Final Project

Recently I have ben tasked by working with Elkins Auto http://www.elkinsfordland.com in an advertising class and it has been a pleasant experience. I was also working with a group of people in the class whose names are Anne Wilson, Casey Gilbert, Josh Jacobs and, Tyra Hughes. We also worked with a couple of representatives from Elkins Auto, these two men were great to work with and were very nice. billboard-project They gave us so much information that was beneficial in building our project and what they were expecting from us as an advertising agency. Most importantly Elkins Auto wanted us to take into consideration that they want to get away from that dealerships and car salesmen are untrustworthy. Elkins Auto has pride in themselves and believes to be an honest business and feel this is the only way to be in a smaller community like Elkin. Due to the size of Elkins word of mouth advertising has been very important to them so getting away from that negative stereotype was necessary. As a group, we worked to put together something that not only worked to get them away from that stereotype but also push towards something even better while putting a focus on honesty and satisfaction.

How Often Are You Really Seeing Advertisements

I recently conducted an experiment by paying close attention to the advertisements that I was exposed to in a single day and they are everywhere. I started off the day in my room and when I woke up I quickly noticed all the advertisements, there were several in my closet alone. Even the brand names on my TV or phone are considered advertisements as well as the simple label on the Deer Park water bottle sitting on my desk. When I went out into the hallway of my dorm there were some advertisements but not many just a handful of posters that myself and the other Resident Assistants had to hang up, even though most people wouldn’t even think of these as much there is always one or two that catches someone’s attention. I decided to play some games that day one my Xbox and before it is even fully turned on we get the Xbox name and logo right in your face. Once you actually get to the home screen you are bombarded with advertisements trying to get you to buy the newest thing or offering some kind of deal that is somehow going to save the user money. Moreover, there are company logos when loading up a game which I know how some people are and they will stay incredibly loyal to some of those developer companies and believe it or not once I started playing my game I realized that there are even advertisement within the game itself now for legal reasons I’m assuming these ads aren’t made very obvious sometimes they don’t even use the name of the product but we are given just enough to know exactly what they want us to buy, well played developers well played. Later on, I decided to go to Sheetz to get gas and some food and I’m going to be honest I love the play on words that Sheetz uses in almost every little sign they have its just incredibly amusing to me and I’m sure that most people other than myself do to. On the drive, there I was once again just completely surrounded by advertisements from billboards to signs on businesses even bumper stickers as well as the radio they were just everywhere and I’m sure most of them my mind subconsciously blocked out. fast-food-10

According to the American Marketing Association the average consumer is seeing close to 10,000 advertisements a day. According to a British study consumers switch between screens up to 21 times an hour, which correlates with Microsoft’s claim that the average person’s attention span is now just eight seconds which tells me that advertisement don’t have much time to sell whatever it is they are trying to accomplish. https://www.ama.org/partners/content/Pages/why-customers-attention-scarcest-resources-2017.aspx I found various other claims of how many ads the average consumer sees in a day and I don’t feel that any of them are really that wrong but instead vary on the area in which the consumer is at. More populated areas obviously have more advertisements the places with a lower population Fluid Media drive believes that we see anywhere between 3,000 to 20,000 this is a pretty wide range so it is hard to make an argument against it. http://www.fluiddrivemedia.com/marketing-messages/ However, we have to take into consideration how many of these advertisements that consumers are actually retaining according to Fluid Medias research it is believed that consumers are actually retaining 247 images per day. I also found another claim stating that consumers are retaining anywhere between 300 to 700 images. http://blog.telesian.com/how-many-advertisements-do-we-see-each-day/ With this being said we are definitely seeing some consumer burnout. Consumer Burnout is when a consumer feels a complete due to nonstop advertisements which can end up hurt a brands reputation. https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/292938/ There have been many different guesses on what the actual answer of how many ads we are seeing a day and how much we actually retain so the best answers researchers seem to have is just a rough estimate. The statistics I found really took me by surprise I didn’t think the average person saw that many advertisements in a day but how much is being retained however seemed about right. We don’t realize how advertisements are constantly surrounding us until we really start looking for them which can really give some insight on some of your buying behaviors.

NFL’s Advertising Issue

Recently the ratings for the NFL have been just awful due to the start of protests in last season this caused a bit of a drop in their viewership and the growing size of the protests this season has only hurt them more during the 2017 season. During the past month, the overall stock market is up more than 2% but shares of companies that broadcast NFL games—Comcast, Walt Disney, Fox, CBS—are all down between 1% to 8% (1). They believed this drop to be temporary but this wasn’t the case and have just continued to drop and game attendance has been disappointing. This has been hurting the network and has ultimately forced them to reimburse advertisers. The networks will be paying over $5 billion this season to televise the NFL and were already facing unflattering margins on advertising profits. An article in The Hollywood Reporter reckons the drop in NFL ratings could trim the broadcaster’s earnings by $200 million (1). Almost three fourths of the games this year have shown a decline in ratings. There is a small portion of games that show a huge increase in viewers and ratings which seems to depend on who is playing. Brian Hughes, a senior vice president at Magna, which monitors audience trends, believes Hurricane Irma impacted viewership during the NFL’s first week. Also, he claims there’s also not enough of a sample size of games to make a true assessment of the league’s viewership so far, he said. But the ratings slump could also be a sign of disruptive media trends on the horizon (4).

NFL Blog post

What does this all mean for advertisement companies who heavily depend on the NFL’s huge viewership to promote their products. Well this is hurting theses advertisers considerably, they are paying huge prices to get advertising spots during NFL games because they know they are getting such a large viewership. When the viewers drop as much as they are currently why would advertisers be paying such a high price. They shouldn’t and as stated previously they have gotten reimbursed for these losses but if these trends continue it will completely cripple the NFL. However, with primetime ratings falling 14% in the coveted 18-49 demo during football, TV networks have been forced to give away more free commercial time as compensation (5). Advertisers will eventually start looking for better commercial spots in a sense following the viewers to whatever they decide to watch instead. As ratings continue to fall for the NFL so too will the cost of advertising. This ordeal has now transcended mere sport and entertainment and become a potentially major financial issue for television (5). It’s believed that the league could still pull off a rating comeback like it did last year when the election ended and the playoffs approached (4). Even though this is possible it’s unlikely according to the current statistics and would require some sort of drastic change in the NFL.

Works Cited

Ad Agency Presentation

In my Advertising course the other day we had a visitor from Inner Action Media, this visitor was Mike Arbogast. Moreover, Mike’s presentation was on how an agency works and the many aspects involved as well as having the entire class participate in an activity. This activity involved everyone hold a picture that was given to them and try to put them all in order without letting anyone else see you picture which forced us into using some very clear communication as well as teamwork. First off in the presentation Mike talked about what most clients need from an agency like his things like more money, customers or time or even less distractions, stress and wasted expenses. Next we talked about the different types of agencies such as the following:

Branding
Advertising
Public Relations
Design/Creative
Digital/Inbound
Full Service

Moreover when dealing with clients it is important to go ahead and set expectations early on establish what is and isn’t expected. As well as learning your clients goals, motivation and their struggles/challenges it is also important to get a SWOT analysis worked up in order for a little more detail on what action should be taken. Its also important to understand their business as well as them to understand yours so their is no misunderstandings as well as making yourself accessible. In conclusion I feel that Mr. Arbogast gave a wonderful presentation as well as providing us with plenty of useful information.