It’s a Dell World

Searching on YouTube for product placements I came across a really interesting video on YouTube. Watch first, then I will discuss!

Ok, I couldn’t believe this when I saw the video. My initial reaction was, well this is the President of the United States addressing the nation and he is talking about Dell! My thoughts after my initial reaction was that advertising has done such a good with being intertwined in Americans everyday life. Maybe what President Bush said was, believe it or not a natural comment?

Reading Jenkins thoughts on advertisers and audiences he really made me think more about the video than just my initial gut reaction.

“Marketers seek to shape brand reputations, not through an individual transaction but through the sum total of interactions with the customer-an ongoing process that increasingly occurs across a different range of media “touch points.” They don’t simply want to get a consumer to make a single purchase, but rather to build a long term relationship with a brand. “(63)

I agree. Marketers try to assimilate advertising into our lives. Be it through TV, internet, radio, at the supermarket, in the movie theaters, etc. bam! It’s everywhere we go! By doing this we are building a long term relationship with the brand. We all have a specific brand for different products we use. Why do we use that specific brand? If we used a generic brand that wasn’t as heavily advertised would we still use it? It’s probably just as good as the brand itself. These are important things to think about as consumers of these products. I challenge you if you are reading this blog to really think about why we use the brands we do? We should really think what we are using our time and money on. Don’t you think?

However, even though I have come to this realization about product placement. I do believe that as consumers we are capable of realizing what advertisers are doing. There is no right answer to the debate of product placement. There are many pros and cons. To be my devils advocate, Jenkins brings up another good point:

“Emerging discourse of affective economics has both positive and negative implications: allowing advertisers to tap the power of collective intelligence and direct it toward their own ends, but at the same time allowing consumers to form their own kind of collective bargaining structure that they can use to challenge corporate decisions.” (63).

Obviously advertisers tap all the power they can get with product placement and advertising. It’s what they do. We can’t blame them for doing their job. However as I said earlier as consumers we form our own opinion on such kind of placement. We have already gained control in some markets such as reality television. Although there are product placements within these shows, we control the show through being able to vote for contestants, make producers work harder to keep viewers guessing, etc.

All in all, I do not mind product placement. However I am starting to think why I use the brands I do now as I stated earlier. Maybe that will be the topic of my next post!

American Idol

After reading the chapter “Buying into American Idol” in Convergence and Culture a quote from Karla Peterson in the San Diego Union-Tribune really bugged me.

“American Idol was not a dumb summer fling, but a conniving multimedia monster. Shameless product placement. Bloodless nostalgia. Incestuous corporate hype… American Idol has absorbed the sins of our debauched culture and spit them out in a lump of reconstructed evil.” (61)

I agree with Jenkins when he says “Peterson is correct that American Idol was shaped at every level by blatant commercial calculations. Yet, her moral outrage doesn’t take us very far towards understand its appeal to the networks, advertisers, or consumers. (61)” I feel that in all different types of prime time television there are product placements. A great example is in the show Friends. I remember watching on TV how companies would pay for spots in Monica’s kitchen, such as cereal, cookware, etc. For Peterson just to crucify American Idol and not think about every other show that does it, is distasteful. As viewers, I feel that is up to us to make ourselves aware that television companies are targeting us when we watch TV and if we don’t make ourselves aware that is not any TV companies fault.

Morally what she thinks of the show has nothing to do with why the show is so successful. Anyone from the country can audition for the show, everyday people like you me, could audition for the show. Middle class to lower class viewers are the ones auditioning and the ones who are watching the show. Also the power to be able to select your next “American Idol” is ideal to many viewers who are sitting at home and want to share such responsibility.

Personally I love American Idol. I only watched the first season when Kelly Clarkson won and been up to date with the seasons by reading about it online or watching clips of it on the news. The first season wasn’t filled with tons of advertisements, I feel that after FOX realized the show was a definite hit, that’s when they raised the stakes. However, I feel that America doesn’t have a big problem with it. It has been on the air since 2002 and still going strong. I do believe that all good things must eventually come to an end, and who knows maybe one day the end could be near for American Idol?

Spoiling the World of “The Hills” on MTV

Ok so it is apparent that out of all my friends, I have a habit of always wanting to know what is going to happen on a TV show before hand and that I love to know about interesting facts about movies, TV shows and pop culture in general! This became clear when yesterday “The Hills” gang, (3 of my close friends) gathered yesterday evening to watch “The Hills” on MTV. So we are watching the show, and there is a scene with Lauren Conrad and Jason, and there is speculation on the show if they will get back together, and I’m like, no they won’t, I read that Jason is engaged and not to Lauren, and my friends are like oh yea you told us about that. When we see the scenes for next week’s episode, we can see that Jason has a girlfriend and it’s not Lauren, and they announced the engagement. It was so cool, that I was right and knew it already. I don’t know why but it was cool. After the show, I wanted my friends to hear this song that one of the people on the show, Heidi Montag has just recorded with her boyfriend Spencer, I thought it was hilarious and pointless and wanted to share it and I came across tons of websites and spoiler sites about this show. Heidi always blogs on her website which is cool. It is crazy!! I wanted to share some of the things I found:

http://www.tv.com/the-hills/show/48806/jason-engaged/topic/59789-847778/msgs.html

http://www.myspace.com/heidimontag

http://officialheidimontag.com/

http://sg.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070917200032AAxzwbf

Anyhow, these message boards and blogs from the stars themselves are cool. I feel that with my participating in this, I have some kind of connection with other fans. Also I can always fill my friends in on what is going on behind the scenes n the show. I am sure when we watch next week, I will have some new info to share!

 

The World of Spoiling

I just finished reading Chapter 1, “Spoiling Survivor” in Convergence Culture by Henry Jenkins and I found the concept of spoiling to be quite interesting. According to Jenkins, “The word spoiling goes way back – or at least as far back as you can go- in history of the Internet.” (30) Then he goes on to talk about how people on the east coast and on the west coast would see a series at a different time, then in the international markets shows would be seen much later. People weren’t talking about it so they were able to experience it for the first time.

I found this to be really interesting because I have to admit, I have searched through blogs and chat rooms just to find out what will happen or has happened in a television show. Never did I think about how the television markets were “helping” viewers spoil the shows. Of course someone who has watched a show on the west coast will blog about the show or tell someone what happened and then spoil the experience for someone else. It’s too easy. Also with the technology we have now to be able to communicate with so many other people in various ways, it’s super easy.

I feel that people do enjoy finding spoilers about television shows and other forms of media. How many are music albums leaked before they release? And how many people do we know have those albums playing in their cars already? I have tons of friends who are guilty of this. This is just one example, but there are many other examples of how American culture embraces the spoiling world. It’s true what Jenkins says viewers “ are determined to figure it out-together-before the producers reveal what happened.” (25) I have to admit before the Real World Australia season began, I did search for spoilers. I was interested in who the cast and wanted to know what craziness would happen this season. The information was out there. There were sites with the links of the cast’s myspace sites and tons of other information that I read. The day the last book of Harry Potter came out, I couldn’t help but know if Harry lived or not and went to Wikipedia to read a shortened version of what happened and was satisfied. Sounds crazy? Yeah, I know! I feel as though that society has helped me to turn into this kind of person and be ok with because we are never satisfied with waiting and always have to know something as fast as we can.

In ‘Speculation on Spoilers” by Jonathan Gray and Jason Mittell they say, “Watching a serial television drama is a huge time investment … For fans of such an ongoing series, there may be a question as to whether the temporal investment will be worth it – will I get the narrative payoff I desire?” This is very true! I feel this way about Grey’s Anatomy this season. With all the changes that have occurred on the show, I feel that the time I have invested in the series has gone down the drain. A lot of my peers who watch the show feel as though it is not worth watching this season. We all agree to watch the 1^st episode of the season but after that we probably won’t invest a lot of time as we did in the past. Reading this quote, it really clicked. I feel that I won’t get the narrative payoff that I desire from Grey’s Anatomy this season. For example, if there is no Burke, how can it possibly work with Cristina? How the hell is George going to be an intern again? Why is McDreamy and Meredith’s “new” sister are linked to something romantic (gross)? I feel that I got want I had needed from the narrative and now since I can no longer devote the time I once had, now it my time to spoil!

VMA’s

Ok so I am watching the VMA’s tonight. I enjoy how the viewer’s can vote for the “Best New Artist Award” online or by texting, we are able to make things happen. However, the VMA’s have been hyping up Britney Spear’s opening performance for a long time now. I have to say that I have been a fan of hers for awhile despite all her mishaps being publicized in the media. However, I have to say I was very disappointed with her performance. She lip sang the entire song, she hardly danced and the performance was very short. I guess all the media attention she has received and MTV’s promotion of her performance did make me expect a lot more but I know a lot of my friends were pulling for her even though we don’t personally know her and we all were like “What?” after seeing her performance.

Back to how this relates to Technology, the VMA’s have been around for so long. I feel that they set the standards for how a music award show should be. Viewers are involved, it’s live and the best of the best in the music industry show up. Then of course most of the footage of the show will be all over the news tomorrow, video clips on You Tube and of course us good old bloggers blogging about it!

I’m off to finish watching the rest of the VMA’s. Hopefully the rest of the performances are great!

Here is Brit’s performance at the VMA’s. Feel free to comment on what you think about it!

Techno Biography

My very first encounter with technology would have to be when I was in third or fourth grade and had the original (NES). Then we got the Super Nintendo (SNES) when that came out. My brother was big on video games and got this so we could play together. I thought it was the coolest thing ever. I absolutely loved playing Mario World, Mario Kart and tons of other games. Then eventually when Sega Genesis came out, of course my brother got that and I was exposed to more video games. I remember my parents being so amazed with this technology.

The second time I was introduced to technology would have to be when I was in the 5^th grade in my computer class. We had the old school computers in our class with the very basic computer games. I remember being in that class and always wanting to have a computer. I remember in my class only 2 classmates of mine actually owned a computer.

After pressing my parents for a computer, I finally received my first computer when I was freshman in high school. We ordered the computer from Gateway. I was super excited, I remember being extremely excited that I had a printer.

My last memory would have to be always purchasing cassette tapes and using my cassette player. I would always go with my mom to Nobody Beats the Wiz every other weekend and she would be me a new cassette of my favorite band or group. I know this sounds hard to believe but when I was younger, yes I did listen to cassettes! When the CD player was first introduced, which I can’t even recall when that happened, I remember my parents getting me one after awhile for my love of my music.

I have to admit when the I-Pod and mp3 players started coming out, I became a little overwhelmed with this technology. I was in high school when all this came out and my friends and I didn’t know much about it, but there is always some kid in school who winds up getting and then you can see it. I never purchased an I-Pod or mp3 player in high school and had a lot of friends who didn’t either; we just stuck to our CD players. I wonder if we were all overwhelmed with the fact that technology was changing before us or we were just scared of change? I did finally purchase my first I-Pod my freshman year of college at AU. I purchased an I-Pod shuffle. It was the best thing ever. I remember asking myself what took me so long to get it?

After that it seems as though I have really grown up with technology. Using a computer wasn’t even a thought for me it became apart of my everyday life. I just naturally picked up or learned about something new that was technology based. I don’t even remember learning how to use e-mail I would just use it. I have to say though, that I am heavily dependent on technology and couldn’t imagine my life without it. Then again, I think about how sad that is to say because my parents didn’t grow up with such technology and I can appreciate their view of the world. My mother still writes letters to family members, neither of my parents owns a cell phone, and they value face-to-face contact. I am totally the opposite but often wonder what life would be like without technology? Scary thought!

It’s Me!

Hello! My name is Jessica Cabrera. I am currently a senior communication studies major at Alfred University in good old Western, NY. This is my first time ever blogging and I am looking forward to posting blogs every so often. Hopefully you will read my blogs and find them interesting