Marketing Firm Wants Your Home for Advertisement

What happens with a mix of a marketing firm, homeowners looking for ways to pay mortgage and a house? According to Brainiacs From Mars, this is a formula for great marketing.  The marketing firm decided that homes could be marketing space and by offering to pay mortgages, homeowners would be willing to offer up theirs. “Exclusive: Mortgage problems? Turn your house into a billboard” by Tim Reid of Reuters.com reports the case of the Hostetlers of Buena Park, CA. They gave their home to Brainiacs From Mars in exchange for “getting their nearly $2,000 monthly mortgage paid.” The result was the company’s name plastered on the home against a green background and the 2^nd part of the home painted orange with a GR code and the Facebook and Twitter symbol.

According to the article, the mortgage payments go “up to a year” but doesn’t clarify the length of time homeowners must keep the advertising on their homes.  The Hostetler’s neighbors were told it would be one month; the couple might push for six months. Speaking of neighbors, some were not fond of the advertisement and color scheme. They complained and city council hasn’t been too agreeable.

The man behind the scheme is Romeo Mendoza, the founder and CEO.  The article reports “his ultimate goal is to turn 1,000 homes across the United States into giant advertisements for his marketing firm”.  Since advertising this format via the company’s website there has been “38,000 applications”.  Mendoza’s contribution to the article was pretty much stating that the scheme helps homeowners and that “he hopes the quirkiness… will convince companies to hire Brainiacs From Mars to run their advertising campaigns”. In the end, he believes the financial need of homeowners will give them the support they need to keep going. Although, Mendoza is aware of the challenge he faces with zoning laws and city council approvals.

Public Relations is Looking for a New Definition

The definition of public relations was last updated in 1982. We can all agree that since 1982 public relations has changed with the emergence of social media and mobile communications. With this in mind, the Public Relations Society of America is making an effort to redefine “public relations”. According to “Redefining Public Relations in the Age of Social Media” by Stuart Elliott of NYtimes.com the current definition is “Public relations helps an organization and its publics adapt mutually to each other”.

The problems with the definition are it’s vague; and today, PR is a conversation rather than adaption. The article explains that PR communication is “a process that for decades went one way – from the top down, usually as a monologue – now goes two ways…” Adaption implies being forced to accept a given image or message. Social media has allowed consumers to respond quickly and publicly en masse to a given PR situation. Consumers no longer have to adapt, they can respond in various forms throughout cyberspace, and in turn, companies can change to please the consumers. An example given in the article and that was very public: Netflix attempted to spin-off their DVD services. Their subscribers took to the internet to air their grievances about the attempt and to a previous price hike. Netflix responded by abandoning the spin-off and they lost 800,000 members as a consequence of the attempt.

 The definition campaign is dubbed Public Relations Defined and its goal is “A modern definition for the new era of public relations.” Public Relations Defined started on Sept 30 with a meeting of many representatives from professional PR organizations and will continue as an “open forum” as the website prdefinition.prsa.org will allow anyone to submit a definition (within a given template). With an outdated definition, the Public Relations Society of America could also look outdated. This new campaign should result in a new definition and updated image for the organization.

Silly Bandz: Feeding a Trend

Have you noticed colorful, shaped rubber bands seen on many tweens and young children? Those decorative bands in the shape of symbols, animals, and other outlined objects are a trend. I’m not exactly sure the actual spark of the trend. What I do know is its popularity has sparked other rubber bands within the market. The original multicolored, cheap, shaped rubber band, in the American market, is by Silly Bandz. Rob Croak, the creator of Silly Bandz and its supplier Brainchild Products (BCP) Imports LLC, was featured on Entrepreneur.com in “Trend-Spotter: The Man Behind Silly Bandz” by Tim Beyers.

This entrepreneur got the idea by seeing similar bands in Japan (which is the reason I state Silly Bandz is the original in America) and felt it would flourish in the American market. Thus, he started Silly Bandz and now, is the main supplier of this trend. The most exciting part of the article is reading the ways in which Croak finds success within this trend. We all know trends can last long but, with children and tweens, trends can last for a small moment before another eye-popping item comes along.