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Throughout my semester, I dwelled in the depths of Second Life and encountered numerous ways in which media and brands enter people lives. Honestly, I do not remember the last time I saw an advertisement in a magazine . Nor, do I remember the last time I heard a radio commercial. As a 22-year-old rising senior in Integrated Marketing Communications , I should be paying more attention to traditional mediums of advertising. But, I don’t. Because I find myself wraped up in other means of advertising . I am not your typical Generation Yer ; you can reach me but it’s much harder to get me to be brand loyal.

After researching other media habits (and perhaps my future media habits based on demographic research I have done), I have been able to identify and distinguish market segments based on a target market’s lifestyle traits and psychographical information. My media habits consist of:
-Internet (blogs, email, graphic design, news)
- Internet Radio
-My iPod
-College Newspaper
-Outdoor advertising
-Cable Television (TLC, Discovery, FX, CNN, Style, Bravo, Showtime) The very niche segmented cable channels with specialty reality television shows
-Art and Business Magazines
-Guerilla Advertising (for music, events, cafes, food, alcohol)
-Product Placement
-Virtual Worlds (Second Life, There.com, etc)

In the beginning of my semester, I reported trends on mainly advergaming, product placement, and ad concepts. Advergaming is a great, key tool to utilize and develop for brands, yet it’s not capturing my attention. Every advergame I stumbled upon, I played for a very short amount of time. Enough time though as I would spend perhaps looking at an ad in a magazine. The interactive gaming online should be very engaging for people in my demographic, along with strong visuals and appeal. Its difficult to really get a hold of us. Like the M&M’s interactive movie search quest game I found. It was very unique and high quality. An essential procrastination game.

Ok, so product placement. Yeah, I saw that logo. And yes, I did remember that Top Design mentioned that particular designer when I went to IKEA . Oddly enough, I cannot remember the name of the designer now. I believe it has to be strongly placed or truly enable much exposure and brand loyalty. Reality Television seems to be the best channel to get across product placement as well. It shows the consumer that people like them are using a certain brand and sometimes it doesn’t look as purposely placed.

I also went into rants in some of my topics about the creative world of advertising by critiquing some ad concepts I came across: most of which were good; otherwise I wouldn’t have noticed them to begin with. This also generated word of mouth for these brands. When promoting my blog on blog search engines and linking them through comment posts, I found that much research and exposure of a brand can be done through the blogosphere.



This is how I got into the buzz about Second Life. Even though Second Life has no advertising as of yet besides the freedom of press and word of mouth, it really generated traffic and membership. Without the blogosphere, perhaps memberships would have not exceeded 5 million? Blogging has added a unique dimention to the Internet. It has provided us with a new means of communication and finding what we need. Much of this is done by linking us to places we need to check out or topics that we are searching for. It also allows us to share our ideas, imagery and notions with a bit more clarity.