Thursday, October 15, 2009

Augmented Reality - Midterm

Augmented Reality

Augmented Reality is a brand new scientific invention that is still in the works but has multiple prototypes. Those including 3-D interpretations of buildings on 2-D maps, hidden advertisements on t-shirts that are only uncovered by cameras, and 3-D guides to learn pretty much any skill out there such as learning how to play the guitar from a ghostly set of hands on your television screen. The invention of Augmented Reality is truly remarkable and can definitely make an impact on society in the future.

Every consumer is looking for the next best thing because the best thing now is already out of style. That is where the cool hunters come into play. Every brand out there, whether it is dealing with clothes, or cars, or food, or etc., is on a special “ranking” kind of system in our minds without us even knowing it. Clothes, for example, have American Eagle which in most teenagers’ eyes is better than Aeropostale clothing even though the clothes themselves are extremely similar in fabric, color, texture, style, and more. To many it is just the fact that that eagle symbol (American Eagle) is better known and more popular than that bulldog symbol (Aeropostale). The process of cool hunting is to find out what brand and what type of product are consumers looking for and why. Cool hunters usually target the teenage consumers because the teenage consumers have more money to spend on things for themselves than their parents even have for personal shopping. Also, marketers must believe that it is easier to persuade the younger minded teenager than the wiser and more experienced adult mind. This might be true in some cases but also might be false in some cases. However, in the case of introducing Augmented Reality to the public, I believe that this will target not just the teenage consumers, but also, the adult consumers.

As previously said, every consumer is looking for the next best thing. Well, in the case of Augmented Reality, I think this is the next best thing. Just the examples from the movie clip entitled Augmented Reality; target three different age groups specifically while also targeting another age group as well. For example, the 3-D representations of buildings on a 2-D map, clearly targets an older age group because no child is really interested in that for it’s true purpose. A child would just be interested in the building representation example for the 3-D effect, not for the reason that it actually is a representation of true buildings one would navigate around. Even though a child would only be interested in it for the 3-D effect, teenagers and adults would be more interested in the purpose of the 3-D effect. Adults would most likely be interested in the 3-D aspect of the map because it is a more realistic representation of the actual landscape they would have to navigate around; while teens would also be interested in that, the 3-D effect also plays an exciting role for them just because it is in 3-D on a 2-D map. So, in the marketer’s perspective on the teen in this situation, the teen would be interested in the 3-D representation on the 2-D map for both the 3-D effect being “cool” and the purpose of the map being a better representation of the actual terrain and landscape. Cool hunters could market this to consumers in a numerous amount of ways to reach both teenage and adult groups of consumers. One way would be to simply have a commercial showing a mother or father driving around a city such as New York City for example, with their teenager in the front passenger seat. The idea of the commercial is that they would be lost in the city and in order to find the route they are searching for, the parent tells their teenager to activate the 3-D rendering on their 2-D map so both of them can share the experience. The consumer will then see this and think “Wow, that could come in handy,” or “Oh man that’d cool!” The marketer would have tricked the consumers into buying the product by using the idea of “cool”, and new, and interesting, while also using a little bit of emotional marketing by showing the relationship one parent can share with their child by having something in common to interact with while stuck driving around.

To target teenagers specifically while still targeting some adults, marketers would love to forward the idea of the idea of the Augmented Reality ghost-like helpers. In the guitar example, one the guitar is held up to the television screen, a camera reads the shape and position of the guitar through sensors and then automatically renders floating ghost-like hands to show the future musician where the place their hands and fingers to play certain chords. This is just like a futuristic video game to teenagers. Just seeing an example of this activity and even the average teenager who does not play the guitar is hooked. It is something new, something different, and something so in depth and easy to learn that a teenager can’t help but be interested in. The “cool” thing about it is that it is in fact so easy to watch and learn while also being fun and interesting because one can learn to play an instrument from realistic looking floating hands in their very own home. Adults would also be interested in this idea of rendering some helping hands, not just to play the guitar but for anything. What if this program was to be used with almost any activity? For example what if you could learn how to cook, how to fix a car engine, or how to paint all just by watching these helping hands and from the comfort of your own home?

If that were the case, people would be more intelligent in certain everyday things and the world as a whole, would have more intelligent minds to help it succeed. From the marketing aspect of the helping hands of Augmented Reality, this would be another very easy product to market. All one would have to do to sell this product is show quick examples of it in action, either in a commercial or hands on demonstration for large groups. If the Augmented Reality helping hands were not just used for playing the guitar, then it would even be that much easier to sell. The prototype however only deals with playing the guitar but I am sure, if the guitar helping hands go on to be a success, then more activities with the helping hands will be produced.

Augmented Reality has an enormous amount of projected success because there is nothing quite like it out on the market. Augmented Reality is the next best “cool” thing out there. It is and will continue to be easy to market, as it will most likely flourish in the technological market.

Monday, September 28, 2009

"The Persuaders" Questions

Answer to Question 1:

After watching "the Persuaders", I realized some things about the marketing and advertising world today. The thing that surprised me the most had to be how much advertisement there is out there, without even realizing it. The "clutter" of New York City is a perfect example. Everywhere you turn you see billboards, signs, posters, touchscreens; pretty much any form of advertisement you could think of. I learned that people can be controlled by the way someone presents something to them, whether that is through what specific words, or visuals, the presenter uses. I realized that I am one of these people who are easily controlled by the way something is advertised or introduced to me. I normally do not carry out with buying the shoes, or eating at this restaurant, but I feel like I am influenced to those things and WANT to carry out with them.

Answer to Question 4:

In the future, I believe the advertisement agencies will either grow and become/stay one of the most popular career choices of all time, or, the agencies will crash and burn and advertisement will become unpopular. The reason I think the advertising and marketing field will prosper is because people will still need to know and be educated about things whether that means clothing brands, restaurants, politics, etc. And also because there will be more and better forms of advertisement out there in the future, such as a floating advertisement screen between buildings as seen in some of those futuristic movies. On the other hand, I believe the field could go in the opposite direction because of the clutter. Eventually, the clutter could get to be so great and so frustrating to deal with from the consumer's point of view, that there will be bands or laws against the production of too much marketing; therefore, having a huge decrease in the field.

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Cropped Image-Cropping Assignment



















This is the cropped image of my subject. Here, in the cropped image, you can see and get the sense that this is a photograph of a beautiful early morning, or late afternoon scenery with nice, green trees in front of a large mountain, with a beautiful, light-blue sky in the background. However, as you can see the differences in the original image below, I simply just cropped the lightning out to take away that sense of destruction and aggressiveness and just show the soft, sensitive side of the photograph to give the photograph a completely new meaning.

Original Image-Cropping Assignment