Advertising and Promotion

Recently, advertisers have been making more use of consumer generated commercials. These consumer generated commercials are usually produced on social media sites such as YouTube and Bebo. For example, Doritos' "Crash the Superbowl VIII" promotion which asked Doritos consumers to compete in making the best Doritos commercial for the 2014 Superbowl. The maker of the winning commercial received $1 million and time on the set of The Avengers: Age of Ultron. Though this is a very innovative and growing means of advertising, it has its advantages and disadvantages. A couple of the advantages of consumer generated advertising are creativity and exposure.  Consumer generated commercials make it easier for companies to get creative with advertising their products. Advertising firms only have so many employees with a limited amount of ideas. Ideas generated by inside and outside advertising firms are more finite than those generated by millions of consumers.  Com

Numerous home-shopping channels have recently started offering a variety of upscale products.   For example, in 2010 HSN started carrying the Sally Hershberger line of hair care products (Belch 486).   Home-shopping channels, such as QVC, Shop@homeTV, and Shop NBC have also added higher end products to their inventory like jewelry and high quality kitchenware.   However, home-shopping channels becoming more upscale has gives the industry its advantages and disadvantages. Some advantages are gaining prestige among consumers making people aspire to purchase from home-shopping channels and broadening the target market.   When people see upscale products being sold on home-shopping channels such as QVC and Shop NBC, these channels will automatically gain a reputation for being “higher end”.   People aspire to be a part of the high class, upper income social status, or at least give off the impression of being so.   This will encourage more people to utilize and purchase from home-shop