VCU Brandcenter - the second semester

Tomorrow I will go back to the school with something new. We changed the school's name from VCU Adcenter to VCU Brandcenter coz we are not just an advertising student. We learn about art, culture, consumer, and commerce that lead to the better branding. We also have new website (www.brandcenter.vcu.edu) which is better than the old one. The new website is quite simple and i love the transition of the webpage. My school also have video series from the leading advertising folks in our industry talking about "CHANGE." There are...
Paul Lavoie, Taxi
Nancy Vonk and Janet Kestin, Ogilvy Toronto
Jeff Steinhour, CP+B
Joe McCarthy, J&J
Bob Scarpelli, DDB
Mike Hughes, The Martin Agency
and 4 more. See the videos here

Lastly, we moved to the new building (which is a couple blocks away from my place..yay!) I am quite excited about the new building because Clive Wilkinson is in charge of this project. I can't wait to see my new lime-green floor. And my second semester is about to begin tomorrow. I am ready for this.

Show me the money

Last two weeks I had a chance to do an extra assignment about "slaves to marketing." It reminded me of one image that i have in my laptop for a while. The guy in this image is Ryan Sheckler, an American professional skateboarder, with his last name tattoo on his back. Many people may know him from MTV's The Life of Ryan show. When I re-looked at this image again, some thoughts came across in my mind.
1. This kid is very talented and skillful. He has got a sponsor from skateboarding since he was 10 or 11 and presently (now he is 17) many big companies are supporting him like Red Bull and Volcom. So this image for me is kind of juxtaposition between expressing himself through his tattoo on his back and corporate logos that have been attached to him for 7 years. I feel that his tattoo is meaningless for me because he has been labeled and monetized so something that he tried to identify himself is diluted.

2. Teenage girls love and adore him. Of course, they are the slave to marketing. They think he is cool even he wears a Volcom t-shirt and Red Bull cap all the time. On the other hand he sells his own t-shirt on his official website with his tattoo screened on it like this. I can't deny that we are in capitalism and it works.

Your Skin is Amazing

Though I hesitate to criticize, there are some things I just don't like about the new Vaseline campaign. As a former media planner for Vaseline in Thailand, I would say Vaseline once focused on the skin health benefits and did a good job in discriminating itself among the competitors as healthy body care product. So the tonality of communication was straight-to-the-point and very functional but still kept a feminine element. In the recent campaign titled “Your skin is amazing,” speaks about healthy skin in a different way. The creative work is brilliant and enhances the strategy with great execution. But I feel that Vaseline campaign is too similar to Dove campaign in a few ways.

As a consumer, I think Vaseline is a simple, affordable product. I feel that Vaseline is trying to educate and convince me about their skin mission statement by telling me that moisturizing my skin when dry is not enough. Taking care of skin is a long-term regime and a thousand ways can disrupt your soft skin. But my Mom won’t understand what they are talking about. The majority of consumers still focus on problem solving and that’s Vaseline job to convert consumers to be more proactive to their skin. As an advertising student who loves to explore new things, I browsed the website and found out that Vaseline paid 5 celebrities to endorse the brand and be a part of skin visions activity. The only one I like belongs to Dave Navarro, a guitarist of Red Hot Chili Peppers and Jane’s addiction. I love the insight saying “My skin is my canvas…my tattoos represent a time in my life….” I hope this quote is real.