Trends in Advertising

Ever popped in your favorite VHS tape from your movie collection at home? Sure, we all have. Then you suddenly think to yourself, "Wow! Look at those clothes and hair! What were were thinking then?" Funny, nobody thought that...at that time. Everything that is a part of our culture evolves. This especially affects business, fashion, technology, food, or any service. The world moves with waves and changes...even in advertising. Let's reflect on a brief history with a few points I'd like to bring up and cover...

War and Protest

The fifties were a nation about being patriotic, and worried of being blown to mushroom clouds. War posters and magazine ads were simple and to the point about everything. Things were just starting to get good. Aw, hell... I'm too young, I don't care to start with the fifties, sorry. Check your local library or Amazon.

Do I see a Pattern?

The sixties were their of own era. Most of the people worth talking to that were a part of the sixties do not truly remember the sixties. Advertising methods were all about distorted wavy text, peace signs and bright pretty colorful flowers. Patterns on everything was hot and very much in style then. There were patterns on dresses, wallpapers and flooring of the typical American home. Kitchen appliances were cream or white. The color television was starting to appear in certain corners of neighborhoods. Patterns were all over concert posters, festivals, books and magazines. Car magazine ads were simpler, yet effective in getting the message across while advetising their $1,800 car. There were no concerns of drugs, gas prices, or safety issues then.

Wood Panelling

Then, the seventies came rockin' in. This era was more about clearing the fog of the sixties. Really cool things starting happening then. Color TV was more popular and affordable, music was thriving, people were getting treated with a little more equality. Everything was bright, colorful, and very much in your face. Patterns evolved more into floral patterns. Wood panelling came around and soon everything was wood panelled. Walls, furniture, home electronics, TV sets, even cars - were wood panel. Kitchen appliances were now yellow, and pastels were huge. Again, car magazine ads were simpler. Cigarette and liquor magazine ads were a huge business, mostly consisting of the rugged rocky mountain cowboy man or a contemporary casual business man/woman. In my opinion, the seventies were bland when it came to advertising or reaching out to a target audience.

Silver and Black

The eighties were a fast paced businessman's world. Computers and technology started to appear in the home. Everything was digitized, electronic, or techno-esque to look more "state of the art" and advanced. Wood paneling was now being mixed with black. Kitchen appliances were white or black. People were trying new things, new companies were developing, everyone was trying to catch up to each other. Beepers and cell phones appeared and put us all closer together, yet so far away. Sony and Nintendo came around the block soon afterwards. This started keeping rich eighties kids indoors more often, and paler. Coke ad campaigns and Max Headroom will sadly be missed by some of us. Only hackers like Matthew Broderick were using The Internets at this time, so online advertising wasn't ready yet. IBM and the PC was leaping ahead of a little guy named Apple, who didn't advertise enough in the eighties. As a farewell to advertising a failed spokesperson, Jack in the Box blew up Jack.

We don't even know

Somebody decided that we should just take the last 30 years and mix it all up in a big jumbo bag of culture vomit... and so the nineties were born. The nineties were a period of people trying to
figure out their own unique thing. Company mergers were splitting up from the eighties due to the economy frowning upon monopolies in business. Cell phone companies were born left and right. The advertising methods sometimes attacked each others technologies, plans, and coverage areas. A new form of advertising in the early nineties was realistic computer generated bus wrapping ads. Crystal Pepsi was the first wrapped ad around a bus. The Internet really took off in the late 90s and changed the world in a way we'd never seen before. In 1995, Ebay was born and changed the way we sold anything on the Internet, even to this day... Napster is born out of a Boston University by Shawn Fanning. A world of peer-to-peer file sharing explodes, with advertising and banners from within the "free" services running like a virus across the world's web.

I still miss Pee Wee's Playhouse and Crystal Pepsi. Anybody in the computer industry was cashing in on "Y2K Proofing" of your American Home PC. In a pre-Geek Squad era, the little man was making more money than the yet to be invented corporate computer fixer upper giant...

Old is New

The millenium was all about us shutting off or blowing up because of that Y2K thing going around. Nothing happened, so instead we had to make up for the anticipated investments of our society. Things started getting expensive and overpriced from here on out. People no longer paid $40 to install a CDROM in their computer. They'd rather go to the corporate computer store giant and pay $200.

In other news, one word: Enron.

Vince McMahon starts the XFL to reinvent the NFL and we all try to forget, including him. The XFL was a professional American football league that played for one season in 2001. The league was founded by Vince McMahon, better known as the owner of the World Wrestling Federation (now World Wrestling Entertainment). The XFL was intended to be a major professional sports league complement to the offseason of the NFL, but failed to find an audience and folded after its first season. This is another example of a great promoter and producer, but lack of need or want to reinvent the wheel.

The Here and Now

Today, everything is all about reflecting on the past. Advertising has evolved into everything we do or say. Everything is all about vintage, old, worn down, or roughed up. Car manufacturers billboard ads have taken the eighties road, reverting back to simplicity with bright colors and stripes to get your attention while you drive your $2,500 car. Car magazine ads took a 180 degree turn instead and used computers to show all the pretty gadgets and gizmos under and inside the cars they sell for $50,000. Companies once again started merging again and beating out the little guy. AT&T, Barnes & Noble, Geek Squad, Starbucks, Dell, and other large conglomerants once again dominate the consumer markets. I guess they didn't pay attention to the eighties as much for that one. Jack in the Box brings back Jack, and is successful. Apple reinvents the computer, the walkman, and the phone - all in one decade. We'll see if history repeats itself as it always does. Again.

Vince McMahon buys every wrestling entity and becomes one big wrestling conglomerate. Probably one of the best promoters and film producers to date, whether you love or hate wrestling, Vincent Kennedy McMahon does his job and does it well. This man makes millions,
even billions selling hot WWE merchandise related to DVDs, toys, clothing, and tickets to sold out shows worldwide.

Video games and gaming brought new life into advertising again. Coca-Cola and online gambling giant Bodog ran ads that were appearing within video games such as Grand Theft Auto series
and more. In the future, look forward to real-time, rotating ads in games that future gamers will play. Google's next ad frontier may be inside videogames at the Wall Street Journal shows reports that Google is in talks with Adscape Media.

Napster came back, this time legal, legit, and 100% free from scandal...with a 7 day trial for unlimited downloading. (Which is a great service, by the way.) Competitors such as Limewire catch on and do the same thing, with advertisements built in. However, many users still opted to use their old free downloaded and out of date executable...still downloading illegally for free all day and all night. Just be sure to not upgrade, and log off when you're done, right?

"The world's an imperfect place. Screws fall out all the time..."

-Judd Nelson, The Breakfast Club

Please enter your account number, again.

The world is getting too fast now. We need to slow down. Databases are running together. My father and I have the same first name, but not middle name. I am not a junior. However, sometimes our credit and bill collector calls seem to run together. This is good for one of us, and bad for the other. That's just an immediate example how our society is getting lost with one another. You call customer support, but most likely you're going to talk to somebody overseas. Hey I'm not knocking anybody oversears, they need a job and to have to work, too.

One thing now that's important is "100% customer satisfaction" and a human responding to an email or telephone call. When you campaign or advertise, try to throw in somehow that you are
still around for them when they need it. Many people still think it's important to support customer support. I'd rather help out a local businessman than an corporate giant, or an outsourced company, wouldn't you? You'd rather get hired by an employer than a temp agency recruiter, right? Anybody looking for a job in 2008 knows this problem. You fill out a million forms with your past employment history, sign up with hundreds of recruiter agencies, when really it'd be much simpler to just email the damn resume straight to the employer. Suddenly, your SPAM folder just exploded into your inbox. Better get Panda Antivirus and Security or AVG Free Edition... Crap.

What does all this mean?

You have to pay attention, everywhere. Look around you when you leave the house. Look at colors, shadows, styles. What is going on behind the ad you are studying? Billboards, bus ads, magazine ads, taxi cab ads, web site ads...they all start to run togther now, don't they? Everything looks old, vintage, and "stylish". Even television and commercials are doing the "film scratch" technique, to give a vintage feel to film. This was borrowed from genius filmmakers who in the past five to ten years have pioneered that in their horror films.

Sometimes, being original and looking to the past can propel you forward into a very successful marketing and advertising campaign. Just remember, sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. YouTube, Adwords, and MySpace have been used as very succesful marketing vehicles for the creative artistic individual. If you sell tee shirts, are a musician, an ebook writer, or anything related to a creative side - you might want to revisit these avenues for you and your business.

Pick your favorite colors, and pick a time period. Theme it the way you like, but stay simple. Rough it up a little, and remind people that you are there for them 100%. Now go to it, get out there and advertise! Here's some advertising books for you to check out and read over. You have many more options to choose from in this day and age than our past competitors ever
could or would have.

KISS

Keep It Simple Stupid

The Potential of Cafepress and You

Know Your Competitors

McDonald's watches over Burger King, Jack in the Box, and Wendy's, right? The shops that I have my eyes on have been CultClassicTs, FlippinSweetGear, BurnTees, Detour Designables, Media Tees, Shirtees.Net, SpeakUp Designs , Barry's World, KA Designs, and ShirtVille. I'm sure these guys make a decent earning per month. I have no idea, but Juan can't help but assume.

Earning at Cafepress

During spring and middle of summer, i.e., slow season, I sell anywhere from 10-15 products per day at Cafepress. During Christmas season last year, there were periods where I sold over 65 t-shirts a day at Cafepress. Christmas makes 65% of my entire year's sales, it's funny... When I do payroll in March each year for myself from my corporation, it's amazing to see a year to date (YTD) earnings over $20-25k. Little do most know after that, the sales slow down - so your adjusted year to date (YTD) income is slanted.

The Flow of Cafepress products

A luxury item such as t-shirts aren't as important suddenly after college tuition fees, groceries and GA$... How about the maxed out credit card bills from Christmas? Sales pick up of course, during the tax refund season of May-June...For only those 2 months. School's out for summer, people are at the beach and tanning, not in front of a computer. Sales pick up again before school, usually good around August and start of September. This applies to most products that aren't a necessity in life. Sure, clothing is a necessity, but marked-up clothing with custom graphics aren't.

The rude/crude/violent themed t-shirts and products won't and don't sell as much, because their products are banned from little Johnny's elementary school. Capeshe?

$50k in net commission sales at Cafepress is a long reach, but I won't say it's impossible. Remember, what matters most of any business is the bottom line. It's not just Cafepress that gives me a check. You have to use everything together, as one happy family. Amazon , Adbrite , Paypal, Ebay , Ebay Partner Network , Cafepress, Commission Junction , ClickBank, PrintFection , Zazzle ..... bottom line figures can reach you to whatever limit you set as your projected goal. You, as a business man should make and set goals for you to follow. It's the best way to get to them....I'll have articles about all of those topics. Soon... I'm just a one man corporation, remember? ;-)

It costs money to make money.

If you spend $900 a month on Google Adwords, and it returns you an extra $2,000 in net sales, that's worth it, right? Google Adwords can make fortunes or destroy them. I personally lost $350 in one day for poor Google Adwords keywords and budget settings 'ala Commission Junction links. Be careful with your keywords. Very careful...

TIP! What also matters, especially for luxury items, you need to set ad scheduling Monday-Friday, 8am to 11pm so you don't waste money. Go looser on the weekends, or preferably, not at all, since people are out and about shopping or whatnot. When you're working from home, the world's quieter and different Monday through Friday. This is because everyone's at college or
work...most likely, on a computer.

TIP! Don't max out the Google Adwords during the slow seasons of luxury items for sale on the Internet. You can't polish a terd. If people aren't buying, damnit, they're not going to buy, okay? It's not your fault, it's George Bush and the economy's fault. Use your guns during Christmas. Consider it your bonus for the year from Santa Claus.

Never kiss and tell.

I've been asked numerous times how much I make each month. Have you ever asked a woman how much she weighs? You'll get the same reply from several businessmen.

A prude and polite businessman does not disclose figures if he doesn't have to. You typically don't want to disclose your sales figures to competitors. This is because it's already on public display how your competitor markets him or herself. By checking up on your competition, you have an idea of what they make by doing what they do. Corporations are private companies, and do not have to disclose gross sales or figures. If a company is public, and trading on the open market, they are required by law to release such accounting and paperwork to the general public record.

That and, the entire focus on this blog is to teach you to reach your arms out farther and dig deeper into the Internet's coinpurse. Using everything together gives you a bottom line figure that reaches closer to the projected sales goal you set.

I really feel confident these tips and tricks that I will be covering over the next few months (as we gear into Christmas soon) are going to help a lot of others out. The advice I give doesn't just apply to Cafepress. You can use these tactics for anything related to selling products online that aren't a necessity, like toilet paper or gasoline. You have to work harder to sell products people don't need.

Getting Started with Google

This is about getting started with some free tools. My primary email is a Google Mail account, which I highly recommend people to use. Signup is free. A lot of the services I am going to review and cover are offered for free by simply logging into your Google Account. Gmail offers outrageous storage space and peace of mind. My last footer message in Gmail read, "You are currently using 797 MB (11%) of your 6981 MB."

For those of you with no webspace or hosting, you can upload your images for free with Google Picasa and start posting on a free BlogSpot account (owned by Google, Inc.). Once you have your presence established on the Internet, you can now put up Google Adsense ads and Adbrite ads that deliver a check right into your bank account or mailbox. Put your ads on your own webspace, your Myspace page, your BlogSpot Blog, or anywhere else you have an account that allows 3rd party links.

I'll discuss later about web hosting and owning your own domain names. Right now, this article is for the novice with no knowledge whatsoever behind HTML or designing a webpage. BlogSpot
offers templates and guides to help you stumble through the painless process of setting up your "Internet Presence" as I prefer to call it.

If you produce or sell a product, you can list it for free at GoogleBase, where your products are listed at Froogle.

TIP: If you notice, none of my linked words in this article are to affiliate driven hotlinks. There is one affiliate driven link I made in this article, and that only pointed to Adbrite. See my tracking number I.D. ? You'll have one too, once you sign up as a Publisher.