Daily Archives: December 6, 2014

Final Projects, Uncategorized

Karen Annotated Bibliography #3

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Swallow, Erica. “Creating Innovators: Why America’s Education System Is Obsolete.” Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 25 Apr. 2012. Web. 06 Dec. 2014. <http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericaswallow/2012/04/25/creating-innovators/>.

Erica Swallow is a writer at Forbes Magazine and she focuses on case studies and strategies for founding successful startups. Swallow’s main argument in this article is that innovation will be driven if the American education system renews itself. Her article mostly highlights the studies executed by Tony Wagner, who is a Harvard Innovation Education Fellow.

Swallow’s main argument is that she covering this research without an objective voice but instead she is trying to persuade the reader that Wagner’s study is a useful resource. The strength of the article is that she has logical reasoning behind the claims that she makes and quotes authority figures in the field to support those too. The weakness of this article is that it links to the study but does not elaborate on the methods taken and what it actually tested to reach these conclusions. It furthers the argument of our final project because it talks about changing the stolid education system that relies on lecturing to a dynamic one in order to make children prepared to be innovators. Although, our product is mainly a way to enhance the working memory of children in order for them to learn basic skills, it also makes students engage more interactively with learning, which will build these problem-solving characteristics that Wagner talks about. SynesthEasy goes beyond performing rudimentary activities to remember state capitals and the periodic table.

 

Uncategorized

Annotated Bibliography

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Nylund, Viktor. “Marketing and Advertising to Children: The Issues at Stake.”The Gaurdian. UNICEF, n.d. Web. 04 Dec. 2014.

 

Viktor Nylund is a senior advisor of corporate social responsibility at UNICEF. His main claim is that children are much more vulnerable to marketing campaigns and that businesses need to be conscious of this idea. He also contends that children are becoming much more independent, to the point that children are becoming their own focus group, making independent purchases and having influence on purchases in the household. He mainly focuses his attention on entrepreneurs and people in the business world. As a senior advisor at UNICEF, he has a natural bias towards protecting consumers from morally questionable business practices, regardless of profits. This helps us because it reminds us that our marketing to children has to be socially conscious, and if we behave in this

 

Fromm, Jeff. “The Crucial Fact Most Marketers Miss About Millennials: Big Changes for Gen Y Marketing.” Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 23 Sept. 2014. Web. 04 Dec. 2014.

 

Jeff Fromm is the president of FutureCast, a firm that focuses on marketing to millennials. He has five main claims: millennials are less concerned with environmentalism after becoming parents, millennial parents are more politically diverse than ever, millennials tend to have less friends when they become parents, millennials are very concerned with privacy, and millennials spend more money when they become parents. He writes to mainly business owners and advertisers marketing to millennials. While not a millennial himself, he does have three children who are millennials, which inform his bias in the field. There is a lot of fat in this article that won’t be helpful, but the main points are incredibly useful in terms of marketing to this new generation of parents.

 

Final, Uncategorized

Third Annotated Bibliography Entry, White Space

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Morello, Robert. “Five Tips for Marketing to College Students.” Small Business. Houston Chronicle, n.d. Web. 06 Dec. 2014.

Robert Morello is a Columbia graduate, a writer, and professor of travel and tourism. He has also worked in marketing and consulting. This article stems more from his marketing experience. “Five Tips for Marketing to College Students” is a condensed set of ideas for companies of all fields to use in their marketing toward people of college age. The intended audience is small companies looking to market their brand toward young adults and especially college students. The five ideas stated in the article are: “Follow the Money,” focusing on parents that fund college students, “Get Them Involved,” acknowledging the importance of interactivity between the product and the consumer through social media and advertising, “Harness Enthusiasm,” which is essentially playing off of young people’s avoidance of mainstream anything, “Giveaways,” using free swag to get the company’s name out there, and “Responsibility,” associating the company with causes that college students believe in in order to win their moral approval as an establishment. Morello claims that these five advertising techniques are key to marketing toward college students.

This article provides some interesting ideas for marketing techniques, but only gives a general overview of ways to execute the ideas presented. It would benefit the reader more to have included some input from actual college students rather than just present an idea of how they think. The article does have the bias of an author who is thinking primarily of how to generate revenue, which works for making money but can create a superficial tone for the company in my view. The article suggests harnessing student ambassadors to spread the word about the company, but I have seen this happen before and it makes for a weird, kind of forced social exchange between student ambassadors and their peers that makes for a weird image of the company. Overall I think the most useful part of the article is the piece about giveaways. We had considered this before, but in a more restricted way than suggested in the article. Morello provides the idea of giving out living essentials to college students, for example hairbands, toothbrushes, or phone wallets, to keep the company’s name in mind when students are using these items. I think White Space would benefit most from this kind of advertising, making this article relevant to our paper, even if just by this blurb.