By: Lia Contesso
Submitted: 2012-01-26 09:32:20 | Word Count: 613
The craziness of advertising on the streets has been around for quite some time. With the prices of television ads ever higher (at least before the economic crisis and prior to the arrival of the cents of new channels of digital television), many companies looked for a less costly alternative that managed to reach large numbers of people while remaining easily measurable, something that was quite difficult with mass media like television and billboards.
With the arrival of social media and the increased identification between brands and their consumers as well as their employees, a great percentage of advertising has now become personal. Not personal in the sense of using individuals as vehicles for transmitting messages but rather as using them as the canvas for the logos and slogans, maybe in the form of personalized key chains or t-shirts with tribal-like messages.
[ advertisement ]
The firms that once took the step from mass television advertising to, for example, advertising cars, are now taking advantage of the social character that has invaded not only the digital environment but also our daily life in terms of interaction with brands.
Companies, being much closer to the consumer and easier to reach, have experienced a change in the relationship with their clients, who can now through the use of online media, directly and publicly complain about a defective product just as he/she would have done before at the office. In the same way, we can now express our appreciation by linking something on facebook or leaving a comment on the page of the concerned firm, but we can also express this same positive conception of a brand by wearing a merchandising item with the firm's image. The businesses that have had the client as their focus for the longest time now, have been the first to realize how the degree of identification some consumers reach with a brand can make them want to wear a promotional t-shirt a logoed key chain or the slogan of the moment on a baseball cap.
Promotional clothing is in among the youngsters. Fashion firms realized faster than anyone that the feeling of being part of a group is a powerful one, and that such membership often comes in the form of an imagery shared with the components of such immediate group, for example, in the form of colors, designs and, sure enough, clothing brands. The consciousness of this fact among businesses has rapidly grown and now not only fashion firms but also telephone operators, food&beverage leaders and consumer electronics companies are creating their own tokens.
Aside from the type of support, advertising remains something that has surprise, amuse and not be perceived as aggressive or imposed. Because of this, and taking into account that the platform for such messages is now the persona of an individual, brands have teamed up with websites and producers of custom t-shirts and caps to include among the many designs proposed by the users, their own brand or message, usually making appeal to the identification instinct and that of differentiation from people outside of the group.
One of the advantages of this kind of advertising is that it represents a one to one impact campaign in the sense that individuals influence their entourage by giving positive reviews of the company, but it is also a mass impact campaign since there is a certain element of mere brand exposure to all the people that at some point during the day come across the person with the customized merchandising.
