Cooling Systems advertises the Cooper Cooler as great for parties, unexpected guests, tailgates, dormitories or offices, and guarantees to improve customer satisfaction for restaurants and bars.

Even though the company already offers a great product, it still lacks a key component for success. The marketing of the product to consumers is just as vital as having an innovative product itself. Without successful marketing techniques, consumers may not see the reasons to purchase the product, or may not even know the product exists. One great marketing technique the company can use is known as narrowcasting. Narrowcasting is known as disseminating specific information to a very specific audience, and not to the entire general public. Within marketing, this can also be further defined as deciphering a target market for a product. The target market for the Cooper Cooler can be defined as people who have middle to high income and are the age of approximately 25 or above. While the Cooper Cooler is a great, innovative product, it can definitely be depicted as a luxury item over a necessary product as it is priced at $100.00. For this reason, it would make perfect sense for the company to target people with higher incomes, giving them the necessary extra monetary capital to purchase the product. The company should also target wine drinkers. One of the major products the Cooper Cooler can chill is wine bottles. According to Winebuzz, a popular wine drinkers publication, the Cooper Cooler is a great product for wine drinkers who want their wine at the perfect temperature or who continuously have unexpected guests. Similarly, the product receives praise in Simplywine as a great innovative electronic that can perfectly chill wine. With a high amount of interest in the product from these publications, the Cooper Cooler should be narrowcasted towards wine drinkers. Narrowcasting could also be an effective technique to use towards sports enthusiasts. By segmenting the market and focusing only on this demographic, the company can increase its product awareness towards people who would be more interested in it. The product was featured in Sports Illustrated as a great tool for tailgating as it can help chill warm soda or alcohol right before the game. The increased attention from this market would make it perfect for Revolutionary Cooling Systems to focus their advertisements on this segment.

The company could also use emotional branding to more effectively market the Cooper Cooler towards their target market. According to Marc Gobe in his book Emotional Branding, in order for a company to reach a specific segment of people it must first identify and associate with the emotional characteristics of that group. Emotional branding is very difficult for any company to successfully implement with its customers. This is due heavily to the differences of people, even within a target market, that could purchase the product. For example, Gobe once again states that emotional branding amongst women may be very different than branding with men. Women tend to associate more with characteristics such as respect, individuality, stress relief, connection, and relationship. To market towards women, Revolutionary Cooling Systems could create advertisements that would stress these characteristics to help generate emotional branding. These could include advertisements such as chilling a glass of wine simply and easily to better deal with a hard day’s work of stress. By creating an advertisement like this, the Cooper Cooler could emotionally brand with women who are looking for that stress relief. On the other hand, a more rugged, fun, and athletic appeal could be created to help emotionally brand with men who are tailgating. Using advertisements such as the Cooper Cooler chilling a warm beer before the big game could help the brand become emotionally attached with men who are looking for that characteristic.

The company could also effectively market the Cooper Cooler to the public through product placement. Product placement can be defined as using a real commercial product in fiction or non-fiction media through an economic exchange. Many consumers in the market place are becoming tired with “in-your-face ads”. According to How Stuff Works, an online publication, “The latest trend in advertising is to make it, well, less advertorial.” A company like Revolutionary Cooling Systems can do this through product placement. By making their product noticeable in a movie, TV show, or other media device, the company can create a brand image without using a direct advertisement. Product placement could also help associate the product with a specific image. By having the Cooper Cooler in a sports movie, it could once again appeal to their target market of tailgaters. Revolutionary Cooling Systems could also pay a TV show to use the Cooper Cooler during a wine drinking scene, which could also help increase brand awareness towards this market.

Many effective marketing techniques, including narrowcasting, emotional branding, and product placement across media are used by companies today. They not only help increase brand awareness, but also increase an emotional attachment between the product and the consumer. By using these techniques, Revolutionary Cooling Systems can help the Cooper Cooler become a major success within the market. However, new techniques are arising yearly for marketing products to consumers. This can include neuroscience marketing, rhetorical marketing, or even the use of text messaging to help increase brand frequency and awareness for their product. If Revolutionary Cooling Systems wishes to become, and stay a success, it needs to continuously think of new and effective ways to market their innovative product.

For more information, visit the company website, or here is a great video demonstration of the product.

Illustrator Practice Picture

Original Picture (top) and a revised one using Illustrator (bottom)

Midterm Project

For my midterm project, I will be choosing the choice of Project 1. I will focus on new techniques for marketing or advertising the heavily unknown product the CooperCooler. The CooperCooler is a highly innovative, relatively unknown product that helps cool drinks from room temperature to freezing cold in minutes. It is was invented by local Greg Loibl in Hyde Park, New York. I feel it is a great product that with newly used advertising and marketing techniques could really prosper in the market. For more information on the product and company, click here.

Social Media Questions

1. While the amount of user-generated advertisements increasing in recent years, we still feel it depends on the type of product that is being marketed to the consumer. While Sonic generates commercials that lack professional techniques, but rather have a more amateur, personable feel; many companies still choose to advertise their products in a professional manner. When it comes to fast food, a company like Sonic may try to relate more to the ordinary person by shooting a commercial with a simple camcorder. However, high-end luxury car companies, such as Mercedes Benz, shoot highly professional commercials to associate their products with a high-end product.

Regarding movies and television shows, the success of movies with an amateurish or homegrown feel such as MTV's The Real World and the new hit Paranormal Activity can lead to an increase in these types of media. However, movies such as the newly made Avatar, which made hundreds of millions of dollars more than Paranormal Activity in the box office, will continue to dominate the box office with it's more professional feel. The popularity of reality TV can be attributed to average,every-day feel of its characters. The producers want the viewers to think that they themselves can be in one of these situations.

2. Consumer-Generated Ads (Tags for this article are located in the Labels for the post below)
Some differences in the tags on Digg and the labels we chose include that they tagged almost every major company that was listed throughout the article. They also tagged more random words throughout the article. We felt they might have done this to possibly increase the frequency the article might pop up on random search engines. For example, the article is filed under the category "Food and Drink" simply because Doritos was tagged. However, we did have some similarities within our tags. The main topics covered such as Social Media, Web 2.0, Advertising, Marketers, and CGA were all tagged in both articles.

3. Transparency is an important concept in the Social Media world because it is causing lots of controversy and questioning of the authenticity of people's individual "opinions" within their blogs when they are paid by corporations to promote their product. For example, Pepsi has recently been paying popular bloggers to write about their products in a positive fashion. According to "The Illusion of Transparency in Social Media", bloggers who are paid to write about specific products lose their authenticity. Transparency definitely affects the offline world as it is changing consumer views of products and companies. After reading a popular blog that puts a product in positive light, it may cause them to actually go and purchase the product offline.

The Persuaders Questions

"The Persuaders" begins by questioning the increase in the amount of advertising we typically encounter in our daily lives. How would you assess the amount of advertising you see? Too much? Too little? Just right? In your view, what difference does it make to know that people today see much more advertising in their daily lives than people 20 or 30 years ago?

I think the amount of advertising I encounter throughout my daily life is definitely way too excessive. Not only are the amount of encounters with commercials, billboards, fliers, etc. throughout my day numerous, but the amount of text messages I am now receiving advertising products and stores are increasing. In my marketing class, we learned of how stores are actually going to begin automatically sending texts with coupons and advertisements when you actually drive or walk passed the store. While this may be a great marketing and advertising technique, it can definitely become agitating and annoying for consumers.

Today, people definitely see much more advertising than they did 20 or 30 years ago. Many companies are increasing advertising budgets to help increase their sales and improve their company reputation. Advertising techniques is becoming a form of art to help convince consumers that they need the product the company is selling. With the increase in advertising over the last 20 or 30 years, many people purchase products based more heavily on the actually advertising of the product than the product itself. A good slogan, logo, or a humorous commercial can directly affect the consumer's purchasing decision.

Where are things headed in the future? What are some possible scenarios that could play out as far as the direction that future persuaders may take their marketing techniques.

The ways companies advertise their products to consumers has changed severely over the past few years. Within the future, new ways for advertising from companies could be severely different. As mentioned before, one of the new ways companies are advertising to consumers is through text messaging. If you walked passed the Apple store at the mall, you could receive a text message from Apple offering coupons, sales, etc. Many companies could take this possible direction as a method of advertising towards the market. Other scenarios that could attract attention from companies include the increase in the social networking world. The information on possible consumers on sites such as Facebook and MySpace is valuable. While many people may think the social networking world is 100% private, this information could possibly be purchased by companies to help identify their target market and increase their knowledge of social trends. For example, if a person lists their favorite activity as video games, the amount of advertising they recieve through emails for products such as Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 may increase.

Digital Nation Part 2

After concluding Digital Nation, some very important issues regarding technology became apparent to me. One of the most interesting aspects of Digital Nation was the story discussing the possible addiction to online gaming that many teenagers in South Korea are dealing with. I think its important for South Korea to continue their assertiveness in dealing with the problem to not only teach kids about ethical issues pertaining to technology, but also to warn them about possible downfalls due to addiction.

I was also very interested in the segment dealing with Second Life. I have never heard of this virtual platform that is taking the place of classroom lectures, meetings, and face-to-face interactions. While it may be a great substitute to connect people who are geographically separated, I feel various issues could arise including the decrease in the actual interaction between people in reality. Many people could impair their social ability to communicate and interact with people away from the computer.

Digital Nation was a great video that brought various issues to my attention. I can directly relate to many aspects of this video. I learned a great deal about the possible decrease in quality of work due to multitasking and also the dangers of addiction to virtual media.

Video Reaction

After watching the first twenty minutes of Digital Nation, my first reaction is that two concerns really come to my mind. Just like the students at MIT, I consider myself a multi-tasker while at school. I also am really beginning to question my addiction to new digital media such as my cell phone, computer, and iTouch.

At school, I am never doing work without listening to music, talking to friends, or watching television. I usually considered myself a good multi-tasker since my grades have been somewhat decent over my four years at Marist. However, after watching the video, I realized that multitasking actually hurt the quality of work for the MIT students. This leads me to question whether or not my GPA could have been better during my time at Marist if I didn't multi-task and focused more on my work.

I am also beginning to think about my possible addiction to new digital media. Yesterday, I was at home on Long Island to watch the Super Bowl with friends. I realized I forgot my phone charger at Marist and was unable to text anyone from school the entire night. This not only made me very anxious to get back to school, but I was in a bad mood all night. I am also always on my iTouch browsing the web during class. I could not imagine myself without continuously either texting or browsing the web on my iTouch or computer everyday. I am curious to see how the rest of the video will actually affect my thinking during the time of Digital Media.

Web 2.0 Definitions

User-Generated Content
relates to the various forms of media content created by end-users

Long tail
a retailing niche strategy consisting of selling a large number of unique items in small quantities

Network as platform
Making features normally ran on the operating system network readily available anywhere.

Folksonomy
A system of classification derived from the practice and method of collaboratively creating and managing tags to categorize various content.

Syndication
Making website information and content readily available on multiple sites.

Mass collaboration
Collective action that occurs when large numbers of people work independently on a single project

Computer supported collaboration
Research that focuses on technology that can affect groups, oranizations, communities, and societies. (e.g.- voicemail and textchat)

Hosted Services
Services provided to individuals or companies in which they can make their website readily available on the WWW.

Web Applications
Any application a user accesses while using a Web Browser.

Social Software
A range of software systems that allows users interact and share data with one another.

Video-sharing Sites
Interactive web platforms in which users can post and share their various videos with other users.

Wiki
A website that allows the easy creation and editing of a number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language.

Blog
A type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics of video.

Mashup
A web application that combines data and/or functionality from more than one source.

source:wikipedia

Collage

iPhone Collage

Communication Technology Breakthroughs

Facebook
Facebook's content includes text and pictures that users can add to their individual pages to interact with others. Facebook has a direct impact on social interactions. This medium can limit face-to-face interactions as people may choose to converse through this technology rather than in person.

Flickr
Flickr's content includes pictures that users can post on their specific profile. This medium substitutes face-to-face interactions since this technology offers an easier, more convenient mean of interaction.

The iPhone
The iPhone's content includes text, images, and programs that can allow people to interact with others through text messaging, the web, or e-mail. This medium can limit personal interaction due to it's ease of communication with others.