Commercials, viral videos, and all other forms of advertising have been criticized for their "exaggerations" "scams", and even "lies". When someone bring up this option with me personally one specific image comes to mind, Fast Food Commercials.

Ahhh Yes! the lovely and deceiving McDonald's, Wendy's, Burger King etc. commercials that reveal images of deliciously glorious looking burgers. Well its one thing on TV and something completely different, even incomparable in real life.

Recently McDonald's had realized the innumerable objections to what customers were seeing on TV and the product they were actually getting. Additionally, McDonald's ran numerous social media efforts that had been meant to illustrate personal experiences with McDonald's. This effort backfired and consumers Tweeted about their horror stories and unhappiness with the food and its' appearance.

In response the corporation created it's own viral campaign revealing the type of photo editing that went into creating a commercial. The end result is the video "Our Food. Your Questions," which debuted at No. 2 on the Viral Video Chart, with 5 million views.In detail, the video spends extra time illustrating how a food stylist painstakingly browns the burger's edges and places each piece of cheese, pickle and onion before strategically injecting the sandwich with ketchup and mustard. Compared with the Big Mac you are served in minutes at your local store, this process takes hours and seems to explain why the burger looks so much better in advertisements. In all, the video, seems like an effort by McDonald's to take control of its brand image online, to expose the inner workings of the company instead of letting someone else do it which has gotten a positive response from their audience.

See the video for yourself.

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Recently marketing is being overwhelmingly concentrated in social media. Admittedly, social media is today’s communication giant but I feel marketing and advertising could use a breath of fresh air. Some marketers are attempting to change their focus away from social media towards the ‘next big thing,’ that isn’t necessarily going to be web-based. 

While I had been looking into the topics of social media and marketing trends, I had encountered some interesting results. For instance, we all know that SEO is much more popular than PPC when considering social media, but did you know that Emailing still hold the top spot at as top marketing channel used other than social media. Search engine optimization lagged behind significantly at number two. Furthermore, “68 percent of respondents said they’re planning to increase their SEO efforts — a number that’s down slightly from 71 percent in 2011.” Could this be due to some crowding out in the social media / web field?

Crowding out could be a viable reason for marketers and corporations to be looking elsewhere to get their creative genius out. In its’ initial start social media had been an outlet for ‘the average person’ to get their word out; today, the platforms are OVERRUN by corporations bombarding viewers with ads and gaining so much recognition that ‘the average person’ struggles to find a place where they can have a significant say.

Nonetheless new venues in social media are being adopted. Google+ being the most prominent. But, Facebook remains as the top social media site used by marketers and business owners, followed by Twitter and Linkedin. Google+ falls behind YouTube and Blogs in 6th place. Yet this venue is projected to increase in popularity in the coming years and really give Facebook a run for it’s’ money.  But, as Google+ had recently revamped its page to allot users more creativity, Facebook buys one of the most popular phone apps (Instagram) to expand their operations into the mobile market (a market where Facebook doesn’t get money from their advertisements, a significant aspect of their business model.)

This social media war is truly becoming old. I find that there is little to be surprised about anymore with advertisements on this platform. Let’s face it, you can do ANYTHING online, so what is there to be surprised about. So where the true challenge and ability to really impress lies, is in other non-web-based venues. In detail, I would prompt everyone to check out Sid Lee Architecture. This firm is different from regular architecture companies in that it merges with the commercial creative world. They use art and buildings to portray a brand image. Truly innovative! Most impressive is that they are against the digital. The owner has been quoted as saying; “We won’t hire a digital-media artist, but we’ll hire an architect who can program and we won’t hire an illustrator but bring someone who like to draw.”

Up above is a diseign by Sid Lee for the Red Bull headquarters. Can we say corporate culture?

Change is key in this sector!!!

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