Thursday, February 10, 2011
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
www.geoffresh.com 
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Transcript of a Speech on People as Advertisers.
Look around the room. Every single person in this room is a walking, talking, and breathing advertisement. Everything you wear, carry on you and own is an advertisement for a lifestyle. You are a sort of non-traditional brand of advertising. A market that has yet to be tapped into fully but is up and coming in the world of marketing and advertising. You are advertisings best tool because you are an average person vouching for a companies product through your lifestyle and use of that product.
This idea is what has made Jason Sadler of Ponte Verde Beach, Florida very rich. In fact Sadler’s current home income in 2009 was eighty three thousand dollars and growing for 2010. What does Jason do you may ask? Well Jason owns and operates a website called www.iwearyourshirt.com. Everyday Jason dons a different companies t-shirt, posts a video blog about the company and pictures of himself in the t-shirt on his website. How does he make so much money from doing this? Well on January first 2009 he started by charging a dollar for this service. Everyday he doubles his price so the second day was two dollars and the third was four and so on a so forth. Currently, he has all of 2010 booked at twice the price and has added a second employee Evan White in San Francisco California. Two men both making over ninety thousand dollars a year simply by wearing t-shirts and having some technical prowess. Why do I bring this up?
Well how many people have heard of these guys before today? Right? Hardly any which leads someone to speculate why they are making so much money. Well according to Michael J. Dotson and Eva J. Hyatt both of the Marketing Department for the Walker College of Business, Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina in an article titled Major influence factors in children's consumer socialization “Our research suggests that young people functioning in their role as social actors are susceptible to various forms of influence.” Also the article talks about the differences between gender bias in advertising. Woman and young females tend to be more affected by word of mouth advertising rather than commercials and ads. Men and young males are more affected by impersonal techniques like internet and screen media. The article also adds that word of mouth and peer to peer pressure are the main reasons people buy the clothes they buy when they are younger and are also the main developers of taste, building life long spending habits and brand loyalty. Many people dress in the same style or remain loyal to certain stores or brands for years making it possible for companies to make thousands of dollars off of a single person.
In an article called ‘Word of Mouth’ Advertising in selling new products written by Robert C. Brooks, Jr. from the Department of Marketing of the University of Georgia published in the journal of marketing in October 1957 it says “Advertising and personal selling are by no means the only sources from which consumers receive information regarding products. Powerful "networks of interpersonal relations" existing within the consumer market are also utilized for this purpose.”
So what does this have to do with you and your life? Well it has a lot to do with you. Like I mentioned before you are the most valuable tool to advertisers because not only are you a living breathing billboard but you are a testament that a product works and that it is the best product for your particular lifestyle. If someone identifies with you, idolizes you or wants to socialize with you, they are more likely to want to wear what you do or own the same things you own.
This is an interesting part of human involvement and life that has not been tapped into completely by advertisers but is an up and coming market for average people to make money off of companies by doing something as simple as wearing a t-shirt. Redbull the energy drink company is already sponsoring people to hand out cans of Redbull to their friends. Other companies have done the same thing, offering jobs to high school and college kids paying them to essentially wear, talk about and promote products through social interaction and word of mouth. Celebrities do it Kim Kardashian recently started getting paid ten thousand dollars a tweet on twitter to advertise for companies. If she tweets four times a day (which she does) she will make two hundred and eighty thousand dollars a week. Now average everyday people are becoming a type of celebrity simply by becoming advertisers themselves. A you tube video blogger by the name of Michelle Phan who shows makeup techniques every week has started to make money from sponsorship deals for promoting certain brands of makeup like MAC and Este Lauder. She posts a blog a week and if she mentions types of makeup brushes shades of makeup or brands in general she makes money for how many views her video gets. Although this phenomenon is rather new it is starting to become common place and is changing the internet and advertising landscape. Making it easier for the average person to make money off of things they would normally promote anyway and helping advertising to realize what they should have a long time ago that the consumer is their best advertiser.
To conclude I would like to pose a question for you to ponder “What do you advertise for free?”