South Park and Charity

The creators of South Park Matt Stone and Trey Parker have recently teamed with the company Omaze and started fundraising for the charity NEXT for AUTISM. During this fundraising campaign they have been offering  a contest for fans to be brought to South Park Studios, meet the creators, and even be added into the show as an extra character. The fundraising itself has offered varied levels of donations that will give people different numbers of entries into their contest. As well many of the donations come with a side reward ranging from digital thank yous to signed merchandise, such as scripts, figures, and t-shirts. The video accompanying the campaign can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkfptcZQKeE

In the video the creators humorously note that they are offering a chance at “immortality.”  By in a sense immortalizing the winner as a character in likeness and voice. It is a very funny way to offer this to fans. While Stone and Parker have crated many controversial episodes and have offended many audiences through their show it is always nice to see when celebrities use status for reasons such as charity. The two creators have always been known for very dark and lowbrow humor but this does show a more genuine side of them. Many of the higher rewards for the fundraiser have already been sold out in just the two days it has run. I personally have been a fan of the show for a long time and it makes me happy to see something like this happen.

My Future In Social Media

Social media has become a staple of the advertising world and is in much higher and higher consideration for the past few years. This is highly due to its various platforms and new ways to target specific audiences. For myself, I do wonder what role it may have on me post-graduation. I think there are two ways social media could be in impact. First, I think it could be a very heavy part of my life if I am employed for advertising creatives. The other side of this is I have the same uses I have now, I use it for personal and networking. During this post I will get more in depth to what I mean.

To talk about high involvement, I think I will primarily be focused on creatives. I would be producing video, maybe even animation for deadline based social media posts. I don’t personally see myself as much on the page or account management side of social media. I think I may have some role with scheduling posts and deadlines. But I think that I will be strongly working in creation due to it being more so what I want to do. Unfortunately, I do think this means I may be recording some video on a phone. Which may I add, I hope I never have to do for a professional account. The often-short videos and animations used on social media by companies are everywhere these days. Don’t get me wrong I do think this has its benefits for companies to be able to create a lot of content quickly and efficiently for their audiences. It just makes me wish there was more higher quality content out there. I think some companies do things very correctly and with a personal taste with their social media accounts. One of them being Arby’s. Here is a link to their social media. Many of their ads on Facebook consist of photos, short videos, and animations of popular culture from tv, books, movies, books, and games. I think they have done an excellent job with tying in popular culture to their ads while also producing some more obscure references to not seem out of touch. This is the type of work that I think is awesome of the company and the type of campaigns I would probably find fun to work on.

To give the other possibility I talked about was just having a personal based social media activity. This is most likely because I could be working in film and video outside of advertising. My initial plans to get into film and video is by using advertising as an entrance. But like I said there is a chance this might not happen. I could very well be working as a videographer, editor, animator, or even on set production. I think this an open possibility that may take away from my knowledge of advertising and public relations with social media. However, there is always that chance I could end up working in social media for something to do with video. With all this speculation it is truly hard to say what I will be doing in regards of the field. I guess time will tell in a few months.

Sources:

Kirby, David M. “The Role Of Social Media In Film Marketing.” The Huffington Post, TheHuffingtonPost.com, 20 June 2016, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-m-kirby/the-role-of-social-media-_b_10571026.html.

“The Complete Guide to Short Video Production for Social Media.” Undullify, 27 Jan. 2017, http://www.undullify.com/complete-guide-short-video-production-social-media/.

 

Hootsuite Certification

Sorry But Here Is Another Amazon Post

So with my title already saying my initial thoughts lets get into this. Outside of the Amazon Key I discussed last week, lets admit it, Amazon does some cool stuff. They feature a wide arrangement of features and services that are meant to convenience their users. The other day while I was updating my Amazon app I noticed a new feature. Augmented reality. The new feature on their app lets people open up a AR space and see furniture, appliances and other products in their own home. The idea of this is to allow shoppers to see the product in their own home and see if they would fit or match themes within their homes.

A article explaining more can be found here. 

Overall, I think this is fundamentally huge for shoppers. This allows a new form of convenience and experience for people as they do online shopping. This creates a chance for people to get the experience of “seeing it in store” while also seeing how it fits personally. I think this can create a great new way for people to shop. Being able to see the product in store is always helpful but I think this revolutionizes that. using a feature like AR allows people to directly see the product in a personal way. Its one thing to go to a store and see a couch and like it. But its a completely new thing for customers to see it in their home. This allows a new form of planning, and even connection to it. With this people can directly see how something would look in comparison to their other furniture and belongings. In the sense of marketing for Amazon, I think this is a tool that will grow and greatly impact how people shop.