Ring Pops: Fun at your fingertips!

With the semester finally coming to a close and Christmas looming around the corner, I find myself sitting on the couch in my family room at home, TV on, wrapped in a blanket, and not a schoolbook in sight. Just the way Holiday Break should be. However, with all of this free time, I finally have the chance to reflect on this past semester (I can't believe I'm already halfway done with my junior year in college. Where did the time go?).

I've had my fair share of gen ed classes, and as I come closer to the cusp of senior year, I am starting to enroll in some of my capstone classes. Most of these classes serve as preparation for the real-world; so naturally, we engage in projects that mimic what we could potentially encounter in our future careers.

In my Creative Strategies class, our final project was to complete a campaign for a brand of candy. Components of the campaign were: the SAP, two print ads, a mounted storyboard for a TV spot, and a digital ad. The campaign was completed in groups, and I was in a group with 2 other girls. We decided to choose Ring Pops as our candy. While I don't have our final SAP on me (it's saved on my desktop on my account at school, I'll get that uploaded as soon as I get back!), I do have our final two print ads. Our target audience was children ages 8-12, and our slogan was "Fun at your fingertips".

Mayhem is everywhere!

Have you met Mayhem? Many of us are all to familiar with Allstate's latest campaign featuring the sadistic perpetrator in situations which show the importance of investing in Allstate's insurance. When I first saw the ads, I thought they were hilarious (My personal favorite is Mayhem as the GPS). In my Research Methods in Advertising/PR class, we're doing a semester-long group research project on a different brand or company. My group chose to base our research question around Allstate's Mayhem campaign, asking whether or not humor is an effective tool in advertising.

We are going to create a survey which includes video links to ads from both the light-hearted, humorous Mayhem campaign, and the more serious "You're In Good Hands" Dennis Haysbert campaign. Following each ad, we will pose a series of questions meaning to gauge the memorable, informative, engaging, and convincing nature of the ads.

Allstate's latest Mayhem ad: super fan

Our group is going to start designing our survey soon and then we can finally start reeling in some data that will (hopefully) bring us a step closer to answering our research question.

I read an interesting article on the New York Times website that talked about Mayhem, and how Allstate has adopted the new strategy of creating a villain to portray the product (or in this case, company) as the hero. By doing this, Allstate is able to establish a positive brand image. Another thing I like about the Mayhem campaign is how they still include the Dennis Haysbert voiceover at the end of the ads, almost like they're tying the two campaigns together or maintaining some sort of congruity within their marketing.


This has definitely been an in-depth undertaking but I've definitely learned a lot about marketing research throughout the process. And what a process it has been. I'm looking forward to seeing the finished product (and the finish line for that matter!)

Ad Project: Milwaukee Power Tools

For my creative strategies advertising class, one of our projects was to create two ads for an assigned "client", who in this case, was Milwaukee Power Tools. After working on the project for several weeks and putting the finishing touches on our Strategic Action Plans, our professor told us that suddenly "our client changed their mind" and wanted to go in a new direction with the campaign: comparing aspects of the tools to nature. We were told to scrap our past ideas and start from scratch; however, we were to keep our SAP the same. Our final ads along with SAP were to be turned in the next day.

Panic ensued.

The rationale behind the last-minute change-up was that our professor wanted us to focus less on using Photoshop and InDesign and more on creating good body copy. Stressed under the time-constraint and tired after what seemed like an endless back-and-forth email conversation, my partner and I managed to pull together two decent ads.

Our final two ads for Milwaukee Power Tools

In our original SAP, my partner and I had targeted the product to middle aged, white-collar male homeowners with families. We felt that our original slogan, "Build your own memories" could still be relevant with the new theme, so we didn't change it. The most difficult part of this project was deciding which two images to use for the new concept and developing creative headlines that could relate the images to our audience and the product.

Hopefully what we lacked in creative graphic outflux, we made up for in copywriting!