The Power Team

While reading the power team story, I found the idea of the whole situation odd, especially the way they pushed religion on their viewers.  I saw their tactics they used during their performance as more annoying and forceful.  I am a believer in God and Christ, I went to a Catholic School for ten years, I have studied all different types of religions but I find it extremely annoying when a person or a group tries to force their beliefs on you.  Religion should be your choice.  The other thing I found strange in this story is that the way they are presenting themselves, I think the presentation is more thought out on how to make money.  The way they preach their beliefs was a performance, which I found odd.  When most people are trying to get a point across, personally, I would not think to use a performance.

A Plague of Tics

Reading “A Plague of Tics” by David Sedaris, caught my attention from the very beginning.  I enjoyed reading this passage because of the visual representation the author provides you with, his detailed descriptions makes you feel as if you are there.  From a reader’s perspective, you automatically understand that he has obsessive-compulsive disorder but I also felt sad for him as a child at the time.  As he was growing up, his parents and teachers just thought it was behavioral problems.  I found it interesting that when he was growing up he wondered why people treated him like he had a problem because in his mind he thought everyone was just like him.  He thought his everyday life experiences were the same as his peers, he didn’t understand why people didn’t want to touch and lick everything when they saw it.  I feel that this passage gave me a great outlook on how to write for your readers to experience what you went through.  His thoughts were all on the paper in an organized manner and catching his reader’s attention from the beginning.  

WJ #9

When I began researching I knew I wanted to research the way the cosmetic industry markets their products.  I wanted to find what ways have worked for some companies and what ways have failed.  But as my research process became more developed, I decided that my main question was "How does the marketing of the famous cosmetic companies affect the young girls in our society.  The marketing departments of this multi-million dollar industry are targeting to the younger girls more than we notice.  Their images of self beauty cause problems to girls all over the world.   Through my research I want to find out the real affects of the girls and women by asking myself the real questions and find the real answers because I too have been fooled by these marketers.  I believe that the industry may be helping by providing us with cosmetics but at the same time taking it too far and have lost the real meaning of beauty.  I want to ask myself, is Dove’s “Campaign for Real Beauty” affecting our society positively or are they to a company that is fooling us with their marketing tactics?  Do they and other companies really find out what women want?

Throughout the research I have already done for my paper, I have found that this is actually a more common topic then I could ever had imagined.  The Dove campaign has multiple videos which lead to my final topic, the videos were filled with emotions that I had felt at some point growing up.  The images they provided of women who were beautiful by the media, the video shows the girl looking at buildboard and seeing all of these images.  At the end of the video a few strong words are presenting say “Talk to your daughter before the beauty industry does.”  What I need to still research about is the real affects on girls, teens, and women with this type of advertising.  I want to find what ages do girl start to really notice the images and cause an affect on their lifestyles.  I also want to know the statistics of affects girls have because of images.  I no longer want to just focus on cosmetic companies but any type of company that promotes the images of beauty in the media, such as clothes and makeup.

Cardona, Mercedes M., and Jack Neff. "Young girls targeted by makeup companies." Advertising Age71.49 (2000): 15. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 3 Mar. 2011.

Dye, Lauren. "Consuming Constructions: A Critique of Dove’s Campaign for Real       Beauty."Canadian Journal of Media Studies 5.1: 114-27.

"For Estee Lauder's Thia Breen, a Successful Career Is Made up of 'People, Passion and                            Performance'" Knowledge@Wharton. 10 Jan. 2010. Web. 03 Mar. 2011.                            <http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1630#>.

 Lamb, Sharon, and Lyn Mikel Brown. Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing Our Daughters from          Marketers' Schemes. New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2007.

LISA, BELKIN. "COSMETICS GIVEAWAYS BACKFIRE." New York Times 16 Oct.                                                                        1986: 1. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 3 Mar. 2011.

Millard, Jennifer. "Performing Beauty: Dove's "Real Beauty" Campaign." Symbolic                                          Interaction 32.2 (2009): 146-168. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 3 Mar. 2011.   

Response to Klosterman

Video Clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08OZ32s1xOM

         After reading Chuck Klosterman’s article I started thinking about all the shows I watched and if they had laugh tracks in the background.  A few of my favorite shows have the laugh track on behind, for example, That 70’s Show.  Before reading the article, I never gave the laughs in the background of the show much thought but now when I watched my nightly episodes of the That 70’s show, I could not help but experience for myself what was actually funny and what was not. 

I agree with Klosterman when he said, “the key to this kind of programming is never what people are saying.  They key is (a) which people are doing the talking, and (b) the laugh track.”  For example, if you watch the video clip I attached, you will notice that the laugh tracks are much more enthusiastic when a certain character makes comments.  In this clip, the audience “exaggerates laugh” when Red and Eric are making sarcastic comments to each other, then when Kitty is talking.  However, now that the laugh tracks have been revealed to me as a viewer, it is irritating to watch the show because after almost every comment there is a laugh. 

Another interesting topic Klosterman brings up is the fact that people have three types of laughs; a real laugh, a fake real laugh, and a “filler laugh.”  These are unfortunately a real thing in our society but I feel that I could not imagine a society that does not revolve around these laughs.  

Introduction to My Research Topic

For my research paper, I would like to research about the advertising techniques of make-up companies.  The way I want to set up the paper is to research one well-known company and understand that companies business and marketing techniques.  After fully understanding that companies business, I would like to compare it to other companies.  I would like to focus on the similarities and differences of the company’s marketing, hoping to find out which companies have found success by certain ways of marketing and what has failed for other companies.  I find it interesting how certain companies are more well-known than others, a goal in my paper is to find out why and how?  The main reason I find this topic interesting is because I am a Marketing major and this is my dream job.

Annotated Bibliography

Byramjee, Framarz. "Conflict Resolution in Vertically Integrated Firm." Journal of Business XVII (2008): 18-29. Http://www.aic.edu/aic3/pub/AIC_Journal_of_Business_2008.pdf. Web. 7 Feb. 2011.

The article “Conflict Resolution in Vertically Integrated Firm” by Framarz Byramjee in the Journal of Business, Volume XVII 2008 explains the conflict resolutions within the vertically integrated firms.  Vertical Integration is only necessary if firms struggle “to possess superior bargaining power for controlling costs and information over other members in their channels”, it provides more work responsibility and better control.  The article also explains that “control is a process that begins when one party perceives that the other has negatively affected.”   There are three elemental forms of conflicts based on the stake of the firms; goal conflicts, judgment conflicts, and normative conflicts.  The article examines the conflict resolutions, which is "viewed as the primary mechanism for reducing manifest conflict in distribution channels."

About Me.

Hi everyone,
I know I already gave a quick introduction, but here is more about me.  My name is Nicole, I am from Charleston, West Virginia.  I am a sophomore at IUP, which seems odd to most people because you don't meet that many people from West Virginia at this school, but I really like being different from everyone.  I especially love when people hear I am from WV because I do not live up to any stereotypes that they might of heard of before.  But anyways, I am studying marketing, I like it so far even though I really don't know what I actually want to do with my future.  I think it would be really awesome to work for a marketing or advertising department for a large makeup company, but who knows that's just one of my big dreams.

WJ #4

Hi everyone, my name is Nicole.  I am currently a sophomore and writing for my research writing class.  I cannot wait to start blogging and getting feedback from my classmates.

            While reading Matt Richtel’s “Hooked on Gadgets, and Paying a Mental Price,” on the computer, I couldn’t help but get distracted by my email, moodle, and facebook.  At first I took the challenge of reading the article online, where I found it extremely difficult to focus.  I have always been the type to comprehend information better while reading from printed information.  Throughout my high school and college education, I have never been able to read information from the computer.  While researching, even if the article was several pages long, I would still print it out to highlight what I found to be important.  I find it much easier to be able to go back and find the information from a printed source because I am a more hands on person. 

            I agree with this article in many ways, the Campbell family is like many families I know.  The family reminded me of a family I have been babysitting for a few years now; the parents are so involved in their gadgets that it affects the way their children behave.  Their children are just as involved and distracted by their gadgets that they are hard to be around.  I do believe that the experiments they are conducting are very important for the future of our youngest generation.  The biggest question is what their social skills and personalities will be like in the near future?  These children are growing up with the technology, how will this affect the society as a whole?

I am up and running!