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Douglas MSS Pitches Students on

How to

Vince Yim, OP Contributor

O, March 19th, the Douglas
College Marketing Students Society
(MSS) presented their speaker night
event, “The Secrets of Advertising:
Creations and Considerations.”

Featuring Kim Short of Ipsos ISA
(sister company to Ipsos-Reid), she
gave a lecture on the challenges
faced by marketers today and
a brief primer on how to over
come them. This event was
organized by the MSS and
was third in a series of speaker
events, that allowed the students
to apply their knowledge from
class.

“Tt’s one of the largest
events that the MSS has ever
organized,” says Gail Tibbo,
faculty chair of the Marketing
department, “I’m pretty
impressed with that.”

As a consultant, Short works
with marketers in gauging
the effectiveness of their
strategies and gives advice on
how they work. Advertising
is but one of the many forms
of marketing, which has made
a very large impact on our
lives. Short estimates that we
are bombarded with literally
thousands of ads on a daily
basis. For companies looking

to convey a certain message (whether
to purchase a product or do a certain
action), this makes it difficult, with
sO many competing messages and the
audiences themselves.

Short illustrated this by asking what
the audience preferred, Pepsi or Coca-

Cola. A quick show of hands indicated
Coca-Cola as the favourite, which
coincided with statistics that Short

had, which indicated that in terms of
branding, Coca-Cola was preferred. She
then went on to cite another statistic
that according to blind taste test, Pepsi

 

Get Ahead In Advertising

came out as favourite.

In her presentation, Short continued
to discuss the most common tools
for advertisers and their level of
effectiveness. These include anything
from music to celebrity endorsement to
humour. She cautioned against arbitrary
use, especially since there is
the tendency to forget what
the commercial is actually
for, or in the case of the
recent “Random Celebrity
Guy” commercials, not even
know what is being promoted.

During the ending Q&A
period, Short addressed
several of the current
_ trends and controversies in
advertising, such as the use
of cookies to track on-line
behaviour on the Internet
to target specific ads. “I
personally have issues with
it,” Short says, “Unless there
is informed consent, which
some companies do, but it’s
not universal.”

When asked about what
the most important lesson
the students can take from
the presentation, Short says,
“There’s a need to be relevant
and you have to engage your
audience too. You need to be
persuasive.”

 

International Protests Mark Four
Years Since Iraq Invasion

Vancouver Rallies 400 in a Downpour

Nicole Burton, OP News Editor

Be. and activists took
to the streets around the world on
Saturday, March 17 to mark the fourth
anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq.
Demonstratiors numbered as many as
500,000 in Barcelona, with smaller
protests in over 100 cities around the
world, including an estimated 50,000
marching on the Pentagon in the United
States, and several thousand across a
handful of cities in Canada.

In Vancouver, more than 400 people
marched from English Bay through
pouring rain, to hear speakers and
music at the Vancouver Art Gallery. In
addition to Iraq, the rally also raised the
question of Canada’s participation in
the NATO occupation of Afghanistan.

Recent polls by CNN suggests that
more than 60% of Americans polled

t

“are opposed” to
the US occupation
of Iraq and want
to see troops
withdrawn within
the next year.
Similar polls
conducted by
Ipsos-Reid in
Canada have
found that
between 55% and
65% of people

in Canada are
opposed to the
current Canadian
occupation of
Afghanistan.