Allison's Blog- Social Media & Marketing

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             Part one of my social media monitoring project focused on Taylor Swift’s release of one of her most recent singles, “You Need to Calm Down”. In part two, I will be focusing on some of Taylor’s more neglected potential fan groups, as well as using data analytics tools to come up with recommendations for how she should interact with these demographics.             After looking at the worldwide trends for Taylor Swift, there were a few interest areas that I found surprising.             The first fact that I found unexpected was that the United States was only third on the list of popularity, with a 78% in popularity. Secondly, I was not expecting the Philippines to be number one on the list, as I do not think of the Philippines as having strong ties to U.S. culture. A quick Google search showed, however,...

Introduction:             It seems to me that it would be nearly impossible to find someone in today’s world who has never heard of Taylor Swift. Nonetheless, for those who feel they are ill-informed about Tay-Tay, she started out singing country music with a self-titled album in 2006. Since then, she has moved on to record songs of many genres, though her music could generally be labeled under the pop umbrella. One of her most infamous moments occurred in 2009, when Kanye West stormed the stage in the middle of her VMA acceptance speech to say that Beyoncé should instead have won the award. From this moment forward, Swift would have an image in many people’s minds as “America’s sweetheart”, which her younger fanbase and overall pleasant appearance also contributed to. For the vast majority of her career, another famous part of Taylor’s personal branding was her silence about political issues on either side. This has increasingl...

             In chapter 10 of “Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies”, authors Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff discuss the release of Dove’s initially groundbreaking “campaign for real beauty”. According to Li and Bernoff, when Unilever (Dove’s parent company) first created these commercials in 2003, “they took a big risk with the message, going against the industry norm of using young, slender, perfect models and instead featuring everyday, average women. . . it worked- people were definitely talking about the ad campaign and Dove” (200). Initially, the ads featured only images of women like the one below: After these ads created a buzz within the groundswell, Dove decided to take the messaging a step further. They created a video entitled “Evolution” in 2005, which exposed many of the photoshopping, airbrushing, and makeup techniques used in traditional advertisements. The video was successful ...

             Their contentious stance on the Hong Kong issue has sparked accusations from human rights organizations of being anti-free speech. But what is Blizzard? For those of you who, like me, are not very familiar with gaming, they are the creators of popular games such as World of Warcraft, Diablo, Overwatch, and Hearthstone. Last week, they hosted a tournament for the latter game. During an interview after the tournament ended, one of the players, Ng Wai Chung , shouted “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution in our times”. This was a direct response to the growing economic and political influence of China in Hong Kong. The now-famous Ng Wai Chung              Blizzard’s extremely controversial initial response to Chung’s statement was to ban him from Hearthstone entirely, as well as seizing his $10,000 in prize money for winning the tournament. Since doing so, they have returned the mone...

Reading Reflection Post #2: Groundswell Chapters 5-8             For almost all of us who have experienced life as a pre-teen, we know that puberty can be an awkward time in a person’s life. Tweens feel awkward in their changing bodies, experiencing a whirlwind of new emotions, and parents and their children alike hate the dreaded “talk”. For adolescent girls specifically, however, the onset of young adulthood creates a unique and uncomfortable new change: namely, periods.             Luckily for these girls, in recent years, conversations about periods have been moving away from shame and stigma, and towards education and openness. In fact, many companies are creating messages about ending the stigma of periods, particularly those that sell pads and tampons. Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff bring up a case study of such a website in their book “Groundswell: Winning in a Wor...