How did you Reach That Level?

I was up watching Sportscenter on ESPN when I was rudely interrupted by a commercial break.  The first commercial in the set was a self promoting ad put on by members of the Sportscenter journalist.  Then the next was a Commercial for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

I was very pleased with the overall presentation of the Commercial.

The main thing that actually appealed to me about the commercial was when the two characters where talking about how much they were advancing through the levels of the game.  Then the one guy says, “You will never reach this level”.  It allowed me to connect with the characters in the commercial because I often trash talk with my friends about in-game progress and achievements.

This ad in particular is not trying to use “puffery” to sell sex or a perfect image.  I think that it is mainly trying to sell Wal-Mart as the perfect retailer.  It is saying to gamers “Hey you don’t have to wait in long lines at Video Game Specialty stores”.  I remember that Wal-Mart ran an ad when Madden 10 came out which followed along the same lines.

From that stand point I don’t feel as if the ad is affecting me as a consumer to shop at Wal-Mart mainly because I have a personal bias against the retailer, but I feel as if the commercial does an effective job in showing off the product (Modern Warfare 2) and it does make it appealing to me.

I think that the main target audience for this ad was males ages (17-25).  I choose this age group because the game is rated M for mature and I would say that most gamers are males.  At the time that I saw the commercial it was about 10 o’clock so I think that was an appropriate time slot to expose the age to the target market.  Sports and violence go hand in hand i.e. Football, Boxing, MMA, Wrestling and Hockey for examples.

Usually TV ads depict character’s in stereotypical ways but I did not feel as if this ad portrayed characters as such.  If I had to decide on a stereotype based solely on this ad, I would say that it is how competitive they make the two guys in the ad.  I feel as if this is a normal thing because I am competitive with my friends but at the same time I realize that not everyone is that way with their friends.  Maybe it’s a guy thing which would make sense if their target market is males ages 17-25.

The ad was effective for me but it did not make me go out and buy the product.  I have gotten away from playing video games as often as I did when I was younger so I don’t really buy games that often.  But I am intrigued by the game itself and I would be more than willing to go and rent it and see what all the hoopla is about.  So in effect, they did get me.

did you see that?

Have you ever seen a car wreck, a fight, or some other type of event that you felt you needed to share with friends or even the world? And after witnessing this event did you go out and tell your friends and or the world, well you’ve been participating in Citizen Journalism.

According to Dictionary.com Citizen Journalism can be defined as the non-professional reporting of the news; also called participatory journalism.  It allows people without journalism training to use modern technology such as blogs, social media websites and other internet outlets to create, change or fact check media.

Citizen journalism has its advantages and disadvantages as does any other media source.

As a positive it allows for prompt reporting, self-expression, new ideas, a first person view, production cost are relatively low and the ability to check the facts of questionable facts.

Although it is also very easy for Citizen Journalist to mis-print stories, leave out important details and be incredibly bias.

Citizen Journalism has played a crucial part in reporting some of the most important news stories over the past few years.  Including the Virginia Tech Shootings in April of 2007.  Footage taken from students’ camera phones, Facebook status updates and twitter messages all allowed mainstream media such as CNN and inside look to what was really going on. Other incidents such as the protest in Burma in 2007, Mumbai attacks in 2008 and the Hudson River plane crash in early 2009 all were covered by Citizen Journalist.

Usually when you see events covered on the news stations, you see them from a distance.  Meaning you see a news reporter standing in front of a scene, in front of the police tape giving a break down of the events that took place.

With Citizen Journalism you see pictures, ammature video footage and first hand accounts of what took place.  Things you would normally never be exposed to thanks to media GateKeepers.

Although these incidents were covered by mainstream media; pictures, videos and eye-witness accounts where first distributed by citizens then picked up by news stations. Some professional journalist may not like that ammatures are posting coverage of the events but they can see the benefits in a first person exposure to the events.