Blogorama

*UPDATED Tuesday, April 28, 2009*

1) My Debut

In the Filipino culture, a debut is a coming of age celebration, usually taking the form of a huge party, for a young woman who has just turned 18 years old. Now, I’m not exactly turning 18 years old, nor did I get a party when I was turning that age (hm…), but it’s an analogy! In a different kind of way, this blog will serve as my debut in the blogging world.

Hey everyone, and welcome!

I am a senior studying communication at USC. I want to pursue a career in marketing and/or public relations. My passions are culture, community, and philanthropy, and throughout my years in school, I have been an active participant in organizations that focus on a particular community close to my heart. As a Filipino American, I am greatly invested in the future of the Asian Pacific American community, and through my future work, I hope to bring this particular demographic into greater prominence in American culture.

I wasn’t quite sure what the focus of this blog would be, but then I thought about this advertising class that I am currently enrolled in. The course piqued my interest because of its unique perspective on advertising. Instead of focusing on the creative aspect of the business, we would be focusing more on the culture and social implications that advertising may have on society. Fascinating.

With this blog, I want to look into marketing and advertising strategies, specifically, those aimed toward Asian Pacific Americans. Did you know that as of 2004, there are approximately 15.0 million U.S residents who consider themselves Asian or Pacific Islander? That number continues to grow every year! We have so much potential to become a formidable part of the current marketplace. Yet, I wonder…Are we considered to be a vital part of the market?

We are continuously struggling to find and negotiate our identity among an ever changing American society. I think that having representation in advertising matters just as much as what images are being portrayed because those choices affect what society thinks about Asian Pacific Americans and even how we view ourselves within our own ethnic group. But where did all these images come from? This blog will also talk about other topics, such as the already existing preconceptions and stereotypes about Asian Pacific Americans. Overt or subtle stereotypes are found everywhere – in books, magazines, movies, etc. They are also on television. For fans of the primetime television comedy/drama on ABC, Desperate Housewives, they may remember a particular scene where Susan argues with her gynecologist asking for his credentials. Her line:

"Can I check those diplomas, because I want to make sure they're not from some med school in the Philippines."

This line lasted for only two seconds! But the outrage it inspired among the Filipino Community lasted for much longer. I remember having numerous discussions about this with my own friends. The point is that representations in the media, even throw-away lines such as the one uttered by a “desperate housewife,” can have surprising consequences. These preconceived notions can show up in advertisements. Advertising doesn’t only affect society, but society also influences advertising. The relationship is mutual!

As a Filipino American and a part of the Asian Pacific community, I am personally affected by marketing messages. This blog will have a very unique point of view in that I can speak of the topic both as a consumer and as an aspiring marketer. Asian Pacific Americans have the potential to become a formidable market audience. How, why, and to what extent targeted advertisements affect our identities remain to be seen.

Let’s start analyzing!

2) Ads? Goodness!

I was searching the internet in an attempt to find inspiration for my new blog, but alas, there were hardly any that talked about my same topic. Blogs about advertising and marketing in general, on the other hand, were much easier to come by.

This specific post from an advertising blog caught my attention. The post had a single image of an outdoor ad for McDonald’s in Helsinki, Finland. On the ad was a picture of a young woman of Asian descent holding a chicken nugget in her hand. The advertisement itself seemed innocent enough. However, what caught the blogger’s attention (and mine) was the fact that somebody distorted the image by folding the top corners of the ad to form a “hat” reminiscent of straw peasant hats, on the young woman’s head. Really, now?


[image from frederiksamuel.com/blog]

The post came from a Technorati ranked blog titled “Advertising/Design Goodness: The Best and Sometimes the Worst Around the Globe.” The blog was started in May 2005 by the writer Frederick Samuel, a German born art director/designer who is currently working for TribalDDB in Toronto, Canada. He has worked in the advertising and design industry for the past five years. The purpose of the blog is to showcase the best advertisements from around the globe while at the same time juxtaposing them with some of the very worst so that we can truly appreciate the merits of good designing.

Using his point of view as a designer, he posts advertisements that he finds visually interesting. They occur quite frequently with at least one new post almost every day, and many are short, simple, and to the point with usually just the image of the ad and some pieces of information about the designer. What interested me about this blog was the commentary – the people who commented, which were many, not only looked at the actual design of the featured advertisement, but also focused on the meaning of its messages.

Check out this comment one visitor wrote about the McDonald’s ad:

“As an Asian, I don’t see why this is racist. That looks JUST LIKE the hat I put on everyday before I head out into the rice fields. Oh, and your laundry and railroads are ready. Pick them up at 3pm.”

Yikes! What biting words!

Here’s the overlap between my blog and Samuel’s – it supports my position that advertising and society are mutually linked. Samuel posts specific ads not only if he admires their creative design but also if they make some kind of social commentary. That distorted McDonald’s ad definitely said a lot about the prevalence of Asian stereotypes. Here’s another example. This post showed an advertisement that was painted in parking lots before the school prom.


[image from frederiksamuel.com/blog]

Wow. The ad was commended for its clever use of location and catchy headline, but one cannot overlook the fact that it also makes a profound statement on the serious issue of drunk driving. The commentary,

“I think the message works. It stops to make you think. It’s straight forward without being over-stated. It’s encouraging to those that abstain from drunk driving, and certainly catches the eye.”

The purpose of an advertisement is to catch one’s attention, and it can be done through its artistic design. How society chooses to react to such designs varies from merely stopping and looking (Wheelchair ad) to physically engaging with and changing the ad (McDonald’s ad). We are constantly interacting with advertising messages – they are filtered through our cultural norms in such a way that we may interpret it quite differently from its original intent. And that’s exactly the point! Samuel’s hope is that people do look at the ads and be inspired, start a conversation, or share their points of view. A smartly designed ad can have cultural consequences. This is exactly what I intend to show in my own blog.

What were your reactions?

3) The Structure of Voice

Persistence does pay off!

Does this sound familiar? A blog that analyzes advertising, brands, communications, and marketing strategies towards…Columbians/Latin Americans!

Okay, fine. So maybe it’s not exactly like mine, but of all the blogs I’ve looked at, this one’s pretty close. The blog is called Ad Structure. Although it doesn’t talk about Asian Pacific Americans, the writer did decide to focus on a specific marketing niche – the Latin American community – and just like me, he is a part of that community. While looking at advertising from the planner’s perspective, the blog still touches upon a number of topics from the creative to the cultural. Since both of us are speaking on a topic that is very personal to us, I wanted to see how he managed to create a "blogging voice" that was true to his intents and origins.

I decided to first look at those posts that demonstrated his approach to speaking about cultural issues within advertising. In one post, the author contemplates about how advertisements sometimes depict a diverse group of people in such a limited way when human beings are actually much more complex than that. He states:

"The second one, was some sort of an analogy to trees, in where there are a central being and from it many ramifications grow. Those ramifications are the equivalents to the layers, and in each of these branches one part of the being is been developed. Those are the visible parts of the being, but is in the roots where the tree finds its meaning."

A number of different factors, I believed, influenced the type of voice with which the writer, Daniel Mejia, chose to convey his sense of character.

First, I found it interesting that he chose to write his blog in English despite the fact that his native language is Spanish and Portuguese. This probably accounts for the few grammatical errors and minor incorrect word usage [incorrect tense, singular/plural, lack of subject, etc.]. However, his decision was driven by the fact that the planning community's, what he calls the "plannosphere," universal language is English. As an aspiring creative for an ad agency, it says a lot about his desire to remain professional by choosing to write in the language of his chosen career. However, language barrier aside, he still spoke quite eloquently on his subjects of interest. He had a very good vocabulary, using such words as “ramifications,” “equivalents,” “sync-effects,” which does much to demonstrate his knowledge of professional jargon.

Secondly, in the statement above, he was trying to explain something as ambiguous as the human psyche. Therefore, some of the writing techniques that he uses are appropriate for trying to explicate such complicated concepts. For example, he greatly employs the use of metaphors and analogies in order for the reader to have something easy and everyday to relate to. He tells the story about the deep roots of a tree. He also describes the human mind as

"Onion layers, Principle a theory that explain how a person is not only what you see or assume he is, there are many more things beneath that surface.”

That certainly helped me understand a little bit better. His statements are comprised of long, complex sentences which are useful for expanding on explanations and providing examples. He also uses a number of rhetorical questions.

“So why we keep trying to define us by only one of our many faces? I know that the most simple things are the most complex ones (intriguing, right?).”

However, his writing style is not only exclusive to cultural posts. When writing posts that critique actual advertisements, such as this random truck ad for Cadbury Chocolate (because trucks have nothing to do with chocolate), he still uses rhetorical questions,

“You all know that I didn’t like the gorilla spot, so what can I say about “Trucks”?

And, he again tells stories, personal anecdotes, in order for the reader to have something ordinary to relate to,

“Perhaps that’s every kid fantasy come true (come on, who didn’t made races with toy trucks when was little… I totally can relate to that).”

"But in the end I must confess I really enjoyed this one, that I have watched it like ten times, that I can’t get the song out of my head and because of that every time I remember the ad, that it’s a shame that you can’t find a Cadbury chocolate here in Colombia."

Although his voice doesn’t necessarily stand out, he remains a likeable and consistent character across the span of his topics and posts. Regardless of what he writes about, his posts are easy to read, professional yet personal, appropriate to the topic, and relatable to the ordinary person.

Who wouldn’t want to read a post titled “Shut up and just have fun?”

(By the way, the gorilla ad...Hilarious.)