Rachel Palekar - Blog 9

TTIY:

Burt’s Bees is a supporter of natural ingredients. There are many imitators that claim to have natural products, but instead use marketing deception to create the illusion of having all natural products. Burt’s Bees launched a campaign in 2008 that was made to help consumers figure out the difference between truly natural products, and the so-called fakes. An article on TriplePundit.com said, “Burt’s Bees is launching a new called “Attack the Ingredient, Not the Brand.”
How do you get all the soft without the suspicious? The ad depicts a tasteful picture of a woman’s naked body against a green nature background. The text superimposed on her skin reads, “Milk & Honey Vs. DMDM Hydantoin.” Under this heading, the benefits of milk and honey are contrasted with the consequences of DMDM Hydantoin. The tag line at the end says, “Have you read your body lotion label lately?””

BB is using a smart approach of informing its consumers about health effects if they use products with unnatural chemicals before informing them of the impact these can have on the environment. Additionally, they use recycled products for their packaging, another way to stay true to their cause.

Social media is not my area of interest, but, I was interested to hear about it from someone who had so much passion about his job. Brian did a great job of giving us a history of the company, and detailing the motivations that drive what they do. The scope of their work went a bit farther than I expected; I did not realize that these agencies were the ones behind the interactive Facebook responses. I cannot see myself working in an agency like this, however, I think Likeable is a fantastic place for someone who is interested in this subject. I feel that the culture is welcoming, and that the founders and other employees take such joy and pride in what they do. This is so important and would inspire those who interned here. The shift towards a heavy reliance on social media presence does pose challenges for some companies. It is a lot of work to continually keep these sites current and comments attended to. I wonder if these exclusive social media agencies will find high competition from full service marketing communications agencies.

Current Event: Why Snap Chat Should Never Have Ads

First of all – Snapchat turned down an offer from Facebook for a three billion dollar, pure cash offer.  Wow. We will see if this was a smart move in the long run. Anyway, this article argues that Snapchat should not utilize advertisements. Why? There are two main reasons. First is the “perception gap” and secondly is the “values gap.” Snapchat is perceived to be a virtual hotspot where teens send each other lewd pictures that supposedly are “gone” after the selected time limit. This however, is only the choice of a minority of users. The second gap speaks about a more pressing issue that regards the differences in values between those that would market snap chat, and those that use it. The article says, “Snapchat users value privacy, while marketers value publicity.” Since privacy is such a big issue, users clearly do not want to be tracked, analyzed or targeted. However, without ads, it is hard for Snapchat to make any profit. Will there be a compromise?