The last blog

The first blog that I read was Jenn's blog , I found it really interesting to relate experiments to the world of athletics. It is a known fact that steroid use is on the rise, so I think that it is a good PR move for researchers to find new ways to enhance their endurance with legal products. This summer I got really into working out. I was constantly conducting experiments just like the one's that she talks about in her blog. I would try different work out routines, different diets, different website programs, different classes and so on.

I also like how she talked about athletes and the importance of crisis management. Athletes are constantly trying new things, (experiments), to enhance their skill in their particular sport. Their PR people always have to be aware of what they are doing, so in the case of an accident they can protect their clients. Experimenting with healthy products is fine and probably encouraged, but experimenting with steroids is just risky.

The next blog that I read was Kayla's blog, about the cause and effect of the fashion world. I found it really interesting about retail testing. I have never really thought about how stores go about seeing what will and will not be bought in a store. I think that is a really unique way of research. Sometimes I go into stores and see an item that I could not imagine anyone ever wearing. Then I notice that there are about 30 on the rack and it seems that they have not been touched. I'm curious if retail testing occurs that often and if I could point it out.

I also agree about incentives in fashion. Any fashionista will take any free item for an hour of their time. Although a gucci bag or shoes seem like a little much. I have been given make up, perfume or an accessory, but never a product THAT amazing. All in all, experimental research is extremely important in the fashion world.

FLASH MOBS !!

Last year my brother called me and told me to go on Facebook and check out what he had done that past weekend. He asked me if I had ever heard of a flash mob, it sounded like something I should know about, but I wasn't too familiar with it. I went on Facebook and saw a video of thousands of people dancing in a random place, he was one of them. It was definitely something that was right up my alley, but I still did not understand the point of it.

I started doing some research. A flash mob is defined as "a large group of people who assemble suddenly into a public place, perform and unusual and pointless act for a brief time, and then quickly disperse"(google)". Flash mobs are usually done to raise awareness about something by causing such a huge scene.Oprah did a flash mob to celebrate her 24th season of her show. It started as a concert being performed by the Black Eyed Peas and by the end of it had over 20,000 people dancing to the same exact routine! Many improvisation groups conduct flash mobs just for fun. I also found a few that occurred on college campuses, such as UNC Chapel Hill, this one caught my eye especially. This flash mob occurred during finals week. Hundreds of stressed out students posted up in the library, looking for any means of procrastination. A total of 3,000 students took 10 minutes out of their studying time to dance off the exhaustion and release the stress.

The unexpected factor of a flash mob is that it all started out as a social networking experiment.  A man named Bill decided to created an email called "themobproject@yahoo.com" and sent it to himself. He then sent it to about 40 of his friends, assuming that they would read it and think that their friend Bill found something cool and unique to do. Since Bill was living in NYC at the time he knew most people were always looking for the new big thing to partake in, especially in the arts community. The main point of Bill's experiment was to see how many people he could get to come a show expecting one thing, that would turn into something completely different, a flash mob. His idea is that the people themselves, would become the show.

Flash mobs now take place all over the world. Many people have followed Bill's idea and used them for other means, such a raising awareness of celebrating something significant. They can usually see the outcome just by observing the amount of people that show up to each practice (which normally take place on a football field, hockey rink, or another large area, depending on the amount of people). They can also observe the outcome by seeing how many people showed up to the actual event and by using content analysis to later review what the media, community or participants had to say about it.

How do we get hooked on TV?

Have you ever wondered what makes a TV show SO addicting? How do certain networks know how to target an audience, and hold onto them for soo long. Shows like HBO's Entourage and True Blood hit the target of college students and graduates. Students have been known to make a night out of "HBO Sunday's" specifically to watch these two shows. Then you have TV stations like MTV who have their annual "MTV Spring Break" every year. High school students become extremely attracted to this week of drinking and partying because they believe that their future college years may be just like that.

TV Stations don't just take a guess at who would enjoy their shows, they start with a hypothesis, like any other start to qualitative research. HBO takes a common approach by using Nielsen, an independent survey company that gives ratings to all popular TV shows. Nielsen finds out the viewers opinions on past and upcoming episodes for HBO. They also tell HBO what TV shows are in the running's on their station, who their competitors are and who their target audience seems to be.

MTV takes a slightly different approach. MTV joined with the Associated Press to gain a better understanding of the youth audience. They had a study conducted by Knowledge Networks Inc., another research company. Their study consisted of over 1,000 youths, aged 13-24, answering a survey. The survey was titled "Youth Happiness Poll" and asked questions about what everyday situations in life make you happy or unhappy. The respondents would have never known that they were taking a survey for MTV unless it said "MTV" across the top of the survey.

I find this survey a lot more interesting than HBO's tactics. It is really amazes me that MTV is more concerned about what makes their target audience happy so that they could implement those variables into different shows. This method of research may work better for the company not only because it is showing their interest in their viewers, but also because it helps build their reputation.

Analyzing other blogs..

The first blog that I read was Vanessa's on a qualitative fieldwork facility in France called "Louvre Focus Group". I found this very interesting because I did my presentation on focus groups and I never thought to consider actual facilities meant for qualitative research as a location to conduct your focus group. I was thinking in a very narrow scope, considering libraries, stores, study rooms, restaurants, but never facilities meant for that purpose.

Vanessa makes an excellent point about conducting the focus group at a neutral place to prevent bias. As I was looking through the website I realized that I personally, would definitely feel more comfortable talking with strangers about my personal opinions and experiences in a such a nice atmosphere. Although I could also see this setting seeming a bit too professional for some people. It might make them feel as if they are being judged (for say an interview for a job), rather than giving their input on a product or service.

The next blog that I read was Laura's blog about qualitative research and the Celebrity Loop Forum. Obviously it is more difficult to conduct qualitative research with celebrities, given the fact that it is almost impossible to get in touch with them, so this Forum seems like a good idea. But a question that comes to my mind is how reliable is this site? While I was browsing I could not find one response from a celebrity. I also noticed that these celebrities are not who you would consider your current IN-celebs, but that is beside the point. It seemed that it was very easy to put a post on there, so I'm wondering if it would be just as easy to give yourself an official celeb name, include the word "official" and BAM! you are now a "celeb" in the Celebrity Loop Forum, something just seems off to me. I'm sure if you give any IT major this website for 15 minutes they could completely break it down and have everyone from Jay Z to Kristen Stewart on there answering the fans questions about them, which would in turn, most likely just cause a huge law suit.

On the other hand Laura did make a good point about business professionals using social media sites to find out what celebrities are saying about their products. I just think it would be a better idea to stick to social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, rather than message boards that everyone in the world could potentially have access to.

Street Fashion

For decades fashion has been an ubiquitous theme in the media. A magazine might be covering a recent cat walk or comparing outfits from a previous awards show like the Grammys, but fashion is not just about clothes, accessories, makeup and hair. Every element of fashion represents a certain attitude, period of time or personality. Everyday we observe these elements of fashion through street fashion.

Street fashion is the silent language of fashion, personality and individuality. Every time we step out of our house and come in contact with another human being we are conducting a form of qualitative research called observation. Do you ever wonder where a fashion designer gets some of their ideas for the clothes they design? Or what about a model and the unique style that they wear. Elle Magazine, one of the most well known fashion magazines in the country, quotes on their website "High fashion is covered from the runway to the street and then brought to you online each day". They show street fashions, runway fashions and celebrities fashions. All in all a lot of the clothes have very similar aspects, but the people wearing them do not. Elle's website also includes a section on their web page called the street chic of the day. They tell the readers the details of what the person photographed is wearing, but they leave it to their readers to decide the attitude and personality of the model.

Here is an example of Elle's "street chic" of the day from earlier this week. The only information Elle gives is about the detail of the garments, once you scroll down, comments, observations and judgments from individuals just like us are revealed. One person spoke about how "aging" she looks, stating that she "looks a few decades older than the other girls in the photo". Many other comments were made about this outfit being a Halloween costume and it being far from elegant, and more sloppy looking.

Just by making a few simple observations, you are gaining insight into those girls attitude, behavior, values, culture and lifestyle. Not always all of them, but you can definitely hit a few. When I look at this picture I first see a girl who sloppily tossed her hair up and threw on sunglasses to cover her face that she didn't have time to put makeup on. The outfit seems to have taken a little more time. She chose a long tight leather dress. This shows confidence. The lack of smile on her face shows arrogance. The printed cover up looks like a bathrobe. The shoes just add to the randomness of the outfit and why does she have a small purse and a clutch? It is overall a total mess. None of it coordinates, she simply looks Gothic, angry, unhappy and unorganized.

Our observations may not always be correct, but the more you observe the more accurate your results become and the better you become at analyzing. Street fashions works as a way to give insight to people about what type of individual you are. Whether you are expressing yourself through colors, texture, print, fabric, etc. everyday you are being researched and analyzed before someone even speaks a word to you.

Comments on other blogs

After a stressful start to this midterm week I came across the perfect blog to set my mind at ease for a bit. In  Jackie's blog post about travel PR, she highlighted fantastic points. Public Relation Professionals are great communicators. They know how to maintain good relationships with people as well as keep people happy, so what better job to get involved with then working in travel PR. In travel PR, professionals work to enhance our vacations the best they can. When planning a vacation, a lot of thought and research goes into it. You are not only making a dent in your savings account, but you want to make sure that every penny you spend is worth it. Travel PR professionals make sure that every minute of your vacation is full of options. After studying abroad last semester, I could definitely see myself going into Travel PR.

The second blog that I looked at was Sam Greitzer's about the new hit movie "The Social Network". This blog appealed to me because the movie honestly changed my perspective on life. I left the movie having complete motivation to do something spontaneous. I wanted to change the world, create the next big thing, do SOMETHING that would make me famous that looking at now, seems so silly, like Facebook.

Sam talks about how Facebook is the 2nd most popular website in the United States under Yahoo. To think that an idea, that started out as Facemash (a website comparing pictures of girls) and resulted in the 2nd most popular website in the U.S is absolutely outrageous! The fact that all it took was some unobtrusive research to figure out what students like Mark Zukerberg desired and would think is "cool", makes me think that unobtrusive research must have been used decades ago as well. 

Reading my fellow classmates blogs has really shown me how often PR research is used. Come to think of it I can't think of a time when research is not used!

Pandora - Researching New Music

   Every day thousands of people go on Pandora to find new music based on their old and current favorites. You simply type in an artist, song or genre and Pandora will start a channel with songs and artists that have musical qualities similar to what you posted.

  I am a huge music buff. I am the type of person when asked, "What type of music do you like" I respond with "Everything", and actually mean it. I am constantly looking for new ways to find or "research" new music, and by using Pandora I am conducting my own unobtrusive research. Pandora is a very popular site used by many people not only on their computers, but on their phones as well.

  Musicians can also use this as a way to see what popular channels Pandora has and judge how well they think they are doing in their careers. They can also use Pandora to figure out what other bands or musicians they should team up with on tours.

  Another benefit to Pandora is ratings. The site allows you to rate if you like a song by pressing a thumbs up or thumbs down symbol. It will then readjust the type of songs it gives you so they are not similar to the songs you dislike. This website is a simple research tool for all music lovers and musicians.