A final word

Well here we are at the end of another successful (hopefully) semester! I guess the "successful"parameter is yet to be determined! Maybe talk to me in a week..

As I look back on what we have covered throughout the semester I feel like I have merely scraped the surface of the world of consumer behaviour! But it has been a journey indeed.

Over the semester we have covered many behavioural themes and the things I feel like I have learned the most about are:

- The self
- Pop culture
- Cultures
- Norms
- Traditions
- Behavioural theories

And many, many more!

I feel like I am a little better equipped to enter the real world of marketing, and just a little more skeptical of society. I would say that I am better equipped to try my hand at manipulating consumers into purchasing products, but lets just say thank goodness I have another year of school to figure that out!

For now I will continue to be a consumer who happens to see right through the nudging!

I would like to thank you for sharing this adventure with me, it's been a blast.

I will end my quest with another one of my favourite ads of all time- why not?




Cheers
Kelly

Coca Cola ad a study of culture- and America

There's nothing more American than America!

I'm not sure if anyone has seen this ad that was released during the Super Bowl by Coca-Cola. I personally think it's an absolutely beautiful ad including different cultural aspects of America. But apparently I am wrong.

In it, they have many cultures singing America the Beautiful in different languages. Too me, this is a symbol of the American cultural melting pot, where the nation exists not as a white supremacy, but rather an eclectic mix of many cultures.

The ad has had nothing but outrage from fans. But why is that?

Click on the link below to see a webpage where many of the Twitter feeds of public shaming are included:

http://publicshaming.tumblr.com/post/75447787843/speak-english-racist-revolt-as-coca-cola-airs

Some people go as far as saying that they will never consumer Coca-Cola again.



What do you think, should coke have had such a lambasting for appealing to different cultures?

Should America the Beautiful only be sung in English?

Would you consider boycotting a product because they include other cultures and languages in a sacred song? Does this desacralize the very essence of being American?

Cultural norms

I have a really interesting story regarding cultural norms that I would like to share with you.

My uncle lives overseas and one Christmas he brought his family across the pond to celebrate the holidays with the extended family. Now it's important to note that my uncle is married to an absolutely beautiful and wonderful Muslim woman, whom I love dearly. But she comes from a different culture, different social class and has had an extremely different upbringing than our family. To start off, she's Muslim, we're not. She comes from a wealthy family and has 12 brothers and sisters and is used to having servants, as is customary for her culture.

So there you go, the stage is set for a beautifully white Christmas in Canada.

As is common to Canadian Christmas, it was cold, dark and snowy and this was the first time that my uncles family (from Southeast Asia) and his entourage of servants and children would see snow. It was also the first time that they would celebrate Christmas.

So my uncle shows up and my mother, remembering that his favorite meal is ham, cooks one without second thought. My uncle, who is delighted to have pork for the first time in probably around a decade, also fails to think anything of the cooked pig in the house.What they both failed to remember is that Muslim's don't eat pork. All is wonderful until my Aunt sees the ham and starts having a fit, and then her two servants (who came with the family to look after the kids) started having fits as well. The hysterics ended when one servant locked herself into our upstairs bathroom and the other the downstairs because our dog happened to look like a wolf.

This was moment one of culture shock.

The next moment was when our dog was roaming around the house sniffing for dropped food scraps and my cousin asked very non nonchalantly:

"Whats she searching for? Rats?"

Moment number two of culture shock. At this point I had never seen a rat in my life, and I'm pretty sure Canada has seen very few.

But the icing on the cake happened when my mom pulled the turkey out of the oven and my little cousin asked again

"Is that roast dog?"

My mother was mortified. We don't eat dog in Canada! But in Asia, they do, and they happen to eat my cousins' dogs. Actually, it's not uncommon for the servants to take the family pet home for dinner. Cultural norms vary from culture to culture and even within a culture. What is customary in one place may not be in another. It is for this reason that whenever dealing with another culture it's important to educate yourself on their customs before cooking a ham and potentially offending their religion!

I learned a lot about culture and cultural norms that holiday season and I will never forget those experiences as they served me well when I had a little sojourn in Asia myself!

Self-Imaging and growing up- Is advertising at fault for teens self-imaging?

Are we growing up too early?

I was at a ski hill a few weeks ago for a costume day and was taken aback by what parents allow their children to wear out of the house. I literally had to do a double take when I saw a 12 year old girl wearing fish-net stockings, booty shorts and an overly tight tank top showing way too much skin.

Here I am in my mid-twenties and I would never be caught dead wearing that out of the house because it is too revealing. This girls' mother let her (and 4 of her friends) dress like this? It blows my mind to think how trends and styles have transformed over the years, and especially in the past decade.

Young girls are dressing more and more scandalously by the minute in an attempt to look more sophisticated and older.

Is advertising to blame for this?

Products are targeted specifically to women. A few decades ago becoming a woman happened somewhere around a girls' sweet sixteenth birthday, but now the line separating pre-pubescent teens from full grown women is a gray area. Young girls don't look young anymore, especially when they adorn the looks of a 23 year old at the age of 13.

Ads like this are a staple in the magazines that young girls idolize. 

When I saw this Evian ad (posted above) I thought to myself, I want a mirror like that!

As a society we are in a constant hurry to get things done, to travel between destinations and to grow-up. Why is that? Is this something that has been forced upon us? Or is it a consequence of our society and marketing norms?

Ads are designed to make women feel like they need to dress-up and be beautiful and don't get me wrong, there is nothing at fault in that. But when girls look to these ads, they forget their own age and try to be something they are not- older.

It's amazing, we spend our entire childhood wishing we were older and then the rest of our lives wishing we were younger.

I believe that this is greatly due to very backwards self-imaging and societal impacts, where being too young is not ok and looking your age is absolutely out of the question.

The paradox of being "busy"

We live in a society where being "busy" is acceptable and completely the norm. In fact, when a person is not busy the common judgement and attitude of that person is one of sympathy. Since when is being "busy" everything in this day and age?

The truth is that we base our lives off of how busy we are. How many meetings and how much we have to do seems to guide our entire being. We sometimes get so caught up by how much we have to do that we end up completing nothing at all besides stressing what needs to be done.

I think many of us students can sympathize with this notion and commonly find ourselves procrastinating as a result. The classic syndrome encompassing the students' life, where the more you have to do, the less you actually complete.

Therein lies the paradox. Are we actually as busy as we think we are?

Some wise man once told me that if you leave it to the last minute, it only takes a minute. While this is true, is it a way to govern your life? Should you stress over what all you need to do instead of living in the present?

I have to look to the rest of the world for answers on this one. Take Europe for example, the land of the mid-day nap, sit down coffees and Sunday closures. Over there it is acceptable to take a few hours off in the afternoon to have a coffee, relax with friends or even have a little siesta. Sundays are reserved for church and family time and coffee shops with to go cups? Good luck!

Through my extensive travels throughout Europe I began to really appreciate the way of life that is the European way. Families live on the same land that has been inhabited for generations and businesses are passed down through the family. The general attitude of laid back Europeans is a work to live atmosphere as opposed to the live to work attitude of North America.

Never will you see coffee shops with only stay in mugs and very rarely will you come across a restaurant that doesn't have food available as to-go orders.

We, as a society live on the principal that we are extremely busy, and our consumption methods commonly reflect how busy we are as well. Time is of the essence and we expect everything to be served immediately, and the efficiency of our days governs how much or how little time we have to stress over.

It's no wonder that the prevalence of stress born health disorders is increasing at an alarming rate in North America. It's because we stress over "time" and how little of it we have.

I turn to this famous quote by Lao Tzu for wisdom:

I am awed by the truth in those words, but alas I have no time to understand how applicable they are to my life as I have so much to do!

The paradox continues. 

Earth Hour

Earth Hour is set for tonight starting at 8:30!

Earth Hour is a global environmental initiative that was started in 2007 in Australia as a way to raise awareness and promote sustainable living.

This year it seems like everyone is getting involved in the sustainable living movement, including Durex!

Watch this commercial that was created for the event,

#turnofftoturnon



I find this commercial extremely interesting because it really does outline how connected we have become with technology. Along with the global movement for climate change through the Earth Hour campaign, Durex really hit the nail on the head with this ad.

How much is too much? Do we as a society rely too heavily on technology?

I myself am a culprit of being too connected with my phone and am guilty of being too reliant on technology to solve my problems for me.

Not only has technology aided the medical age to get to where it is now, thus increasing lifespans, but has also aided the destruction of global communication barriers; allowing for mass communication to exist. Technology has also increased efficiency and ease in so many different avenues that imagining a life without a smartphone, internet and computers is hard to comprehend and even harder to fathom.

Social media has enabled old friends to connect and basically immediate assimilation of information to the global population in seconds. The sheer speed that information can be spread and the number of people it can reach is sometimes overwhelming. But what kind of impact has this increase in efficiency brought us to?

As a student I cannot live without my computer as pretty much everything is available online, and as a member of society, living without technology is pretty much as obsolete as the original iPhone.

Pretty much what it comes down to is that if you have a smartphone, the demands and expectations that are put upon you are incredulous and not replying in a timely fashion is just not an option anymore. Even 10 years ago I can remember being in Europe and not calling my parents for weeks on end, and I could get away with it because "I couldn't find a pay phone", but now? Good luck!

The same goes for communicating with peers, social groups and responding to emails. I can't possible think about returning an email 3 days upon receipt without apologizing profusely for being late. As if it is my duty to drop everything I am doing to reply immediately to each and every text I receive, snapchat I open, Facebook message thread I am a part of.

I worry for the future of humanity as the increase in social media usage creates an almost false communication between people. We probably won't know for a while what kind of social implications this will have on individuals, can people even have a face-to-face conversation anymore?

But alas, this is another topic altogether!

For now, turn off the lights at 8:30 like you're Nelly Furtado for Earth Hour and together we can build a more sustainable world!

Bend it like Beckham?

Or is it Bend it like your coach?

I've heard it said that those who can't do, coach. So it's very interesting to me that coaches have enough insight and expertise into the realm of athletics that they are able to actually teach. A math teacher can't possibly teach a grade 7 class trigonometry if they can't recite SOH CAH TOA themselves. So then why should coaches be able to actually guide athletes in the direction they choose, if they can't do it themselves?

I guess the better question here is: How? How do coaches, who can't necessarily perform to the same level as their disciples assimilate enough information that is both constructive and performance enhancing, while remaining motivating to the individual.

A possible answer came to me while I was watching Bend it like Beckham, being that it is not necessarily the job of the coach to display exactly what they are trying to convey, but they are there to motivate, inspire and project feelings off of one another as a means of self-improvement.

Take for example Jess, a middle class British-Indian girl trying to make it in the football world for the first time. She is extremely talented, but has never been exposed to the "coaching" side of playing football. She has gotten as good as she is by constant self-awareness and perception, rather than constant bombardment of feedback, both positive and negative from a authoritative figure such as a coach.

Jess is very lucky that she has been able to play by feel until her new coach, Joe, shows her the ropes and eventually steals her heart (which is another issue delving into power relationships entirely that I will not touch on as I do not agree with such exploitation of a reference power). What Jess had been missing entirely was the presence of a social power, as well as an authoritative figurehead to motivate her to continually prove herself to.

I guess what I am trying to get at here is that coaches have power over their athletes that is sometimes used as a means to motivate athletes to perform to the best of their abilities for the better, yet sometimes exploited for self-accomplishment and to help strengthen their ego's. It doesn't really matter the dynamic of the coach-athlete relationship, what remains to be said is that: when a figure, like a coach, is able to motivate athletes via their stature and authority, they don't necessarily need to be able to demo exactly what needs to be done, rather they can build a platform such that the athlete can figure it out themselves.

I feel that this is applicable to the world of consumer behavior in ways of utilizing reference groups and social power as a means of motivating consumers to continually grow. By enabling a platform that is geared towards the success of an individual, while utilizing utilitarian social power, people can be motivated (and coached) into a certain consumption dynamic that is geared towards self-improvement.

Who knows, maybe you could be coached to bend it?