The Ocho (B)

In response to Heather's Blog about Sports Illustrated and Target Swimsuit Ads:

I have no problem with nontraditional gender specified advertisements in a magazine I read. I don't see why this would be a problem in the first place. It's not like I have to go through the 6 pages of swimsuits, I can just simply skip over the advertisement that matters nothing to me and continue on with my reading. If anything I could see this benefiting the company that is advertising. A guy could be reading his SI see the swimsuits, check them out, see one he thinks is "sexy" and in turn tell his girlfriend/wife or whatever about it, and she in turn looks, likes it, and goes to buy one.

What if the shoe were on the other foot? What if there was advertisements geared toward males in a copy of Cosmo? How would women feel about that?

Blog lucky number 7 (A)

FanFueled is a collaborative marketing platform that allows for companies to enlist everyday consumers to advertise for their company, using incentives from clothing to tickets. I was one of FanFueled's lackeys two years ago in an attempt to win tickets to Camp Bisco X. Once a week I would log on and click some buttons that would in turn spam my facebook and twitter account with links to Camp Bisco's site. As well as individually inviting my friends to join the page. When people clicked the links I got additional points. I partook in this for 5 months leading up to the actual festival in July. By which point i had 1100 points, enough for a simple screen-printed sweatshirt or lesser prize. Now fast forward to present day, Camp Bisco is back on fanfueled for their upcoming summer festival. However the layout has changed and the point system is completely different. As someone who was an avid FanFueled participant I now look at the site and feel it is nearly impossible to win/earn any prize worthy of spamming my friends.

My question to you is do you think it is fair for a company to take use people for advertising purposes when there is a very small chance they end up with anything to show for it?