Khue Ngo Blog #4

My Take on Current Events: Intel’s “Look Inside”

I saw this ad from Intel on Adweek the other day. It tells the story of Jack Andraka, the 15-year-old boy that invented a test for pancreatic cancer that was 168 times faster, 400 times more sensitive and 26,000 times less expensive that the medical standard up to that point. One would ask: What does this has to do with Intel?

Well, I think that Intel makes very good use of Jack Andraka’s story, pointing out that many organizations rejected him only because of his age and did not “look inside” his idea and research. Intel thereby ties their tagline to Jack’s story that clearly plays the emotional card at the end when showing his honest and authentic joy when he wins the world’s biggest research competition (which was sponsored by Intel…). This is quite effective in my view, as the story is memorable, and since it fully supports and emphasizes the “look inside” perspective, Intel is not at the risk of viewers only remembering the spot but not the brand.

My TTIY Project

So this week I took a closer look at the AE Blog. It seems like the identity of the blog author(s) is deliberately hidden as the blog entries are written from the “we, American Eagle in general” perspective. 

The blog offers several categories that one can browse. These are: Style, music, travel, inspiration, we the AE, meet the cast, and Aerie. In these categories, there are a few returning weekly “columns”. The inspiration category for example offers a “Fitness Friday” series. Each week, they choose another topic such as “midnight trainer” or “study break spinner”. For each of these topics, they present the matching sportswear and interview or ask one of their AE colleagues to comment on it.

They also have a “Bloggers do it better” column every week. In that series, they ask fashion bloggers to combine one of their AE clothing item in their own personal style. Last week, they had four bloggers showing different styles. This week, it was only two bloggers. This blog entry is featured at the top of the page throughout the entire week.

Moreover, they do a #AEstyle roundup every Friday. In this series, they show pictures from individuals that wear American Eagle clothing and posted it with the #AEstyle hashtag on Instagram or Twitter.

I found that they also have a Pinterest page with a total of 151 boards. Each of those has individual themes such as "Effortlessly Chic" or "Fall 2013". The pins are not all AE clothes but everything that fits the topic. Pins that are posted by American Eagle themselves are marked with the logo, but apparently other people can also post on the boards. I will follow the dynamics of the Pinterest page in the following week.