What High School did you go to??

For those of you who are from St. Louis, or for those of you who know anyone from St. Louis, you will appreciate this. I find it especially hilarious as I myself went through these yes and no questions and lo-and-behold it led me exactly to the high school I went to, Whitfield School.

So try it out and enjoy!

Click on the image to view larger

Click on the image to view larger

Brand Leverage in Advertising

I was doing some reading about "synced ads", where one or more ad spaces cooperate together to communicate one message. This reminded me of the Super Bowl commercials this past year and how there were quite a few ads that promoted two companies instead of just one. I found this very interesting, as it was a new concept to me and I wonder now if it worked or not. I'm not sure that it did, and mainly this is because as I was trying to google the commercials, nothing immediately popped up about them or how novel these commercials are.

I have a few thoughts on these commercials.

First, I think that in today's media culture consumers are bombarded with advertisements. They get them on Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, public transportation trackers, Gmail, billboards, train stations, buses, etc. Basically, ads are everywhere and for an advertisement to stand out to a consumer it has to make big statements or really grab a consumer's attention. I think this combining brands is one way companies are trying to do this. It potentially could simplify information, or at least simplify the AMOUNT of information a consumer is receiving. Potentially, this idea could work.

Second, and the antithesis of this thought, while multi-branding a commercial controls the amount of information coming in to a consumer during a given period of time, it also can complicate the information.  A consumer may be left more confused about what they saw rather than driven to remember the company's name and intent. Case in point, I could not remember who had teamed up on the commercials until I'd searched google for a good 5-10 minutes. In internet time, this is A LOT of time spent trying to find the company and thus, not good for the company.

Thirdly, I do think that this form of advertising could be good for consumerism and advertising. I think this, because since there is so much competition out there, a company can start making dynamic advertisements in order to compete against one less product. It shows consumers a team of products working towards one goal/intent versus so much competition between companies. Because, lets face it, in today's society companies are not isolated from working with other companies. To survive, I think it is important to team up, to use another company's strength in order to make your company stronger. A great example of this is the GE/Budweiser commercial. Budweiser is a strong American Beer company and GE is a strong American energy company. Together they are showing we are Americans helping other Americans do the things they love. We work together, we power each other. This is a strong message to make in this economy and this time. Its saying that America is still strong and there are people out there helping other people. And while this commercial wasn't particularly memorable, I think it had a strong message.

Overall, I think companies gave this a idea a good go and I don't think its something that should be over or not done again. I just think this form of advertising needs to be perfected and experimented with to see what is most dynamic and memorable for the viewers. 

Another commercial with co-branding.

Latest and Greatest

Here is the latest and greatest Cupcake Menu I designed for the bakery department. So go ahead! Try some of our very own In-House made cupcakes at Whole Foods Market Charles River Plaza!