The Madness Ensues

Welcome to the middle of the third week of my SRP/ internship. 

You may be thinking , "Wait, third week? What happened to the second week?". I have been asking myself that same question. Time has flown by since the beginning of August and seems now to be passing at maximum speed. Over the past couple weeks I have found myself listening to, watching, and actively looking for advertisements and commercials. Yes, that's right I have left the luxurious comfort bubble of streaming and have given into the irresistible world of advertisements. Its amazing to think of how much work goes into every single advertisement from start to finish. Its madness, but in a mad world you have to have structure. So, while everyone is losing their minds we're here to make sure things run smoothly. That was basically what was said last week in the weekly staff meeting as deadlines approached and the to do list seemed infinite. Granted that stressful atmosphere never really goes away in this profession. So what have I learned? I've learned that Mad Men leaves out a lot . I have learned that my project might need a bit of tweaking in terms of what I'll actually be researching because my adventures have taken me in an unexpected direction. As unnerving as that should be for me considering that I just realized my final project of my high school career isn't following "schedule" I am feeling quite....up for the challenge. Ironically, that's the challenge of marketing. Nothing ever goes smoothly, but business never stops.  A phrase that echoes through the office is "never a dull moment" , which has proven to be true more times than not.

 "the ability to deal with people is as purchasable a commodity as sugar or 

coffee. And I will pay more for that ability, than for 

any other under the sun." 

John D Rockefeller

Though this quote is materialistic and slightly disturbing it is almost right on line with my own research. So, well said Rockefeller...well said.

Week 1: Welcome to the Real World

At the official conclusion of the first week of srp's I am eager to say I have much to report. I was lucky enough to be able to begin my internship at Dark Horse Media immediately so naturally this week began with the enthusiasm and anxiety similar to that felt on the first day of school. Much like the title suggests, this is not school anymore, this is the real world so of course that anxiety was unnecessary to say the least. From the minute I entered the office I was welcomed with smiles and open arms. My onsite advisor made sure that I was introduced to the other six women who work in the office, all of whom were more friendly than I ever expected. My weekly hours of ten to four meant that everyone was already deep in their work by the time I had arrived. However, my onsite advisor as well as another woman in the office were kind enough to guide me through what they were working on at that moment and what they would be working on throughout the week. At the end of my first day I walked out of the office grateful for the warm welcome and slightly overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information that was just shared with me both about the company as well as the media industry in general, but after getting my first taste of real world experience I was eager for more.

 

To say that the rest of the week was incredible would be an understatement. From being able to sit in on a couple brief client meetings to being assigned small tasks of my own I was able to learn so much about the business. Due to the small size of the agency I was introduced to many aspects of the marketing process that may normally be divided amongst several people in larger firms. I learned a bit about big data and how specific audiences are targeted in advertisements, which approaches the Big Brother example at times but in the most amazing and least threatening and totalitarian way possible. I discovered that I quite enjoy being referred to as a millennial, as that was brought up several times during discussion this week when discussing how difficult it is to target the modern generation on a local level.  Unfortunately, over the course of the week my laptop was plagued with a nasty virus which put my work at a slight stand still, but with the help of technology that is beyond my understanding it was cured within a few days and my work luckily didn't suffer from this minor set back. I'm not quite sure what next week holds in store to be quite honest. However, my personally assigned task for this weekend was to brush up on my Microsoft excel capabilities as well as start a few of my research sources.......and I'll list those tasks as pending.

 

Forgive the length of this post and its semi formal yet unorganized nature, which I'm sure will turn into a shorter light hearted post in no time at all. Blogging is a reasonably new means of communication for me and I am not quite sure what I'm doing to be perfectly honest. What I am sure of though is that this week was amazing from start to finish and I am grateful for this amazing opportunity, the new friends I have made, and all that I have learned in this short amount of time!

 

Stay tuned for next week when I report back on my findings from another week in the real world.

Introduction and Background

"...marketing is the backbone of capitalism.

 Without it you'd be dead in two days."

 -New Girl 2013

Hi! My name is Amanda Marburger, and I am a senior at BASIS Tucson North. Like many of my peers I have been given the opportunity to participate in what our school calls senior research projects, srps, where seniors are expected to choose basically any topic of academic interest, obtain an internship relating to that topic, conduct personal research that will our expand our knowledge of this topic and allow us to answer our own research questions created specifically for the topic. At the end of the research and internship process we, the seniors, are expected to deliver a final product in the form of a paper or some other creative means as well as give a presentation that illustrates what we have learned through the entire experience. 

For my own srp I have chosen to study, as the initial quote suggests, the essential and influential field of marketing. More specifically, through the research I conduct in this project I hope to study the psychological effects that marketing and advertising have on our society in order to discover how economic empires were built on a seemingly simple technique. I plan to research how exactly happiness, luxury and life styles are sold though they are abstract ideas. Some questions I plan on answering are:

1.How has happiness been defined through marketing, and is there a difference between happiness and luxury?

2.What types of triggers do consumers look for when trying to buy the American dream, and how do agencies target specific demographics?

3.Even though luxury is obviously unnecessary why do we all fall for advertisements anyways?

I acknowledge that the success of capitalism and materialism is heavily effected by economic factors, which I plan to address briefly, but I am more interested in the equally influential psychological side of the industry.

 Being born into a family of salesmen and as an active participant in our materialistic society, I have developed a keen interest towards the idea of capitalism and materialism despite their negative reputations. I find it fascinating that individuals are able to literally sell intangible ideas to one another. For example, I was originally fascinated by the way that Disney was able to distribute the idea of happiness in such vast quantities. I then began to think about the broader picture and how the American economy was built almost solely on the advertisement of the “American dream” and the “American lifestyle”. In addition to my initial interest, the art class and psychology class I took in my junior year fueled my curiosity towards the power of advertising because they showed how basic elements such as wording, color, and structure can easily influence an individual. The final and perhaps the most influential personal experience I have had with this topic comes from stories I have heard from my grandfather and his career in the advertising world, which have played a role in my long term career choice because he has shown me that advertising and marketing is not as easily executed as previously thought and is actually a time consuming and expensive process. Through all of these experiences I have gathered a great interest in marketing as well as the desire to learn the incredible craft, which I hope to begin to do through this project.

In order to research I will gather data from a multitude of sources. To understand the psychology of buying and selling I will consult scholarly journals and other various internet research tools. To study the process of advertising I will be interning at a local marketing agency where I hope to gather information on how groups of people are targeted and what exactly it takes to sell various products. In my internship I will be shadowing a partner at Dark Horse Media, where I will be allowed to observe the entire advertising campaign process from the original client’s need to increase their exposure,  to the final product that is distributed throughout the community. I will be introduced to office data collection systems that are used to target specific demographics, as well as be allowed to possibly participate in various client events outside of the office where I will be able to observe more client interactions. To study the effectiveness of advertisements I will be conducting interviews with a broad spectrum of consumers. 

I am so grateful to have been given this opportunity to research something that I have become incredibly passionate about, and I am eager to begin this experience! Thank you for reading.