#jake squirek

[jcuissocial]

Social Media v.s Search Engine

1)      Two types of online advertising that I have selected are social media advertising, as well as search engine advertising. The reason I chose these two types of advertisements are because I feel they are the most prominent ones that we are exposed to everyday. More people use google and facebook everyday than any other sites I can think of, so I thought it appropriate to choose the ones most effective at getting impressions. Although most of us use social media every day, research has shown that social media advertising may not be the best channel to advertise through. In fact, according to marketingcharts.com, social media ads are shown to be fairly annoying, rather useless, and only somewhat effective. On the flip side, according to internerseer.com, search engine advertisements may be the best form of advertising available. The reason for this is because (for most search engines) your advertisement only comes up when the user types in a keyword that’s related to your company. This helps the search engine not show meaningless advertisements to consumers, and helps the consumers see ad’s they are actually interested in. This has shown to be very effective, especially with google, and (in general) has a higher success rate than traditional advertising.

  2)     The future 500 company that I chose was Wal-Mart. The reason I chose Wal-Mart was because they are the number one company on the fortune 500 list and spend a ton of money advertising. This relates to me because I am very interested in the advertising field in marketing.  As you can see below, I found one advertisement of theirs on Facebook (social media), and one on Google (search engine). I found both advertisements to be fairly effective and grabbing my attention. 

3)     For these two ads, I believe they are trying to target a younger generation because social media is primarily occupied by a younger generation. I also believe this because the social media ad came up when I typed in “buy electronics” in google, and I believe there’s more younger individuals purchasing electronics than older. The social media ad focused on organization appeal, as well as driving home their values/beliefs of American jobs. They are most likely doing this because people know that most of their products are made in China, and I find this very interesting. The social media ad is simply for showing the consumer how cheaply they can obtain electronics compared to other stores, and the value (the difference in dollars) they will obtain.

  4)      The ad that I believe is most effective is the social media ad. The reason I believe this is because Wal-Mart has always been known as an outsourcing company, and I think many people would be shocked to see they employ so many Americans for jobs. I think this could peak their interest and maybe even change some people’s perception of Wal-Mart. Although, had I searched in a specific laptop, and Walmart had an ad displaying the price (relative to competitors) I believe the search engine ad would be more effective, just not in this particular case.

     Sources

http://www.marketingcharts.com/wp/direct/social-media-ads-fairly-annoying-rather-useless-somewhat-effective-25213/, maketing charts staff, dec 5, 2012.

  http://www.internetseer.com/services/article.xtp?id=37031 , Andrew Weidel.

[jcuissocial]

JIT 1: United Breaks Guitars"

After watching the YouTube video "United Breaks Guitars" and seeing United Airlines response, this is my response to JIT1:

1) Upon seeing United Airlines response, I do not believe they handled the situation appropriately. This video has close to 14 million views, and they had a very good opportunity to save face, but instead they chose to ignore the video complaint, and after way too long, decided to compensate him $3,000 for the broken guitar. This to me is insulting, especially after the guitar alone cost more than $3,000. More than 13 million people watched the video, and it gave United Airlines terrible PR. They had an opportunity to make a terrible situation at least somewhat positive, but their decision to ignore the video, and then only compensate him $3,000 (in which he decided would rather go to a charity) after it had blown up on You Tube, sends a terrible message to their customers and has given them terrible credibility and PR.

2) I believe this video was seen by so many people so quickly because I'm sure many people have also had similar problems within the airline industry. It's also a very humorous spoof towards the airline, and not only made a good song, but I'm sure many people were as amazed as I was to see that the airline still had not responded. Many people wanted this man to see justification because if it could happen to him, it could happen to anyone. When a company this big chooses to ignore a situation this monumental, people all around jump on to support the cause, and I believe this is exactly what happened here.

3) Social media and the internet provide a unique challenge towards corporations all around the world, and the fact of the matter is that companies need to adapt. Theirs a simple solution to all challenges of this magnitude, and that's simply that companies simply respond and "right" the "wrong". Companies need to be aware of how their customers feel about their experiences, and how their company is perceived. Its not only important to get feedback from customers, but also have employees searching the web for situations such as this, where an unhappy consumer is venting about a bad experience. If they have people on top of situations like this, they can get in contact with the customer, evaluate whether the situation is worthy of some sort of compensation, and then compensate the customer before it spreads like wildfire over social media.

Its so very important for major corporations such as United Airlines, to be able to nip situations like this in the bud before they blow up because bad PR can be the difference between success and failure. Its very understandable that not every person whose venting over social media about a bad experience with a company is justified in doing so, but its the companies responsibility to make sure their on top of every incident (good or bad) so they're the ones in control of their PR, not just sitting back allowing a situation like this to happen. To summarize, if major corporations don't adapt to the challenges of the internet and social media, they will continue to get bad PR, and ultimately have a negative perception by their customers, which then will result in less revenue. All companies need to take this seriously and adapt, because the internet/social media isn't going anywhere.