Sunday, 3 January 2010

Gender

The topic of 'Gender' was discussed in the last lesson. The definition of 'Gender' is whether being the sex of a male or female. Gender is determined socially, the reason for this is because each society emphasizes particular roles that each sex should play.
Men and Women are known for playing different roles in the society for example women have the role of producing children.

Difference between men and women:

There are many characteristic differences between men and women. These are thinking wise, human relationships, emotions, reactions to stress and languages.

The website Mastersofhealthcare.com (http://www.mastersofhealthcare.com/blog/2009/10-big-differences-between-mens-and-womens-brains/)explains the ten differences between men and women. I will be explaining some of the differences below:

* Human Relationships- Women tend to communicate more effectively than men. This is because women tend to look at the issues such as focus on how to create solutions that works for different situations, they talk through issues, emotions are involved, the tone women talk in with other people, women tend to show more empathy as men are more task oriented. Men tend to have more difficulties when it comes to understanding emotions, however women are more emotional than men and understand emotions more.

*Reaction to stress- Women approach this issue with the attitude of "tend and befriend". Men approach this issue with the attitude of "fight or flight". The reason for this is because women take care of the situation carefully and tend to be more stronger emotionally and do not lose their temper in a stressful situation, they "tend" to look after their children in a stressful time and "befriend" strong relationships with people. Reaction to stress occurs according to the difference of hormones in men and women.

*Right and Left brain- Research has shown that men are more left brain thinking and women are equal on both sides of brain thinking. Men are usually stronger with left brain activities and tend to approach problem solving from a task oriented perspective. Women tend to solve problems more creatively and they are more aware of their feelings and other people's feelings when communicating with others.



In today's lecture we started off by discussing how to impress women. In order to impress women small suprises make a difference for example some of the things people came up in the class were buying her flowers, gifts, love her, kiss her, listen to her and support her.



To women small detailed things matter for example a man would have to support his wife by telling and showing her how much he cares for. These are simple things that women expect from a man to do in order for him to impress her, if these things are not done for a women she will feel neglected and not loved which will leave to complications and misunderstandings.

We also discussed about how to impress a man. In order to impress men it is not too difficult as men tend to get impressed by women who take care of them by giving them food and looking after their needs.

An activity took place in class, in which a picture was shown to the students of a room with filled with different things. The aim of this activity was to look at the picture for a few mintues and then remember the items that were placed in the room. The results of this activity showed that women remembered more intimate things such as pictures and flowers and men tend to remember the bigger items such as funiture.

Gender Differences:

There are many differences between men and women, for example women tend to remember more intimate details and memory's such as the first word their child said.
Gender differences impact on advertising also in various ways, for example many of the adverts established target a certain gender group men or women. Usually adverts aimed at women target stressed beauty and youth, as for men their adverts target valued ambition and physical strength.

Solomon 1999, states that in advertising that the societies assumption about men and womens role are communicated according to the behaviour that are stressed for each gender. According to different products the adverts are made differently as they aim to target a specific gender, therefore women would be interested in adverts such as clothes and make up as men will be interested in adverts such as cars.

Women's shampoo advert:

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This advert target audience are women. Women's ads are more detailed as shown above, mainly they are toiletry or make up ads which women can relate to.

Men's Lynx advert:

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The above advert targets men. Men's adverts usually target a single product such as shown above the advert targets the Lynx product. Men tend to think in a more macro way, therefore they need to be shown a bigger picture in order to understand the advert, it is important for the advert to be less complex and to the point.

Friday, 1 January 2010

Enterprise Week

The Enterprise Week was very beneficial and interesting to all students. There was a variety of events that were available regarding after graduation jobs.
The event that I personally found interesting was the Question Time Industry Panel.

In this event 5 members represented different agencies. The first member was Sue Elms, she was a executive vice president of the global media of Millward Brown. The second member was Sue Unerman, chief strategy officer of Mediacom. The third member was George Hutchinson, chair and managing director public affairs of Burson-Marsteller. The fourth member was Rik Haslam, group creative architect of WWV Rapp and lastly the fifth member was Matthew Chapman, international service and systems innovation director of Billetts.

The main discussion that took place in the event was about how communication has developed throughout the years. One of the main points that was discussed was how broadband developed throughout the years. Research showed that 81% of marketers stated that they use mobile marketing online as they find that easier to use, the advance technology has helped the business industry to grow. Sue Unerman, stated that businesses can lose up to £10,000 on Internet adverts if they do not send out a clear message to their audience. Also, David (a 3rd year student) stated that "three thousand nine million searches of adverts appear on Google".

Another topic that was discussed by the panelists was 'Brands'. The panel stated that customers value the price of the brand and the value of the brand adds quality to customers lives. For example, Cadbury adds value to the society's lives by being adventurous and it also adds joy.
The concept of brand is changing, as consumers tend to contribute to brands by talking about the brand in the 21st century, for example these days whatever Google tends to say the consumers believe it, before this never used to happen, this indicates that if someone typed in Google search "what are the top ten companies in Britain?" the companies Google states, there is a high probability the public will believe.

Political factors about products were discussed. It was stated that products have to live up to their own power in order the product to sell. Advertising communication was mentioned, as in integration marketing communication all brands are given a voice as consumers should understand what each brand delivers and the message it sends out. Controlling brand seems to be less in control of the environment as it's all about shaping a brand in people's minds as it will allow the consumers to remember the brand.

Overall, I thought the panelists discussed good topics as they related to my assignments and the discussions discussed in the event helped me understand the topics more in depth for example the topic on 'Brands'.

Each of the companies above have their own webistes and blogs, which you can go on and discover further information about the agencies. The links of each agency is given below:



Website: http://www.millwardbrown.com/Sites/millwardbrown/

Blog: http://www.mb-blog.com/



Website: http://www.mediacomtmb.com/



Website: http://www.burson-marsteller.com/default.aspx

Blog: http://www.burson-marsteller.com/Innovation_and_insights/blogs_and_podcasts/BM_Blog/default.aspx



Website: http://uk.rapp.com/home/



Website: http://www.ebiquity.com/uk/billetts/