Imagine that you are a PR practitioner hired to promote a new TV show. What steps would you use and why?

If I was the PR practitioner hired to promote a new TV show, the first thing I would do is identify the target market age group. Secondly, when I know what age group this show is being targeted at I would make sure it airs on TV at a suitable time that the specific age category would view be able to view it. There is no point airing a comedy show for college students at 8am in the morning as they would either be in class or sleeping. Then once that is sorted out, we would then need to decide what channel is the most popular for students to watch shows of a similar genre. Once these issues have been resolved, then the show needs to be advertised to our target market and really get the word out. We will use TV commercials, magazines/newspapers, social websites and blogs to attract our audience to watch the show. Once the show is being successfully aired, we would need to find out how well our show is doing. We would do this through social media, for example set up a fan account on Facebook and get feedback from viewers of the show by asking questions that allow for feedback to be generated and from there we can monitor what viewers of the show like or dislike.

What target markets do you belong to, and how do advertisers reach each of your aspects?

When asked what target market I belong to, it provokes more than a simple answer. A target market is a demographic segment of the market a which a particular product is marketed to. I believe my age target market is 18-24 and which the is the typical age category for college students. Other than the college student target market, I also belong to sports athletes market.

I think the new and one of the best way marketers are advertising is through new media. Im especially talking about social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter. It is a powerful way for national brands and small businesses to reach their customers, with advertisers being being able to target multiple states, cities, and countries with a single marketing campaign. There are many ways to segment the market based on certain criteria such as relationship, age, birthday, education, sex, workplace, and language. Also when marketers use Facebook, they target keywords to reach target audiences based on interests, activities, movies, and TV shows and many other things that users may list in their Facebook profiles.

Rupert Murdoch Plans to hide his sites from Google

An interesting interview with with media mogul Rupert Murdoch talks about how he plans to hide his news sites from Google. This will mean that when you search Google for news, you will not be able to see Murdoch's News Corp sites such as Sky, FOX News, and The Wall Street Journal. In effect this is a plan to stop other media sources from "stealing" news from their articles. Also Murdoch plans on making readers pay for the news they read. Already you are only able to read the first paragraph of the of articles on the Wall Street Journal site, but if you wish to read further on then you have to pay for it. Murdoch believes that if people buy newspapers then why cant they buy news online. He states that he would much prefer to have fewer visitors to the sites willing to pay for their news, which he believes would make a quality audience.

The problem with Murdoch's theory is that you need to have an audience and constantly have masses of people flooding the website so by hiding those site from Google, it is really a bite in the foot. Ask yourself one thing... whenever you search for something, anything what do you use to search for it, answer: Google? so clearly by severing the connection between the source of the information and the end user, you are limiting yourself in a bad way. Secondly, I think they should do a survey on how many people would actually pay for news on a website they can easily get for free elsewhere. Ill take an educated guess and say that not many people would pay for it, especially the younger generation.

Source: http://mashable.com/2009/11/09/rupert-murdoch-google/

Reactions to Guest Speaker Tim Athans

Our guest speaker Tim Athans is a media buyer for Annheuser-Busch Inbev, and he came to talk to us in particular about how Annheuser-Busch Inbev advertises and targets certain markets for the beer market. Annheuser-Busch Inbev is the largest brewing company in the United States, operating 12 breweries in the United States and about 15 in other countries. Annheuser-Busch joined with Inbev in the summer of 2008 and are headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri.

Annheuser-Busch Inbev has a huge advertising presence, and probably the biggest is the sports marketing division which creates commercials for the Super Bowl and other sporting events, such as horse racing and motor sports like NASCAR. When Annheuser Busch needs to launch it's new brew, it would buy national ads for a certain time and channel depending on what audience it is targeting. For example they bought about 11 commercials for the show "Saturday Night Live" to launch their new brew Bud Light Golden Wheat. Music and entertainment has been used to promote the wheat flavored version of the Bud light brand and it's also sponsoring the musical segment on ABC talk show "Jimmy Kimmel Live". Annheuser-Busch is banking on the success of different versions of the top selling Bud Light brand, which normally have a higher price. So far beer sales have been flat this year as customers cut back on spending.

They are constantly looking for ways to reach consumers, and if consumers think they are watching a commercial they just wont buy it. Since Tim Athans came in I have paid close attention to the Bud Light commercials and other advertising and what I have noticed is they try to make it as authentic as possible, not letting it look like they are selling something. However, shortly after when I made a trip to the store or the bar, I at least thought about purchasing a Bud Light even if I did stick with my preferred brand. It really is fascinating the hidden power of psychology that goes behind the commercials and all the rest of the advertising.

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